Page 6 of Fated or Knot (UnseelieVerse: The Omega Masquerade #1)

6

FAL

T he other fae on the patio turned to stare, alerted by Lark’s breathy cry of “Unseelie!” I’d jumped to my feet after Lark’s leap from the balcony, my call into the night following the gray blur of her wings.

What a situation this had become. I straightened and cleared my throat, regaining a semblance of my princely dignity after a simple kiss from a pixie obliterated it so efficiently. I headed for the stairs to go into the garden after her. That didn’t seem like a steady flight, and I wasn’t about to let my future mate escape me so easily.

“Unseelie aren’t allowed at this event,” a male said as I passed the bench where he sat.

I paused, my gaze slipping to him and the two others who shared his bench. “Two alphas from the same pack aren’t allowed, either,” I responded coolly. They had a blue-winged pixie between them.

“We’re not from the same?—”

I strode past them with a scoff, uncaring of what they had to say for themselves and, frankly, tired of listening to Theli. The burr found in the Seelie tongue was starting to get on my nerves…except when spoken by a certain shy omega who smelled like she was already mine. Lark could talk to me in Theli all she wanted with her higher pitched, musical voice.

Suppressing a growl, I took the stairs down to the garden two at a time.

There was no way word of my presence didn’t filter to the ears of the Seelie royalty, but the deed was done. I’d found my scent match. The repercussions of who she was would be interesting, to say the least. But I’d still managed to pass as Seelie for long enough to pick up on her indulgent scent of chocolate and honeyed dessert crackers.

I craved the combination as I strode through the castle’s garden, looking for her or Tormund. He had insisted on coming and waiting outside the event, just in case I needed rescuing. An eye-rolling sentiment from my baby brother.

As the eldest of my pack and the one to come up with the idea of meeting Seelie omegas, I’d practically been forced to attend this event. I’d handled it fairly well until Lark stole my disguise, though the first hours were dreadful. The scent blockers in the air were not enough to dampen my sense of smell completely, a fate I cursed until the moment Lark tiptoed right past me on a guard’s arm and the wake of her scent made my skin tingle.

It’d only been a matter of time before I would’ve gotten her alone. I’d observed her, guessing the reasons for her every quirk. And while she’d been stiff and unsure face-to-face, she’d certainly made a favorable impression on me.

I had too many unanswered questions about her. Why had she come to the event late and without supervision? Why did she take in the crowd of potential doting mates with the chagrin of someone who’d rather be anywhere else?

And most importantly, why had she stolen from nearly every alpha who’d passed by her?

I didn’t disapprove. If anything, the fact that she was a tricksy little thing who’d pulled off a surprise on me too was better than foreplay. I was so rarely shocked, but it turned out Lark was hiding her identity the exact same way I was. How incredibly invigorating.

Now I wanted to steal her. We’d be on first magirail to Neslune tomorrow morning if she hadn’t run from me.

The trail of bitter chocolate scent she’d left behind tempered my excitement some. Especially when I found a concentrated circle of it mixed in with the smell of bruised grass and freshly unearthed soil. She must’ve crashed at this spot. I circled out from there, picking up the ghost of her fear and pain with an agitated snarl.

This was my fault. I hated that the harsh smell had come from her, startled free by our joint identity revelations. If she’d only stayed a few moments longer to listen to me. Many Seelie still believed my kind to be “cursed” when there was no such thing.

The fae people had split long ago to populate the island nations of Thelis and Serian. Thelis enjoyed more temperate weather and nurtured milder Seelie, with their primary population consisting of sweet woodland fae—forest elves, pixies, gnomes, and dryads included. Meanwhile, Serian, situated further to the north, invited any race hearty enough to survive its harsh winters to live under the label of Unseelie. This included most of the bestial fae races. It was no surprise that most of my people carried at least one animal trait under those conditions.

As for Lark’s true identity, I didn’t care that she was a servant—and why was she dressed like one anyway? Omegas were the most precious and rare fae. The rest of us were plucked from the stars to serve them .

