Chapter 60: News
Lucas sat alone at the head of the long breakfast table. The sunlight filtering through the tall windows bathed the dark wood in amber-gold, and the staff, efficient as ever, had left a small tray: croissants, clover honey, and a soft-boiled egg in a delicate glass cup. But he’d barely touched it.
Serathine had left early—an appointment with one of the maritime lords. Something about trade ports and taxation alignment. She had kissed his cheek lightly before leaving and told him not to read anything upsetting until after breakfast.
He had ignored that part.
The tablet in his hand glowed faintly, open to an encrypted court archive—one of the few Lucius had forgotten to revoke access to. Lucas hadn’t hacked anything. He just hadn’t logged out.
He hadn’t meant to go looking for anything dangerous. Not really.
NovelFire
At first, it had just been a line of curiosity, an idle attempt to make sense of the word Trevor had used the night before—dominant omega—a phrase that had lodged itself behind his ribs like a thorn too small to remove and too persistent to ignore. It sounded clinical, exaggerated. A contradiction in terms. Something not meant to exist, and certainly not something meant to apply to him.
And yet, the tablet now held a different truth.
He had started with the basics, sifting through noble archives that wrapped every piece of biological information in diplomatic language and sealed medical documents in layers of formality thick enough to muffle the truth. The entries weren’t new. They weren’t even especially informative. But they were real. Real in the way blood was real. In a way, a cage was real.
Dominant omega.
It wasn’t a classification so much as a warning label. Not because they were unstable or dangerous, as the old whisper stories had claimed, but because they weren’t supposed to be seen. They weren’t supposed to exist in the open. Because if one ever did—if one were ever confirmed—then entire houses would move, and nations would listen, and bloodlines on the verge of extinction would suddenly find reason to fight again.
Because dominant omegas weren’t liabilities. They were the last viable thread in an increasingly brittle net of legacy and power. They weren’t forgotten—they were hidden. Covered up before they could be claimed. Sealed behind oaths, treaties, and, in many cases, marriages negotiated behind glass doors and presented to the world only after the ink had dried and the bond had been sealed.
Lucas scrolled slower now, breath shallow, each swipe bringing him closer not to an answer but to an understanding. This wasn’t just about what he might be. It was about what people would do if they believed it.