Page 7

Chapter

Seven

Leo

T he plan had begun to form in my mind from the moment Father insulted me and my brothers by hinting we were no better, in his estimation, than the villagers he’d condemned to his work camp. No one we’d spoken to so far had been entirely certain where the work camp was, how fortified it was, or how the villagers who had already been taken prisoner might be freed.

But if we were on the inside, if we were taken there directly by the castle guards, not only would we learn so much more about the wretched place, we’d be able to rally the prisoners who were already there to break out.

It was a simple, brave plan and I was certain I would have finally had the opportunity to stand up as a true leader of my father’s people, but as soon as Diamant and I were separated, I discovered the flaw in my plan.

“Are you alright?” Misha asked, scooting closer to me in the stuffy, enclosed carriage the four of us had been tossed into, chains on our wrists and ankles so that we wouldn’t be able to escape the way Tovey had when Lord Groswick had tried to steal him away. “You’re looking rather grey and green.”

“I’m fine,” I lied through clenched teeth.

“I don’t think you are fine,” Rumi said, leaning toward me from where he sat against the carriage’s other side. “What aren’t you telling us?”

I could see the suspicion in my brother’s eyes. He knew, or at least he had a good guess about why I felt so horrible and struggled so much as Diamant and I grew farther apart. I could tell that my bonded mate was back in the magical world, but feeling that only added to the distress that I couldn’t tamp down completely.

“I know what it is!” Obi gasped wrestling with the shackles that bound his wrists as if he could break free of them. “He’s in the same condition Tovey was when he came back from that first night with Rufus. You went into heat with Diamant, didn’t you.”

I winced and growled, clutching a hand to my stomach where the growing ball of life inside me rested. It was almost as if it was arguing with me that it wanted out, that it wanted a nice, safe, warm place to rest so that it could prepare to…hatch.

Thinking about the strangeness of it all had me swallowing like I was trying not to be sick.

“Yes, I went into heat,” I confessed in a gust of breath, my shoulders dropping in defeat. “Yes, I have an egg in me that needs to come out, just like Tovey did.”

My brothers reacted with varying degrees of happy, supportive surprise, but somehow that only made me feel worse. I shrugged Misha off when he tried to embrace me .

“I’m not papa material,” I growled in protest. “I’m a leader. I should be a leader, a fighter.”

“If you knew you were pregnant, why did you let yourself be separated from your mate?” Obi asked.

Rumi gave him a quick, sharp, sideways look as if the question were inappropriate, but I knew my brother well enough to know he was probably thinking the same thing.

“I can handle this,” I insisted. “Diamant and I won’t be parted forever. This is the only way I could think of to gain the intelligence we desperately need about this work camp. We can save those people from the inside,” I went on, not allowing any of my brothers to second-guess my decision. “And Diamant will go for help, bring some of the other dragons, and follow our bond to know exactly where we are. This is the best possible way forward, regardless of how I feel.”

Silence filled the dim interior of the carriage. My brothers watched me. I could tell they didn’t entirely approve, but Rumi, at least, knew I was right.

“What’s done is done now,” he said. “We’ll watch out for you as much as we look out for the villagers kept prisoner in the camp.”

I grunted, pretending it was the ache in my belly, but really, I didn’t like the way I’d suddenly been lumped in with a bunch of captive villagers.

The carriage rolled on, and in far less time than I would have expected it to take to reach a nefarious, hidden work camp, we came to a stop.

“More prisoners?” a deep voice called out to us. “And these ones delivered in a fancy carriage, like royalty?”

“They are royalty,” the alpha guard who had accompanied us from the castle said.

The carriage jostled as he and the other guards jumped down from the driver’s seat, then one guard came around to open the door, revealing the four of us.

An alpha with a rough face and a smarmy expression stepped into the open doorway. His smirk immediately turned into a look of shock when he saw us. “The omega princes?” he gasped.

“King Freslik wants to teach them a lesson for constantly trying to escape,” our guard said.

“They’re to be sent to work with the rest of these useless peasants?” the alpha asked.