I stopped below an essence lamp, drawing in a deep breath. Unsweetened chocolate wove in with my brother’s familiar scent. It grew more honeyed as the wind picked up a chill gust.

Oh, good . To my relief, she’d run into Tormund. My lips relaxed, and I slid my fingers into my suit pockets as I followed the trail they’d left behind with less urgency. Lark meeting my brother was the best possible outcome. If anyone could gentle a frightened and potentially wounded omega and see to her needs, it’d be that lovable oaf.

I tracked their scents straight to the inn my pack was staying at.

Somehow, I beat Tormund to my inn room, where Marius and Kauz waited for us with one of their never-ending card games. “Finally!” Marius exclaimed in our mother tongue, throwing down his hand and jostling the piles of coins heaped between them.

Kauz raised a brow after looking me up and down. “Where’s your mask?” he asked.

I flashed a feline smile. “Our tricksy omega stole it.” I was glad to switch back to Serian after suppressing my natural accent for so long.

Kauz narrowed his eyes of violet-threaded starlight. He’d worked quite hard on making the illusion airtight so we wouldn’t have a litany of uncomfortable consequences coming when the Seelie royals contacted our mother and accused us of some kind of wrongdoing.

My brothers and I had been on our best behavior for the trip here and our stay in Ilysnor. Some of it was for our own sanity, as traveling for so long on a magirail while carrying on with a sibling feud would be absolute misery, but for the most part, it was for the Seelie around us. Inevitably, the Seelie always found some fault in our actions, no matter how polite we were or how benign our common trickery had become of late.

Well, when it happened, I would handle it.

“ Our omega,” Marius echoed. He crossed his arms, his denial already leaking into the pack bond.

“I know you didn’t want to consider that fate would give us?—”

Tormund burst into the room behind me with an exclamation of “Brothers!”

His presence blotted out Marius’s doubt with a heaping cup of joy drenching our pack bond. He crushed me in a big hug, lifting me to the tips of my toes.

Marius sighed. “What happened to your cloak?”

“I met the most perfect omega,” Tormund said, ignoring him and denying me another breath all at the same time. “She’s just a wee little bird, but she smells like a dream. And she’s only two rooms down from this one.”

“She couldn’t possibly be our omega,” Marius said disdainfully.

“Tor,” I managed, pulling on his wrist. He released me with an apologetic glance, smoothing out some of the new wrinkles in my suit with a few brushes of his broad palm. He was the youngest out of the four of us, and sometimes I questioned when he’d gotten to be the biggest and strongest as well.

“Yes, our omega!” he exclaimed.

“I’m going to need more of a description than ‘wee little bird,’” Kauz remarked. “And ‘tricksy’ while you’re at it.”

Tormund and I took a seat at the table and took turns explaining Lark. I went first, and my brothers noticed she’d vexed me a bit by the shift of amusement in our bond. I hated unfinished puzzles, and Lark was one I hadn’t figured out yet.

While Tormund described how he’d calmed her down, shooting me a scowl for causing her distress, I met Marius’s gaze. We stared one another down in a contest of wills and dominance. He had a bad attitude about this whole venture, but he wouldn’t air it and ruin this now that we’d found Lark.

“Then I bought her something to eat,” our redcap brother concluded. “So, we’re going to steal her away to Neslune tomorrow, right?”

For the Unseelie, nothing was quite so romantic as a well-meaning relocation. Mother still swooned over how our fathers had stolen her from her childhood home in the dark of night for their first date.

But for a skittish Seelie who’d already bolted once? Maybe not the best strategy to win her heart. “With a few extra steps,” I hedged, pulling out Lark’s mask from my pocket and sliding it across the table to Kauz.

He picked it up, spinning his starlight essence around it with a thoughtful hum. “This was hers?”

“Aye.”

His dark purple lips pinched into a line. “How unusual.” No one interrupted as he inspected the tarnishing surface and made a pinching motion above it. A misty layer of magic lifted from the mask, resembling a fold of the fake dress Lark had been wearing. “Creating something as easy as a layer of clothes shouldn’t have taken this much essence. Not to mention, illusion is an unusual skill for a Seelie to possess.” Kauz flipped the mask between his fingers, seeming troubled. “Did you want me to visit her dreams tonight?” he asked me.

