Page 60 of Omega’s Fealty

I hear the outer door, and voices, and then Reinhardt’s.

He comes in without knocking, two men behind him. There is a third with a case that he sets down by the door. Reinhardt does not look at the men or at the case or at the television. He gives me a curt up-and-down look, checking that this particular living Ken doll has been dressed correctly.

“Good.”

He takes the cards from inside his jacket and offers them to me. I take them obediently, like I always do.

“You have seen the news.”

I notice that he has dropped the usual “Your Highness.” Perhaps he thinks that there is no need for formalities now that we are so “deeply in love.”

“Yes.”

“Then I need not explain it to you. There will be a recording at sunset. On the terrace on the ninth floor, with the river behind you. It’ll make a good backdrop.”

He glances at the cards, and then at the window, where the light is already going long across the buildings.

“You have an hour to learn them. Don’t read from them on the terrace. It’ll look better if it appears to come from the heart.”

“Of course.”

He goes. The men go with him. The one with the case leaves the case. The door closes and I hear him speak outside, low, in our own language, and then nothing.

I read the cards through once, all of them, the way I would read a speech for a centennial.

It’s a great speech. Reinhardt has always been good at them.

It’s not what I’d choose, but it will appeal to the Americans. They are sentimental. They believe in love.

The speech goes on about a love that our traditions do not allow. A love that has been forbidden and has endured. He is asking my people to break with two hundred years for him. It’s written so that they will think I am the one asking.

He has made himself my Roan.

The camera crew is going to be his people. Same as the security. I want to refuse to say the speech. I don’t want to say this.

I don’t think I have any choice at all.

My only option is to say them so well that he is reassured that I am the brainless obedient little omega that he has always thought that I was.

I turn that over in my mind. It is the one thing I have always been good at. I have never disobeyed. I have always done what I was told. I have never argued. What would be the point?

I have sold my country to the camera since I was a toddler. I have said things I did not understand and things I don’t believe and made them sound natural.

If I say his words well enough, so well that the whole world believes I am in love with a sixty-nine-year-old beta who has known me since I was born, then Reinhardt will believe it too.

He won’t believe that I love him. He’s no fool, but I can make him believe that I understand my position and I accept it, all the way down.

He’ll believe that Roan’s bite was something that was done to me, and the pregnancy too.

I need to make him believe that I have come home to my keeper and put my head down the way that nature intended.

If he believes me, they may stop watching me, even for a moment. All I need is a moment.

I pick the cards up and commit them to memory.

Security comes for me just before sunset, four neutral-scented alphas in gray suits. They bow before they take up position. Two in front of me and two behind me.

They are supposed to be my security, keeping me safe but it doesn’t feel like that anymore. They feel like my captors.