Our guard shrugged. “That’s what the king wants.”

More guards had gathered around as the four of us were wrenched out of the carriage. Being manhandled like that only made me feel worse. I despised the feeling of any other alpha besides my mate touching me. My knees nearly buckled once my feet hit the ground.

“Like they’ll be good for anything,” the alpha in charge snorted. “Take them to the barracks. Work is done for the day, but they can at least eat with the other swine.”

If I’d been feeling better, I would have given the alpha in charge a piece of my mind over the way he treated princes. As it was, the best I could do was to stay on my feet as my brothers and I were dragged away from the carriage and into the work camp.

For a moment, I forgot all of my aches and complaints. The work camp was larger than I’d supposed it would be and far more daunting, but I was excited to get a good look at it.

The central part of the camp, where our carriage had arrived and where we were dragged off to, was made up of several longhouses with crudely thatched roofs and few windows. They stood in rows like soldiers, and indeed, soldiers guarded them. I caught sight of a few people staring forlornly out the windows or being led from the fields that surrounded the center of the complex, all of them looking weary and defeated.

The fields must have been part of the work that the villagers who’d been taken prisoner were meant to do. It was the wrong time of year for planting, but from the look of things in the light of the setting sun, a vast amount of empty wasteland where the camp had been built was being cleared for later cultivation. It wasn’t a bad idea to cultivate that land, but forcing peasants to do the backbreaking work, almost certainly without compensation or any right to the land, was evil.

There were a few other buildings that didn’t appear to be lodgings. I supposed those structures held other types of work, perhaps for women or even children, which I saw too many of as my brothers and I were brought to one of the longhouses. My father’s cruelty knew no bounds.

“What are we supposed to do with them?” a grizzly old soldier who looked like all the other mercenaries we’d fought back in Berk asked as we were taken into the dim, smoke-smelling building. “They look too fancy for this place.”

“They’re King Freslik’s omega sons, you dolt,” the alpha who I was now certain was in charge of the entire camp said. “He wants them kept here for a while to teach them a lesson.”

“The…the princes?” the grizzled guard looked nervous, as he should have been.

“Yes,” the alpha in charge said, calculation in his eyes as he rubbed his stubbly chin. “And I think I know just what they’re good for.”

Beside me, Misha shivered and let out a low moan that he quickly swallowed. I felt sorry for my gentle, sweet brother. Rumi and I could face this sort of a situation and rise above it. Even Obi had hidden depths of strength. But Misha was all sweetness and softness. He was far better suited to papahood than being a prisoner.

Part of me wished our situations were reversed, but I wasn’t about to give up my dragon to anyone.

Thoughts of Diamant bolstered my flagging spirits. I closed my eyes for a moment as the guards debated how we should be treated and called upon him through our bond. I don’t know where you are, my love, but I could use you right now.

“Keep them here until I give further orders,” the alpha in charge snapped. “It’s up to them whether their own people embrace them or curse them, since it was their father who landed them all in this position to begin with.”

He raised his voice at the end, speaking to the crowd of bedraggled villagers clustered along the sides of the walls of our new prison. The vicious smirk he wore hinted that he hoped the other prisoners would hate us.

I had more faith in people than that.

As soon as the alpha in charge and the other guards turned to leave, slamming the barrack’s door behind them, I turned toward our new companions.

“We’ve been hoping to find you all and this camp for days now,” I said, pretending that we’d arrived to liberate them instead of to join them in captivity. If I had anything to do with it, that’s exactly what we would do. “We’re here to help.”

The villagers just stared back at us at first. They were mostly young or very old, and there wasn’t an alpha among them. A few appeared to be betas who might have had mental and physical strength, but who looked far more beaten down than I wanted to see .

“This is our father’s doing,” Obi told them as we walked deeper into the room to join them. “Believe me, we’ve been working for a long time to counteract everything he’s done to harm our people. He’s treated us just as badly as he’s treated you all, though.”

I winced, uncertain whether it was best to start out with that.

