Page 29

I turn the page and begin to read.

***

“So, what did you think?”

I snap my head up from the needlepoint in my hand—another thing Aurora has forcibly taught me to do. “Sanctioned omega activity,” she’d muttered, pushing the materials into my hands. “Welcome to my entire fucking childhood.”

We’re sitting in a fine drawing room in some other wing of the house. Each time we see one another, it’s like Aurora wants to take me further in the castle than she did last time. It’s always a new room, always pointed looks at the various doors leading out of the place. The guards either don’t notice, or don’t care.

I’m betting on the former. I can’t imagine Augustus will be too happy with them if I do manage to slip out on their watch. And I can’t imagine he’ll be too happy with his sister for being an accomplice.

No matter where I am or what the subject is, my thoughts always manage to wander back to him. Does Aurora know that he’s been coming to see me? That we’ve played chess now, three times this week.

Each time, Augustus plays more and more aggressively. Staring at me across the table with an expression that I can’t quite make out. His intensity is almost a compliment.

Him taking me seriously.

Now, Aurora reaches over and nudges my foot with hers, drawing me out of my thoughts and reminding me that she asked me something. The motion makes me accidentally poke myself with the needle.

“Ow.” I pop the injured finger into my mouth, speak around it, “What did I think about what?”

She laughs lightly, like I am just so silly, waving her hand in a dramatic fashion. “What did you think about that book I loaned you? The romance?”

I blink at her stupidly for a long moment, then it finally clears through my brain that she didn’t slip the wrong book under my door. She just doesn’t want the guard standing at the corner of the room to overhear our conversation and report back.

“I thought it was…surprising,” I say, swallowing and glancing over my shoulder at the guard. He stands at the door, his blond hair cropped close to his head, his arms crossed. He does not meet my gaze. He is burly enough that I imagine he could break me in two like a toothpick.

“Surprising how?”

“I’m surprised that you were able to get your hands on a romance like that.”

She glares at me. “How I got it doesn’t matter. Did you read it?”

Licking my lips, I try to study her. Try to figure out if this is a trap. Is she just waiting for me to admit to it so she can get me locked up? Or really locked up. Thrown in the dungeon, like Augustus threatened before.

I don’t think so.

Maybe it’s stupid, naive, hopeful—but I’ve never really had a friend. And over the course of the past week, I’ve started to feel like, as brash as she is, Aurora might be that for me. It’s hard for me to imagine she would purposefully set me up like that.

Especially because her having that book in the first place was dangerous enough.

“I did.”

“We’re going to the bathroom!” Aurora calls, standing suddenly and pulling me up. Her voice echoes back at us in the large, mostly empty room. “Mylah needs help adjusting her bra.”

The guard winces, making a face that says, yeah, I don’t need to know.

He trails us over to the general area of the bathroom, watches as we walk in together. The moment the door is shut and locked, Aurora turns on the sink and spins around to face me, dropping her voice to just above a whisper.

“So, you read it. And?”

I glance at the door. “Don’t you think he’s going to think it’s weird that the sink is running like this?”

She waves her hand. “Those men don’t know anything about omegas, or women in general, for that matter. Tell me what you thought about the book, Mylah.”

After deciding to crack the cover and to turn to the next page, I read through the entire rest of the thing in one exhilarating sitting. Adrenaline had coursed through me, my heart beating hard and fast with every line I read.

The start of the book was just an official list of the grievances against omegas—the laws disallowing us from being in public alone or when we want. The regulations that don’t allow us to have our own separate bank accounts or credit cards. Chaperone rules at most restaurants and coffee shops. Doctors requiring an alpha to sign off on health care decisions, which only increased the likelihood of abuse escalating, the book argued.