I nodded. “Something is amiss with her.”

“Aye,” he murmured in agreement.

“Perhaps her subconscious will tell you her troubles. Imagine if we swept away her worries before we steal her to meet Mother. We can earn her trust quickly and elevate her to where she belongs,” I reasoned.

“Our pack princess,” Tormund said with a broad smile. He smacked the table and stood, trailing red fibers from his ruined cloak as he bid us good night and went to his room. I shook my head with a chuckle, now that I knew why he’d butchered the cloth. He’d give away the family fortune if given half a chance.

As soon as the door closed behind him, Marius said, “No Seelie will ever trust us. And our people will never accept a Seelie princess. Stars forbid, a Seelie queen.”

“There will certainly be consequences for Lark being our omega,” I said, putting on my practiced politician’s voice.

“We’ve met countless nixies that would fulfill the role beautifully without consequences ,” he argued, gesturing widely. Kauz leaned back to avoid being grazed by a flying fin. “And this female was disguising how she was dressed like a servant. She will have no idea what to do when tossed into the piranha pit Mother navigates with ease every day!”

“We will teach her,” I stated.

Marius turned to Kauz for help. “This is insane, right?” he demanded.

Kauz, as always, was the neutral arbiter of the pack. I could already tell that he hadn’t formed an opinion of Lark yet, as his side of the bond was placid. He had turned his gaze to the mask in his hands, starlight glittering over his fingers and along the patterns painted over his leathery wings as he spun essence for some unknown spell.

“We haven’t met her yet. But we have met every unmated nixie in Serian. Shaking the hand of one of the princes is practically a rite of passage for our country’s omegas,” he said, sounding distracted. “So, Fal guessed correctly that she had to be a pixie instead. Why is that such a problem? Our search is finally over.”

I let his reasoning sink in for a moment before adding, “Give her a chance. See if she’s so bad when she realizes you’re one of her scent matches and starts to consider you for a mate.”

Marius released a distinctively equine snort that matched his kelpie form. “Do we control fate, or does it control us?” he asked.

“Smarter minds than ours have been asking that since the dawn of Faerie,” Kauz remarked.

“All I’m asking is that you try before you dismiss her,” I said, resisting the urge to roll my eyes. “If not for your own happiness, then for Tormund. His rages have been getting worse.”

Marius stood with an irritable flick of his ear. “I know.”

“One day, our pack bond will not be enough to call back his sanity,” I pressed.

“I know ,” he grunted.

“And,” I added, with the intentionality of a finishing blow. “His fated mate will always be able to soothe him.”

Marius scoffed and headed for the door as well. “Not fate. Some quirk of redcap biology at best.”

“He needs her.”

“Good night.” He slammed the door behind him.

Stubborn as a kelpie wasn’t a saying for nothing. He’d have fought this trip tooth and nail if he’d realized we’d really come here for his sake first and foremost, not for Tormund.

I sighed, waiting for Kauz to finish the intricate spell work he focused on now that there was quiet in the room.

“She sleeps,” he murmured eventually. “I must go do the same to dream with her. You only wish to know of her troubles?”

I itched to know a lot more about her. To turn her past out and shake all the skeletons loose with the dust, to learn why she limped—and if someone was to blame for her injury, their identity so I could ruin them utterly.

I wanted to know the things she wished for at night so we could grant them. Locations she dreamed of visiting so I could steal her away to them.

But most urgently, I had to understand why her blue eyes had been shadowed with darker emotions when she’d said she’d wanted to be “seen” at the Omega Masquerade tonight. It’d felt like a cry for help, and I would answer it once I knew what she needed from me.

“Her troubles will suffice,” I said.

He lifted his brow with a knowing look.

“For now,” I added.

If he could tell me everything , it would save me time and effort. But I would eventually learn it all myself once she trusted me enough to confide. No matter how long it took, I’d show her that fate had crossed our paths for a reason.

I looked forward to seeing her again. No masks, no illusions, and fewer secrets between us.