“What can you tell us about this place and how you got here?” Rumi asked, far more sensibly.

The villagers looked at each other, as if trying to decide what they made of us. Most of them ended up glancing at a particularly tall beta who was around my and Rumi’s age.

“If you’re here to help us,” the beta said, “why haven’t you come before? Some of us have been here for months.”

“We didn’t know where this camp was,” I said, trying to sound apologetic, which didn’t come naturally to me. “We weren’t even aware of its existence. We only just found out about it a few days ago.”

“We’ve been held prisoner ourselves,” Rumi added, far better at being friendly than I was. “The king keeps us locked in our bedchamber in the castle.”

“Then how is it that you’re here?” an omega woman who looked several months pregnant asked with a frown. “Have they brought you here to spy on us?”

“No!” I said.

I would have explained, but a deep twinge of pain struck me just then, nearly doubling me over. I clasped my hands to my belly in a futile attempt to stop the feeling.

The pregnant woman seemed to understand my problem immediately. “How far along are you?” she asked, stepping bravely forward to rest a hand on my arm. “I’m Shayla,” she added.

I tried to smile gratefully at her, but at the same time, I was wary of explaining fully. “I’m far enough along to feel horrible,” I said with a groan.

Shayla immediately shifted to my side to rub my back. “The king did this as well, I suppose,” she said in a disapproving voice. “Selling his own son’s heat for whatever gain he thinks it will get him.”

My face flared hot with reluctant shame at the idea. Even though that wasn’t how I’d ended up with child, Father had sold my heats before. It made me feel sick that the people of our kingdom knew about our shame, or rather, our father’s shame.

At the same time, it broke down the barrier that would have been there otherwise.

“King Freslik is evil and a menace to this kingdom,” the beta growled, coming forward to shake Rumi’s hand. “I’m Milosh, and I hope you don’t mind me saying that.”

“Not at all,” Rumi said, shaking Milosh’s hand in return. “I agree with you. We all do.”

The atmosphere in the longhouse changed immediately. My brothers and I were drawn farther into the building, to the far end of the room, where some sort of weak stew was bubbling in a large pot over an open fire. The captive villagers made certain the four of us were settled and had been given a meager portion of the supper, although they all took less than we were served, and in short order, we were eating together.

“From what we can gather,” Milosh explained as we ate, most people sitting on the floor, “the purpose of this work camp is more about separating us from our families and loved ones so that they do whatever the king says than it is to produce anything.”

“Baylin, the chief in charge of the camp, is as corrupt as they come,” Shayla picked up the explanation. “He’s the one who’s profiting from the wool we’ve carded and the rope we’ve made.”

“The entire system is corrupt, from top to bottom,” another young omega said with a sigh.

“How well-guarded is the camp?” I asked. “Has anyone tried to escape?”

“We’ve tried a few times,” Milosh said, rubbing a hand over his face in exhaustion. “The trouble is that they work us so hard that by the end of the day, no one has the energy to try to battle their way out.”

“They keep us guarded as we work,” another beta added from the edge of our group. “There aren’t a lot of them, but they’re heartless and think nothing of hurting anyone who, as they say, gets out of line.”

“But you could all rise up and fight back as one if you needed to,” I said, more plans swirling together in my mind.

The villagers exchanged another round of tired, sheepish looks.

“We’ll do whatever you need us to, if you’re willing to lead us,” Milosh said. “You don’t know what being in a place like this day after day, week after week, does to you, though.”

“We want to break free,” Shayla said. “I want to return to my wife. But the relentlessness of cruelty shown toward us—” She burst into tears instead of finishing.

Anger tore through me, which only made me feel worse than I already did. Kidnapping people from their homes and lives and holding them prisoner was one thing. Breaking their spirits until they no longer had the will to fight back was salt rubbed into the wound.

“We’ll help you,” Obi said, still full of youthful enthusiasm. “We can help everyone form a plan to fight back and to escape.”

The villagers looked hopeful but doubtful at the same time.

