The Omega Prince (The Kingdom of Pacchia Book 1)

THE OMEGA PRINCE

The Kingdom of Pacchia Book 1

Lia Cooper

DISCLAIMER This work contains language and sexual content that may not be suitable for readers under 18. This work contains EXPLICIT SEXUAL MALE/MALE CONTENT. Not your cup of tea? Don’t read it. Otherwise, please enjoy.

AUTHOR’S NOTE This story takes place in an alternative reality where sex and gender are categorized according to presentation: alphas impregnate, omegas bear children, and betas can either impregnate or bear like human normal. Men and women as we know them can present as either alphas or omegas. This concept is often called omegaverse.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

THE OMEGA PRINCE. Copyright © 2014 by K C Rumsey. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission.

Cooper, Lia (2014-08-19). The Omega Prince, The Kingdom of Pacchia Book 1. The Spec Press. EBook Edition.

All rights reserved.

#

Sometimes you’ve got to write something fun.

CHAPTER ONE

What's Past is Prologue

He was Lord Riven now, the only son of the late Lord Riven.

A middle child, considered spoilt and indolent in his youth through very little fault of his own. It was the prerogative of the peerage to keep their children in the comfortable style in which they themselves were raised. And so the youngest Lord Riven was instructed by tutors in the manor castle, taught to ride and mock fight, and left to enjoy the pleasanter pastimes in life such as hunting every day except Sundurn, which was reserved for feasting.

The son, known to his sisters and closest companions as Dierik, was little seen at the High Court of the King of Lyle, and there was much talk bandied amongst the other houses when his fourteenth birthday came and went without his joining the King’s Guard as was the wont of most noble sons looking to distinguish themselves.

No acts of valor, scholarship, or might were thus put forward to advance the young Dierik, and his name was predominantly forgotten until his twentieth year when news reached the High Court that Lord Riven and his household, excepting the son and the youngest daughter, had been murdered in their beds and the manor castle burned to its foundations.

After that, the name Riven was explicably attached to gratuitous rumors of patricide and plot though no evidence ever surfaced that the son was in fact the root cause of his family’s fall.

The damage was already done.

The more greedy and tenacious corners of the court, smelling blood, were quick to circle the floundering house. Within a month, expeditionary forces began to make their presence felt all along House Riven’s borders, and shortly that after the son gathered his knights and loyal vassals and marched to his defenses.

That was eight years ago.

CHAPTER TWO

The Stage

In the court of the High King of Lyle, the king's only child came to maturity in the sixteenth year of his father's reign. The boy, the crown prince Aubrey Allora of Wescott, presented as an omega that year to very little surprise, for he was fair and fine boned like his bearer, much vaunted for his intelligence and level headed demeanor even while the rowdier members of his cohort tore through the palace sparring grounds seeking attention in sweat and bloody—if meaningless—endeavors.

There was much rejoicing at the news of his majesty's maturation. For only the worst warhawks amongst the courtiers would consider an educated and silver-tongued monarch an ill omen for future affairs of state.

Prince Aubrey was pleasant and neutrally spoken in his words before his father’s court. He was a man who made a point, even in his youth, to remain informed of important matters throughout the Kingdom, even as his own tastes ran towards more sequestered pursuits like reading and mapmaking.

His majesty passed many an afternoon in his first fifteen years, traipsing through the grounds of the high court, a weather-beaten journal in hand, muddied and scraped from hours spent discovering new paths through the deeper forest.

To the consternation of his manservant and vaunted compatriot—the Honorable Winston Dupuis, third son of Baron Dupuis—these adventures were only little curtailed after his presentation. The Hon. Winston was not a very big fan of tromping through brambles and sticker bushes unless it was in pursuit of a brace of quail or a fox’s red brush.

I’m not sure this is the best use of your Majesty’s time, Winston said one morning at the very end of Marchadun, peeling the better part of a raspberry bush from his hose, careful of the sticky sharp spines and frowning at the stains the overripe fruit left on the fabric. It was one thing, to his mind, to dirty one’s person in a noble endeavor. Unfortunately, there was nothing very noble about falling prey to a berry bush.

The Crown Prince merely settled for rolling his eyes as he helped his friend disentangle himself from the foliage.

Don’t be such a grey cloud just because you can’t pay better attention to where you’re going.

I merely wished to point out that there are more pressing matters we could be attending to.

What? Like organizing a menu for the feast? As if Cook would let you within twelve paces of her ledger and assuming I had any interest in putting forth a say in the matter, which I do not.

Winston grumbled under his breath.

Indeed that is not what I meant. If there were any planning in which we might participate, it seems natural, to my way of thinking, that it would be in designing the steeplechase. For Winston was a great lover of horses and could not easily forsake an opportunity to show off both his horsemanship and the superior breeding of his mare Gess.

He was not half wrong that the steeplechase fell fair comfortably within the realm of both their expertise—both having a meticulous knowledge of the grounds composing the High Court. And perhaps if it were for any other event, his highness might have taken delight in pooling their natural inclinations together to create such an astounding test of courage, stamina, and skill as was not to be found at any other race. But as it stood, Prince Aubrey felt all over cold at the merest mention of the Tri-fête and would prefer to avoid any involvement in its planning to Winston’s obvious and now vocal dismay.

Despite being an omega, Prince Aubrey had little interest or use for the sort of alphas that the fête attracted. Or really, any alpha of any sort. He knew intellectually that one day he would be expected—nay, required—to take a husband. But his venerable father was still in good health and would hopefully continue to be so, thereby forestalling his majesty’s domestic obligations.

You’re being entirely too snobbish about the whole affair, Winston had said to him on no less than three occasions thus far. We cannot all possess your cool head for territories and treaties. Some people enjoy a good scrap.

The Hon. Winston was a beta and therefore could not be expected to really appreciate the expectations Aubrey felt regarding his eventual marriage—as though a royal engagement was not foreboding enough on its own merits without the addition of sex that colored the affairs of alphas and omegas. His friend would never have to suffer through the indignity of an unattached heat, and would not be expected to marry one of the idle, testosterone driven alphas who flocked to the fête. And as his family’s third son, he had merely to fall in love with any respectable beta—man or woman—and make an honest spouse of them to appease the preoccupation of his grandchild-obsessed mother.

The prince worried that if he showed any opinions about the fête one way or another he would find himself accidentally encouraging both the participants and the gossip that inevitably hovered around his eventual marriage. Better to avoid all preparations and much of the event itself as far as propriety allowed.

He would be required to view the primary events: the feast, the opening ceremony and the dance on the first day, but otherwise, he had planned to make himself as busy as possible for the rest of the festivities.

Winston would just have to find a way to temper his disappointment at Aubrey’s apathy.

There’s nothing wrong with enjoying a good spat, Winston grumbled. His boots trampled an unfortunate number of plants as he followed Aubrey through the overgrown brush. They could hear a small brook nearby and the prince was intent on seeing it before they turned back for luncheon.

"The fête is hardly what I would characterize as a spat."

Well, no, I suppose it’s a good deal more than that. But suppose we were to be attacked? You’d appreciate the martial prowess of our peers then, I expect.

In such a hypothetical situation, we would only be under attack if I had failed utterly in my own duties as king, Aubrey said archly.

The trees before them parted and they stepped out onto a very narrow bit of shore lining a trickle of fresh water. Aubrey’s soft leather boots sank into the dark mud. His manservant reached out a steadying hand and wrinkled his brow.

I may not be the diplomat that you are—

Aubrey smirked back at Winston over his shoulder.

—Oh, hush, Winston said, tugging on his Prince’s tunic. "But I suspect that not even you can predict the