Omega’s Gamble by Claire Cullen
Chapter Ten
Like Ferno,Raine never took well to being cooped up. His father knew it too, and whenever he was in a particularly bad mood, Raine’s life would get just a bit more constrained. Growing up, he’d lost count of the number of times he’d been confined to the palace, to his wing, to his rooms. The king knew just how to make him feel like a caged animal. So it was no surprise that he felt like a helpless child again when Prince Darien forbade him from leaving the castle.
Raine wasn’t sure whether he’d told the guards and the ban would be enforced if he tried to go outside, but he wasn’t foolish enough to attempt it. He also wasn’t stupid enough to write a letter home asking for his winter clothes to be sent on. His father would probably have them burned in a fit of anger. No, Raine was stuck inside for the foreseeable future, or at least until the spring came.
He grew more subdued as the days passed, desperately craving open space and fresh air. It would pass, as it always did, but he hated the constant realization of being trapped, of the walls closing in on him. So when Etta started talking about the library, he seized on her words, clamoring for a distraction.
“Library?”
She paused mid-sentence.
“Yes, I’m sure you saw it when Darien showed you around.”
Prince Darien hadn’t spent long enough in his company to show him around, except that day he’d ‘rescued’ Raine from catching a chill.
“Everything happened so fast,” he said instead. Etta might complain about everyone and everything, but she had a soft spot for Darien.
“I’m not much for reading these days, but it has a compendium of all the royal portraits and paintings,” she said.
Etta presently had a fondness for watercolors, though she often seemed frustrated by her own lack of talent. Raine knew how that felt—he’d never shown much aptitude for the traditional omega accomplishments. He was as likely to prick his finger to the point of needing stitches as he was to successfully embroider a cushion, and it wasn’t for lack of tutelage or perseverance.
“I like to read,” Raine said, wondering if he’d be allowed in the library in the first place and how restricted his reading selection would be. Ludinia had a small omega-approved selection that extended to include educational materials, but all in all, it was poor fare. He’d survived by pilfering the occasional title and relying on his indulgent tutor to provide him with interesting tomes now and then. Gerhart had been a good egg who’d done his best to keep Raine from the wrath of his father while nurturing his more eclectic interests as far as he could. Despite how careful he’d been, it hadn’t stopped him from being dismissed on Raine’s fifteenth birthday. He’d been seen as too soft, too indulgent, not a firm enough guiding hand for an omega only a few years away from marriage. Raine missed him and often wondered where he’d ended up. It was hard to get a good position when you were let go by the royal family.
Etta resumed talking about her painting studies, but Raine had already made up his mind to search out the library and see what he could get away with. If he couldn’t escape the castle by way of the doors, maybe he could escape by way of books. There were hundreds of worlds he might get lost in for a few hours. Prince Darien would never know.
* * *
It wasn’thard to figure out how he’d missed the library. He’d never seen such an unassuming door leading to such a huge room. When the guard had pointed him toward it, he’d assumed that either the library was tiny, or the guard was playing a joke. When he opened the door and didn’t find a broom closet or a tiny enclave of bookshelves, he was both relieved and bemused.
He stepped inside, closing the door behind him, the sound echoing around the cavernous room. High ceilings allowed a second-floor mezzanine of sorts, reached by way of one winding staircase and a handful of wrought iron ladders on railings. Everywhere the eye could see, every conceivable surface, was piled high with books.
On light feet, he moved into the center of the room, his eyes sweeping left and right. He didn’t see anyone else in there, but there were plenty of nooks and corners where someone might be hiding. One wall held an inviting fire that chased off some of the chill from the room. Like the rest of the castle, the lights were that odd, eclectic mixture of old and new, as if someone hadn’t quite been able to let go of the past but didn’t want to hold back the future, either.
He turned in a slow circle, taking everything in, book upon book upon book. It was heaven.
“Can I help you, young man?”
With a start, he whirled around and found an old man coming through a hidden door set into the wall between two shelves.
“I… I’m Prince Raine,” he said.
The old man’s gaze didn’t waver. “I know who you are.”
