Chapter 1- Rowan
I had become something of a beast.
A silent marauder hermitted away from the neighboring townfolk. A minotaur in the maze of woods. A fairytale women whispered to their children around the fire, and a warning fathers gave their families before hunting season. The whip our king cracked upon the backs of any fool who dared displease him. That whip was stained red and its leather worn, ends frayed but still hungry. Still looking. I still wasn't sure what I was looking for, maybe the only thing I've ever looked for. The hunt, the chase, the capture. An omega to feed my hierarchy while feasting on her from the top of the food chain, to create new enemies, new flesh to slay. I had hunted them down. Every last one of them, until recently one of them who had betrayed my mother, had fled. The man was at first nameless, a useless shmuk who had sold her out, allowing my father to capture my mother, mutilate her, and then dump her body in the nearest river. Then soon, it had dawned on me that he had a daughter, a secret he kept stowed away. Likely spoiled rotten and rolling in her fathers dirty money like a gluttonous swine. And with looks that would most definitely compare to one. I would ruin her, humiliate the little beta in every inhuman way possible after I was given instructions to her location.
My heavy boots thud against the cobblestone aggressively as I made my way up the steps and through kings gates, two officers nodded not daring a glance in my direction as they passed me by. A terse two finger gesture thrown into the air left in my wake, and a guard opened the doors to the castle. The air was sweeter here in the entrance hall, the sweetness and bitterness of blood and copper. My heavy trod towards the belly of the castle the only sound to break the silence. That and the occasional scurry of a maid who dared not look at my gnarled face. The castle was its usual gloomy self, barren, as though it mourned its lost matriarch, the king's traitorous wife. She had run off with a guard and was murdered by barbarians on the outskirts of our border. She lusted after another man. Yet the walls of the King's home wept nonetheless. The townsfolk didn't, practically leaving their doorsteps and duties to celebrate her fall. Her royal help did not mourn her.
Nor did the king.
The hallway grew darker until I pushed the oak doors to the king's study open, and stood inside bowing my head, and tipping my gaze. "My king.”
“Come." His deep baritone voice menacing, yet unthreatening. I stepped forward and looked up. The older man smiled warmly, a wide contrast to his leather face and dark brow. The hierarchy may be intimidating, but the crow's feet crinkling his eyes softened him. He was the man I couldn't call father, but had always been one for me.
"Sit, I have what you're here for Rowan." He ordered. I obeyed, dropping stiffly into an armchair across his dark wooden desk.
"Take only the Beta's from the 4th legion with you, I know what you hear about her status as a beta. The commander in that quadrant told me another story."
"My lord, Barsik's idiot girl couldn't be an omega." I stated, almost a question in disbelief.. Female omegas were rare, less common than male omegas.
"Rowan, intelligence is not derived from genealogical connection, as you would know, but status is. Her mother was an omega, and no one's ever seen the girl or spotted a missing omega from the system in two years." He continued, his salt and pepper brows lowering as he spoke. "I know your plans with her, it's not in my heart to do favors. Particularly when it comes to a girl who is soon to be dead," he chided, intentional with the unspoken words thereafter.
King Alkar hadn't become the only ruling power in this side of the world because of his charity. The only monsters roaming his empire were the likes of vagrant soldiers from the east, and me, according to the townsfolk of Flaig, the territory's capital. The town I had known as home for the last 18 years.
"Ronan," the King's voice as grim and his gaze as steely, "get it done, finish it. What you do with her is your right."
And with that, as if on a silver platter, James handed me her scribbled address in ink. I would bring back her head, and that would be the last of Barsik's daughter he would see before I slit the snake's throat into a smile.
