☆*:.｡. o*･゜ﾟ･*:.｡..｡.:*·.*:.｡.･*o .｡.:*☆
The Southern Isles were a paradise of cruelty. While the North was forged in the honest bite of frost, the South was a place of humid opulence, where every smile was a dagger and every breeze carried the scent of rotting lilies.
Lorcan was fourteen now.
He had grown into a devastatingly beautiful young man, his features possessing a refined, ethereal elegance that made the Southern nobility whisper in his wake. His hair was longer, tied back with silk ribbons, and his posture was perfect—the result of two years of his mother's relentless polishing.
But beneath the silk and the smiles, Lorcan was a hollow shell, held together by the memory of a stolen tunic and a locket he kept hidden beneath his robes.
Lorcan sat on the marble veranda of the Summer Palace, a glass of chilled nectar in his hand. Across from him sat Julian, a high ranking Alpha from a powerful merchant family. Julian was exactly what the Queen wanted for her son,wealthy, influential, and undeniably Southern…way too southern….
"And so," Julian continued, leaning forward with a confident, predatory grin, "the trade routes to the East are finally stabilized. My father says that with the right... alliance, we could control the spice flow entirely. Don't you agree, Lorcan?"
Lorcan's gaze was fixed on the horizon, toward the cold, blue line where the sea met the sky. He hadn't heard a word. His mind was miles away, wondering if the snow was falling in Elysium right this instant.
"Lorcan?" Julian asked, his voice dropping an octave as he reached out. "Are you listening, Prince?"
Julian's hand moved across the table, his fingers grazing the back of Lorcan's hand. The touch was warm, possessive, and—to Lorcan—utterly repulsive.
Lorcan pulled his hand back instantly, the movement fluid and polite but unmistakably cold. He offered a practiced, empty smile. "Of course, Julian. You were speaking of the spice flow and the East. I was merely reflecting on the complexity of the logistics. I am listening very well."
Julian's smile faltered, a flash of Alpha irritation crossing his face before he masked it. "You're always so distant. It's as if your heart is trapped in a block of Northern ice."
"Perhaps," Lorcan murmured, his voice as soft as a breeze. "Or perhaps I simply prefer the quiet and snow."
Behind the heavy velvet curtains of the veranda, Queen Lilia watched the interaction. She was a true Alpha—sharp, commanding, and utterly devoid of maternal warmth. Beside her stood Everest, the man who had once been a King but was now revealed in the privacy of their home as an Omega.
It was the family's greatest secret. Lilia was the iron hand,Everest had been the public King only to satisfy the Southern patriarchal laws. Now, stripped of his crown and his pride, he was a ghost of a man, his spirit broken by his own failure and his wife's dominance.
"He still thinks of him," Everest whispered, his voice trembling. "He waits for the letters that never come."
Lilia let out a cold, dry laugh. She walked over to the hearth, where a small fire was always kept burning to ward off the humidity. "The letters did come, Everest. Every week for two years. Aiden is persistent, I will give the Northern brat that."
She reached into a hidden drawer in a side table and pulled out a stack of envelopes. They were thick, heavy parchment, sealed with the Blackrosewood crest—Aiden's personal seal.
"He writes of his training. He writes of the twins. He writes of the way the library feels empty," Lilia said, her voice dripping with mockery.
She tossed the stack of letters into the fire. The flames leaped up, devouring the words Aiden had agonized over, turning his declarations of longing and his updates on the family into grey, formless ash.
"Lorcan must learn that the North is a dream," Lilia stated, her eyes reflected in the fire. "And dreams are for children. He will marry a Southern Alpha, and he will forget that mountain pine ever existed."
Out on the veranda, the air suddenly changed.
The humid, floral scent of the South was sliced open by a phantom blade. Lorcan gasped, his glass slipping from his fingers and shattering on the marble floor.
It wasn't a sound. It wasn't a sight. It was a sensory explosion that vibrated through the very marrow of his bones. Across the ocean, thousands of miles away, an Alpha had woken up. And because their souls were stitched together by a bond the adults couldn't understand, Lorcan felt it as if he were standing in the room.
The scent hit him like a physical blow, Raw mountain pine. Scorched earth. Ozone.
It was Aiden.
Lorcan's lungs seized. He felt a phantom heat radiating from his own chest, a sympathetic response to the future king's Pressure, Aiden was exerting in the North. His skin turned pale, then flushed a deep, feverish pink. His pulse hammered—Aiden-Aiden-Aiden—against his throat.
"Lorcan? What is it?" Julian stood up, looking concerned. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
Lorcan stood up so abruptly his chair screeched against the marble. He didn't look at Julian. He didn't look at the shattered glass. He looked toward the North, his eyes wide and shimmering with a sudden, desperate clarity. He could feel the fire in Aiden's blood, he could feel the confusion, the shame, and the raw, unbridled power.
"I have something to do," Lorcan said, his voice no longer empty. It was sharp, clear, and filled with a sudden, terrifying purpose.
"What? We haven't finished the tea," Julian protested.
"I should get going," Lorcan repeated, already turning toward the palace doors. "Now."
Lorcan didn't go to his mother. He didn't go to his father. He ran to his private chambers and locked the door.
He fell to his knees, clutching the locket at his neck. The scent was still there, humming in his mind, telling him that the boy he loved was no longer a boy. Aiden had become a man. Aiden had become an Alpha. Lorcan crawled to his trunk and pulled out the stolen grey tunic. Two years of Southern heat had faded the scent, but in this moment, the fabric seemed to glow with the phantom energy of the North.
"I felt you," Lorcan whispered, his tears finally falling, hot and fast. "I felt you, Aiden."
He realized then that the silence of the last two years wasn't because Aiden had forgotten him. It was because the South was a cage built on lies. If Aiden was an Alpha now, then the clock was ticking. The Six Year Shadow was halfway over, and Lorcan realized he couldn't wait another three years for his mother to decide his fate.
He looked at his reflection in the mirror. He was fourteen, an Omega Prince of the South, but his soul belonged to a Northern Sovereign.
"Wait for me," Lorcan breathed, his eyes flashing with a sudden, golden defiance. "If you won't come for me, Aiden... then I will find a way to come for you."
In the fireplace of the Queen's study, the last of Aiden's letters turned to ash.