The scent hit Aurean before the door even opened.
Spiced amber and something sweeter beneath—omega musk, rich and cloying. His body went still, fingers tightening around the folded linens in his arms. He had been summoned as usual, expecting to assist Rythe's evening routines, nothing more.
But when the door was opened by a laughing, half-naked figure lounging against the prince's table, Aurean knew this night would be different.
Tallen.
The favored omega consort of the palace. Sleek, elegant, cruel in ways only those born loved could afford to be. He barely spared Aurean a glance before turning back to Rythe with a feline smile.
"Oh, is that the pet?" Tallen purred. "You weren't joking. He really is tame."
Rythe sat shirtless on the bed's edge, wine in hand, face impassive. His eyes flicked to Aurean, unreadable.
"Come in," he said simply.
Aurean stepped inside, every movement controlled. Tallen wrinkled his nose.
"Shouldn't he be kept with the dogs?" he asked Rythe, voice syrupy with venom. "I'd hate to have my scent mingling with something so... desperate."
Rythe said nothing, only gestured for Aurean to lay out the silks and oils on the table as usual. Tallen moved to the bed like a performance, straddling Rythe's lap with the familiarity of ownership. His moans were loud, practiced, intentional—as if meant to echo.
And still, Aurean did not flinch.
He set the items with precision, his face blank as Rythe's hands moved over Tallen's hips. The sounds of kisses, of whispered filth, filled the space between them.
Tallen leaned back with a smirk, eyes landing on Aurean as he began unfastening Rythe's trousers.
"Does he clean up after, too?" he asked mockingly. "Or do you let the beast watch like a good little kennel pet?"
Rythe's jaw ticked.
Aurean did not speak.
He only bowed slightly, his voice flat. "Shall I wait in the hall, my lord?"
Rythe looked at him then. Really looked.
He saw no embarrassment. No anger. Just the same stillness that had begun to haunt him. As if Aurean had gone so far beyond humiliation that it no longer reached him.
"No," Rythe said suddenly. "Stay."
Tallen gave a delighted little gasp. "You are cruel," he giggled.
But there was no humor in Rythe's eyes.
And later—when Tallen was gone, curled in silk and smug satisfaction, leaving behind a tangle of scent and sweat—Rythe remained sitting upright.
He stared into the candlelight, one hand clenched tight.
He had thought keeping Aurean close would make him easier to manage. To watch. To own.
But it wasn't working.
The boy wasn't breaking.
He was changing.
And Rythe, for all his control, could no longer tell if he was the captor… or the one being drawn into something far more dangerous.
The corridors were still, long past midnight. Moonlight spilled through the arrow-slit windows, washing the stone floors in silver. No guards challenged Aurean's path—Rythe's mark had granted him silent passage, even at this hour.
He kept his steps quiet.
He didn't want to hear them echo.
His fingers still smelled faintly of oil and spice from the silks he'd folded. His sleeves were crumpled from kneeling too long beside the bed, and the phantom weight of Tallen's smug glances clung to his shoulders heavier than any chain.
But what clung worst of all was the stillness in Rythe's eyes.
That watching.
That cold, calculating study of him—even as the omega moaned into Rythe's neck, as if Aurean was the one being undressed and laid bare.
It wasn't shame that bit at him. Not anymore.
It was something deeper. More hollow.
If they think me a beast, he thought, I will become one.
He slipped into the hound yard without drawing attention. The night air smelled of hay and earth and blood and fur. Honest things. Grounding things.
They came to him immediately.
No commands, no coaxing.
The smallest—the gray female from the cell—was first to nose his thigh, whimpering softly. Then the others approached, one by one. Some brushed past his legs, some pressed close to his side. One—massive, golden-eyed, scarred—sat down right in front of him and stared up without blinking.
Aurean dropped to his knees.
His breath finally cracked.
Not into sobs—but into silence so deep it hurt.
The hounds leaned in. One licked his face. Another pressed its head beneath his chin. They surrounded him like a shield, sensing the storm coiling beneath his skin—sensing the shift in his energy, the tightening control of a human stripped of self, now replacing it with something older, something steel-boned and wild-eyed.
He ran a hand through the black ruff of the golden-eyed hound.
"I won't break," he whispered.
A low rumble—almost like a growl—came from the hound's chest. Not aggression. Not warning.
Agreement.
For a long while, Aurean knelt there, breathing in the scent of the pack. Letting the fire under his skin find shape. He wasn't healed. Not close. But the numbness had begun to crack.
And beneath it?
Something alive.