“Begging your pardon, Your Highnesses,” Milosh said, “but how can four pampered omegas fight back against an army of hardened mercenaries to free hundreds of captive souls, many of whom have lost the will to resist?”

“We have help,” I said, wanting to reassure them, but uncertain how much I could say about the magical realm. “We have strong, powerful help from people who know we are here and know how to find us.”

That brightened the spirits of the villagers.

“He’s right,” Rumi added. “We have support from men that the king doesn’t even know about. They will find us soon, and if all goes to plan, we will not only be able to escape, we will free all of the captives and destroy this place.”

That had everyone’s attention. I could feel hope racing through the defeated villagers again.

“Tell us what we need to do,” Milosh said.

“First,” Rumi said, setting his stew bowl aside and leaning in, like we were conducting a secret meeting, “we need to know more about this camp, its size and its strengths and weaknesses.”

“Any information you can give us will be helpful,” I added, wanting to take charge as much as Rumi.

The villagers were more than happy to tell us everything they knew. They knew more than they thought they did. Not only were they able to tell us physical details of the camp, where it was most heavily fortified and where it was weaker, they were clear about just how corruptible the guards were.

“Father’s greed just might be our salvation in the end,” I commented to Rumi late into the night, after our meeting with the peasants concluded and we all shuffled off to bed. “Instead of hiring men that could be trusted to operate a place like this, he found the cheapest, cruelest people he could.”

“They should be easy to bribe,” Rumi agreed as we climbed into the same small bed, since there weren’t enough beds in the longhouse for everyone.

“I’m convinced we can fight back,” I said. “These people might be tired and disheartened, but did you see how their eyes lit up when they realized help is coming?”

“It restored them,” Rumi agreed. “I’m convinced that we’ll be able to lead a rebellion within these walls, sooner rather than later, and that everyone will be free by?—”

He stopped speaking as the longhouse door opened and the alpha in charge, Baylin, stepped into the building holding a lamp.

“Where are the princes?” he growled, his face eerie as the lamp illuminated it.

I exchanged a glance with Rumi, and even though my body ached and my stomach felt terrible, I pushed myself to sit, then to stand.

“We’re here,” I said, chin tilted up in defiance. “Who wants to know?”

Rumi, Obi, and even Misha were quick to scramble to their feet beside me. I couldn’t speak for them, but I had the deep sense that we needed to do whatever we could to protect our new villager friends from harm by facing whatever came our way bravely.

A few seconds later, I wasn’t certain that was such a good idea.

“The four of you, come with me,” Baylin said, gesturing for four guards who had been waiting outside the door to come in and grab us .

Being touched by another alpha set my teeth on edge and made me slow and clumsy as I was dragged out of the longhouse and into the starry night as the villagers, who had gained so much hope by our arrival, wilted as we were taken away.

“Let go of me,” I panted, feeling like I would be sick to my stomach. “You have no right to touch me.”

“Quiet!” Baylin said once we were a few steps away from the longhouse. “Don’t make a sound and don’t try to escape.”

For a few, glorious seconds I felt like my brothers and I had stumbled into an impossible stroke of good luck. I considered that Baylin might have been on our side after all and was letting us go.

Then we reached the edge of the camp’s defenses, where we were met by an even rougher group of men with a covered farm wagon.

“See?” Baylin said, presenting us to the men by the wagon. “I told you it was them.”

“This cannot be happening,” Misha moaned quietly.

One of the men by the wagon stepped forward, a small sack in his hand. “It’s them,” he confirmed with a nod, then held out the sack to Baylin. “Payment as agreed,” he said.

Baylin chuckled as he took the sack, then gestured for his guards to push us toward the wagon. “They’re all yours to do with as you please,” he said.

I wanted to fight and struggle in protest, but I felt so horrible that it was all I could do to stay upright as the new set of captors took us.

Diamant, where are you? I called out through our bond.

The plan had been to infiltrate the work camp so that we could help the captive villagers stage a rebellion. Instead, we’d just been sold off to an unknown fate.