The Omega's Reflex novel · Chapter 2 of 6
Chapter 2: Morning Table
The court breakfast. Marcus eats without a mark on him while Raven grips the table white-knuckled, feeling every ache Marcus should feel. The pack watches and laughs. Marcus says it out loud: his pain goes to whoever causes it.
I woke up alone.
The other side of the bed was cold and smooth.
Raven had been gone long enough to dress and leave no trace of himself.
I lay there and took stock of my body.
Nothing hurt.
That was the strange part.
The ache I'd carried in my left hand all night was gone.
Every joint was loose.
I felt like a man who had slept ten hours in his own bed.
I got up and washed at the basin.
No marks.
No bruises on my wrists where he'd held them.
Nothing on my throat.
I looked at myself in the dark glass of the window for a while.
Then I put on the charcoal coat and went down to breakfast.
The great hall was full.
Long tables, benches, the whole pack at morning meal.
Two hundred people and the smell of porridge and smoked fish.
Snow light came in gray through the high windows.
Raven sat at the head table with his back straight.
He looked like he hadn't slept at all.
"Marcus," he said.
Just my name.
I sat down beside him.
A steward put a bowl in front of me.
I ate.
The porridge was good.
Hot, salted, with a knob of butter melting in the middle.
I hadn't eaten properly in a week.
I ate all of it.
Then I took a piece of bread and tore into that too.
Raven hadn't touched his bowl.
"Eat," I said.
"I'm not hungry."
"You didn't eat last night either."
"No."
I turned and looked at him properly.
He was pale.
There was a fine line of sweat at his hairline, and he was holding the edge of the table with both hands.
His knuckles were white.
"Raven."
"Finish your breakfast."
"You're hurting."
"I'm fine."
I looked down at my own hands.
They were steady.
Not one thing in my body hurt.
I have never in my life felt better.
I picked up the bread and took another bite.
Raven's jaw went tight.
He made a sound.
Low, through his teeth, like a man taking a stitch in his side.
The bench across from us went quiet.
A woman in the second row put down her spoon.
"Alpha?"
"I'm fine."
"You don't look fine," she said.
The man next to her leaned over.
"He's been gripping that table since he sat down."
I set the bread down.
I looked at Raven's hands again.
He let go of the table.
He put them flat on his knees under it, out of sight.
Too late.
Half the hall had seen.
I reached over and picked up his untouched bowl.
I ate his porridge too.
Raven's breath came out of him in a slow hiss.
Someone down the table laughed.
Just one laugh, short, and then it died.
Then a boy at the end of the second table put his hand over his mouth.
Another one snorted.
It went down the benches like water finding a crack.
Two guards near the door were grinning at each other.
The steward turned away to hide his face.
"Why is he eating like that?"
"Look at the Alpha."
"He's white as the snow."
"Maybe the wedding night went badly."
"Badly? Look at the omega. He's glowing."
"Maybe he's the one who did the work."
Laughter rolled up the hall.
Raven didn't move.
I put down the spoon.
I have spent my whole life being laughed at in rooms like this one.
I know the sound.
This was not the same laugh.
This one had something else in it.
They were laughing at the wrong man.
"Enough," I said.
The hall didn't stop.
"Enough," I said, louder.
It stopped.
Two hundred faces turned toward me.
I stood up.
"Something's wrong with the Alpha this morning and you're all enjoying it."
One of the guards by the door shrugged.
"Nobody touched him, omega."
"No," I said.
"You didn't."
I picked up my bowl.
I turned it over and set it down on the table, empty, upside down.
Then I spread both my hands out on the wood where everyone could see.
Clean palms.
Steady fingers.
"Do you see anything wrong with me?"
Nobody answered.
"I ate my breakfast. I ate his. I slept eight hours and I woke up without one ache in me."
I turned to Raven and held my hand out to him.
"Give me your hand."
"Marcus."
"Give it to me."
He put his hand in mine.
I turned it over.
Nothing wrong with it either.
No red, no swelling, no mark.
He was holding my hand the way a man holds a rail on a ship.
"Now watch," I said.
I took the edge of my own sleeve and pulled it back.
Then I bit down on my own forearm.
Not hard.
Hard enough.
Teeth on skin, a quick pinch, and I let go.
The hall made a noise.
Raven's arm jerked like I'd struck him.
He pulled his hand out of mine and clamped it over his own forearm.
Right where I'd bitten myself.
The same spot.
The same size.
I turned my arm so the whole hall could see it.
There was nothing on it.
Not a mark.
"Nothing stays with me," I said.
"Whatever anyone does to me, the pain goes back to the one who did it."
Silence.
Total.
The fire cracked and nobody moved.
"It's been in me since I was seven," I said.
"My brother pushed me into a stove and he screamed louder than I did."
A woman near the front put her hand over her mouth.
"So this morning," I said, "the Alpha of Wanderich is sitting at his own table with his jaw clenched because every small thing my body should be feeling is going into his instead."
I looked at Raven.
He was looking at me.
There was something in his face I couldn't read.
"That's what a bond does," I said.
"Or that's what mine does. I don't know yet."
The hall started to move again.
Benches scraped.
People leaned into each other.
The word went down the tables in whispers and came back different.
"Reflex," someone said.
"Did you hear him? Reflex."
"That's not a real thing."
"It's real. Look at the Alpha."
"Then the contract marriage was true."
"The bond took."
"The mate is real."
I sat down.
Raven hadn't moved.
He was still holding his forearm.
Under the table, out of sight, his other hand found mine and closed around it.
He didn't say anything.
He just held on.
Somebody at the far table stood up.
I heard the bench go back before I saw who it was.
Rodrick came down the length of the hall at an easy walk.
Ivory robe, gold embroidery, chestnut hair swept back silver at the temples.
He stopped across the table from me.
He looked at me for a long moment.
Then he laughed.
It was a big laugh, warm, the kind a man uses at a feast when he wants the room.
The room laughed with him.
"Reflex," Rodrick said.
"That's the word you used."
"It's the word."
"So what I'm hearing," he said, "is that the Alpha of Wanderich took a contract husband to settle a debt, and now that husband is telling two hundred people he has a gift nobody has ever heard of."
"I am."
"You bit yourself at breakfast."
"I did."
"And you want this hall to believe the Alpha felt it."
"Ask him."
Rodrick turned to Raven.
"Raven. Did you feel it?"
Raven looked up at him.
"Ask me something else."
"That's an answer," Rodrick said.
He turned back to the hall and spread his hands.
"You all heard him."
The hall murmured.
"Here's what I think," Rodrick said.
He put both hands on the table and leaned over it, close to me, close enough that I could see the small red mark on his left palm where he'd been holding his cup.
"Here's what I think," he said again.
"I think a debt-bought omega walked into this hall this morning and told a story."
"A story that makes him important."
"A story that makes him the reason the Alpha is sitting there gray in the face."
He straightened up.
"I think he bit himself and made the Alpha flinch with a look."
"I think every one of you just watched a liar work a room."
He turned to face the hall.
"Marcus Green is a liar," Rodrick said.
"I'll say it to his face and to yours."
The hall went still.
Rodrick looked at me.
The little burn on his palm was red and fresh, and he kept it in plain view on the table between us.
"Prove me wrong," he said.
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