There was silence between them for a moment as the man continued to make his way across the room to a long table.
“I’m Tennant, the head librarian. The only librarian, these days.”
“It’s nice to meet you. You have a lot of books.”
Tennant cast his gaze around, lips quirking upward in amusement. “Some days, I fear I’ll be buried by them. But they keep coming, and I don’t have the heart to turn them away.”
Raine took a few steps closer to the strange man.
“Who brings them?”
He’d never seen a library that looked, on the surface, so disorganized. But looks could deceive. Maybe they were in the midst of an early spring clean?
“Oh, the king is an avid believer in the power of knowledge. He thinks any and every book ever written belongs in his library for someone to seek out.”
Raine couldn’t help but smile at that. Contrary to his own father, who believed knowledge should be carefully controlled and doled out to those who deserved it, King Tiberius was a welcome change.
“Now, was there something particular you were looking for?” Tennant asked.
Raine considered, glancing around the chaotic room.
“Not exactly. Do you have an omega section?”
He wasn’t sure whether to be disappointed or relieved when Tennant straightened and waved for Raine to follow him as he moved about the room.
“Over here are works that deal specifically with omega history. There aren’t many of those, and you might have to root around to find them. Over there is the fiction—omega romances and so forth. Don’t ask me how they end up here, but every year there are a few more. Books that deal specifically with omega biology and the alpha-omega relationship are over there, and books written by omegas are this small section here.”
Raine started at that. Books written by omegas? And they were just sitting on a shelf, out in the open like that? His father would have had a conniption.
“So there’s no… approved reading section for omegas?”
Tennant turned narrow eyes on him.
“Approved reading? Who’s to say what’s approved or not?”
“At home, the head librarian in consultation with my father, usually.”
Tennant’s gaze narrowed further. “You can read, can’t you?”
“Of course,” Raine hurried to agree.
“Then I’m sure you can work out what’s beyond your skill. I’m not here to baby anyone. If you need a book and you can’t find it, come ask me. The rest I leave up to the kings and the princes.”
The old man turned and limped back to his table.
“History,” Raine blurted out. “I’d like to learn more about the kingdom. Oh, and…” He hesitated. The history was enough of a risk. At home, he’d have gotten in a lot of trouble asking for anything more.
“And…?” Tennant prompted impatiently.
“I like to learn,” Raine said helplessly, unable to voice his real wishes, too afraid of the consequences.
Tennant beckoned him again, crossing to the other side of the library.
“History,” he said, waving to a set of shelves. “Island history here, the rest of it up there.” He gestured to a ladder that led to the next level, where there was a small table and a chair set out.
He brought Raine into an alcove, out of sight of the main room.
“This alcove is the sciences, everything from biology to engineering. The next one over is the arts. One after that is the softer stuff: humanities, philosophy, and sociology.” He hesitated as he turned to leave. “You’d best not get in over your head. It’s not my job to oversee; you have a husband for that.”
With that, he walked away, leaving Raine to stare after him. Was he telling Raine that he should get Darien’s permission before exploring the books? Or was he just making sure Raine knew that he’d be turning a blind eye?
After a moment of staring at shelves brimming with books, he followed Tennant out.
“If I wanted to borrow a book…”
“You can write in it the ledger over there,” Tennant said, pointing without looking at a huge dusty ledger that looked like it hadn’t been touched in years. “Most don’t bother, though. Everything always finds its way back here eventually.”
It was as close to tacit permission as Raine was likely to get. He could look at any book he liked and could take them with him without having to leave a written trail of his readings. He could even go a step further and leave a false trail, marking out only those books which he knew no one would bat an eyelid at.
His heart pounding, he crossed the room to the omega fiction section and grabbed the first soppy romance he saw. That’s what everyone would expect a newly married omega prince to be reading. He went to the history shelf after that, picking up a small compendium about the royal family. That would help him learn who, when, and how. And it wouldn’t look at all suspicious if someone spotted him with it. He found a short book on island history as well and added it to his stack. That done, he ducked into the science alcove. If anyone came upon him in there, he’d pretend he had just found a quiet place to read. Instead, he started scanning the shelves. There was organization of a sort, with the shelves roughly divided by subject. But there were so many random books mixed in with other topics.
He wasn’t sure what he was looking for exactly. In Ludinia, the books he’d desperately wanted were squared away in the restricted section of the library. He’d never had a hope in hell of even setting eyes on them. It was probably the same here, and Tennant had no reason to even tell Raine there was a restricted section. What people didn’t know about, couldn’t pique their curiosity.
He was halfway through what looked to be the engineering section when he spotted it. Just the letters alc on the spine of a book, the rest rubbed away. He took a quick look around to be sure of privacy before he slid the book from the shelf. Advanced Mechanics of Alchemy, Volume 3.
Raine stared at it for a long moment, unable to believe what he was holding in his hand. An actual alchemy book, containing the kind of knowledge he’d dreamed of having since he’d heard all his uncle’s stories as a boy. He eased the book open, almost afraid it would crumble under his touch. But no—page after yellowed page of printed words and diagrams, concepts he’d never heard of, vocabulary he’d never seen before.
If there was one book, there had to be more.
Hiding the volume between his other three books, he resumed his search. It didn’t take long, mere minutes, to find what he was looking for. Not just earlier volumes, but the series that preceded it. And then he stumbled across something even better, his breath catching at the title. Alchemy for the Apprentice. He flicked through it, his excitement building. This seemed more his speed. With reluctance, he slipped volume three back into the shelf where he’d found it. As much as he never wanted to let the book go, there were only so many he could take with him without being spotted or arousing suspicion. Better to get away with taking one book, and come back for the others another day, than to ruin it all by being greedy. In the end, he settled for a single alchemy volume, sandwiching it between his other books.
When he stepped out of the alcove, he didn’t see Tennant, though he did spy one of Darien’s second cousins perusing the shelves nearby. Raine tiptoed on light feet until he was standing near the fiction section and then trod more heavily as he made for the door. The cousin lifted his head and offered a polite smile, seeing nothing untoward about his omega in-law borrowing a novel or two. Raine paused at the ledger, wiping away the dust before he carefully noted the three books he was happy to admit to and omitting the fourth. That done, he forced himself to walk calmly from the room and not to rush. He was practically bubbling with excitement inside, but it wouldn’t do to attract attention by letting even a chink of that escape. The knowledge he’d longed for was finally at his fingertips. He wouldn’t let it be taken from him.
His luck held until he turned the next corner and there, right in front of him, was Prince Darien.
“Prince Raine,” the alpha said politely, stopping to talk to him.
Just his misfortune that the one time he didn’t want the alpha’s attention, he had it.
“Good morning,” he offered politely.
“Perusing the library, I see.”
Darien glanced down at the books in his hands.
“Yes. It’s very well stocked.”
“My father’s doing. We may need to build a new wing to house them all one of these days.”
To Raine’s dismay, Darien reached out and picked up the book at the top of his pile—the compendium of the royal family. Below it was the romance novel, its cover leaving no doubt as to its contents. Darien picked that one up too, staring at it with a frown.
Raine had just enough time to switch the alchemy book to the bottom, leaving the history book on top, before Darien glanced down at them.
“An interesting selection. Studying up on us, are you?”
Raine’s heart was in his mouth, but he flushed at the alpha’s pointed look as he set the compendium and novel back into Raine’s hands.
“I like to read,” Raine said, refusing to make excuses or apologize.
“Well then. You’re in the right place,” Darien said slowly, frowning once more. He stepped around Raine and continued on, his footsteps fading into the distance.
Raine let out a breath, sagging against the wall. That had been close—too close. If Darien had seen the alchemy text, there would have been consequences, of that he was sure. If it was discovered by anyone else that he’d taken such a book from the library, there would surely be repercussions. In Ludinia, it would be serious enough to endanger, even annul, his marriage. Was he willing to risk his freedom to sate his curiosity?
His heart heavy with disappointment, he turned and began to retrace his steps.