“Hey, kid. You ready?”

“Yeah,” Tenshi replied. They’d done this before. And they were about to do it again.

There were only two of them, but that was enough. Tenshi pressed his back against the thick trunk of a pine tree. His partner, Dimitri, did the same ten metres away. In just a few moments, an Aston Martin would drive around the bend and they would get to work.

As soon as Dimitri spotted the car, he whistled and Tenshi stumbled onto the road—right in front of the speeding vehicle. 

The car screeched to a halt. As the driver and passenger got out, he swooned. The passenger, a lavishly dressed omega cried out in surprise. “Tony, what’s happening? Who is that?” she questioned shrilly. 

“Miss Valerie, please stay in the car. I will check.” 

“Oh, is he alright? Can we help him?” she asked. 

“Yes, Miss Valerie,” said Tony. “Please stay back. Let me do it.” 

There was no reply from Tony’s charge. He assumed she’d done as he had advised and gotten back in the car. Tony advanced cautiously onto the figure crumpled on the road.

As Tony got closer, he could see that the figure had long, dark hair tied in a waist-length braid. The omega on the ground whimpered, as if in pain, and curled up further. Instantly, Tony’s guard dropped. How could he be worried for his own safety when he, an alpha, was standing over an injured omega. 

“Hey, it’s alright,” he rumbled soothingly. “I can help. We can take you somewhere with doctors,” he said kindly. The omega’s face was partially hidden by his arm, but Tony could see dark eyes. He came nearer and reached out an arm. “Here, let me help you up.”

The omega took the offered hand.

Tony’s eyes widened when the omega’s foot made jarring contact with his stomach. He was flipped over so quickly that he hadn’t had time to process the change in position. But by then, it was too late. The omega was seated firmly on his back and pushing his face against the ground. 

From inside the car, Miss Valerie screamed and hurried to get out. And as soon as the door opened, Dimitri had a gun at her head. “Don’t move,” he said calmly. “And no one will get hurt.”

Miss Valerie froze. Her face was pale and her eyes wet with scared tears. She was looking at Tony, too afraid to turn her head to see the other man.

“Hand over all the jewellery and that nice mink coat you have on,” he instructed. 

Trembling, she did so slowly. Miss Valerie removed everything except the silver locket she had on. 

“I said everything,” Dimitri demanded impatiently. 

The omega began to cry. “Not that, please. It was my grandmama’s,” she hiccupped tearfully. 

Dimitri rolled his eyes and pressed the nozzle of the gun into blonde curls. “Now.”

The girl sobbed as she handed the necklace over. 

“Get back in the car.”

Still crying, Miss Valerie climbed back in and shut the door. Tenshi got to his feet, leaving Tony on the ground. Without the pressure on his head, the alpha climbed to his feet and looked around wildly for their attackers. But they had both vanished behind the thick layers of trees. 

They were gone and there was nothing he could about it. Miss Valerie was shaking in the car. He had his duty. Tony rushed back to the Aston Martin and sped away. This highway was unsafe, and they should get off it before they lost more than a few diamonds.

Behind the trees, Tenshi and Dimitri watched out of sight as the car drove off. Dimitri hummed to himself and studied the jewels. “Not bad,” he muttered. “Decent quality, we can get a good price for these. The silver locket isn’t worth as much.”

“Why didn’t you just let her keep it then?” asked Tenshi with a raised eyebrow. “If it’s nothing compared to the rest.”

Dimitri made a face. “I didn’t want to be merciful, or they’ll get the wrong idea, you know?”

Tenshi rolled his eyes. “Give me the necklace.” Dimitri tossed it over. The silver flashed in the waning light. “This is cheap silver,” he said. “You definitely should have let her keep it. It's useless.”

“Yeah, yeah. We already got it. You can hold on to it if you want, see if you can return it to them if you see her again,” said Dimitri. “They’ll be here for a month anyway.”

Tenshi pocketed the locket.

~

At the palace, Veo watched as a silver Aston Martin drove up and the latest omega practically fell out of the car shivering in tears. This was the first omega he had seen arriving with his own eyes and it happened as he was sneaking out of the increasingly chaotic palace into the forest.

To everyone else, she was the latest guest who had turned up with missing items. Once, memorably, a very sulky omega had turned up without shoes. Of course, the Queen and servants had to react appropriately to the repeated incidents of highwaymen robbing their esteemed guests. More patrols had been set up in the forest, but no one had been apprehended as of yet.

Prince Veo did not know any of this. All he saw was the omega in clothing far too thin for the climate—she likely had a jacket—and shrouded in a cloud of depressed blues. He wondered if he should go up and comfort her but shuddered and decided against it. He didn’t recognise the girl and if Mother found out, she’d try to push them together, thinking that he had taken a liking to her. 

Miss Valerie was taken away to her room and consoled and Veo slipped away.

~

Alone in the forest, he took a moment to inhale the fresh scent of pine and cedar. Veo picked his way to a tiny open space where no trees had grown and sat himself right in the middle of the space. He folded himself into meditation and simply breathed for a moment. Here, alone, he could distance himself from the whole mess his mother had organised. He could pretend that he didn’t have to meet and greet a dozen omegas and pretend to like them for a month. He could just be. 

When he had completed his meditation, Veo picked up his cane. To anyone else, the stick simply looked like a thicker version of a cane that a blind person would use. It was actually a Bo staff. 

Unlike the usual materials, his staff was made of titanium and collapsible. With a twist, Veo unlocked the mechanism, and the ends of his cane sprang out to form his weapon.

Prince Veo had been given his first Bo staff at eight when they’d finally figured out that he could see things others couldn’t. With time and practice, Veo’s abilities could have been used as an asset. But his parents had worried that their son would be weaponised, and they hired martial art instructors to teach him self-defence. 

He hadn’t liked it at first, unable to understand why anyone would want a blind child who couldn’t even read. Veo had eventually learned to love the exercise and he opted to specialise in the staff. The audiobooks of ‘Journey to the West’ had been a huge inspiration as a child.

At twenty-two, when his father had died from stage four cancer, he left his country out of grief and his mother gifted him with the cane to protect himself.

He took himself through the warmups. There was a light sheen of sweat by the time he was done. This was the clearing that he had used since he started coming to the forest to train. And it showed. There were small dents in some of the trees if one knew where to look; they were places where he’d accidentally went too close and hit a trunk.

Most people would have hit the trunk on purpose probably. But then, most people couldn’t see the emotional state of every living thing. As he swung and leapt around the space, trying to avoid hitting more trees, Veo thought about the omega he had just seen. 

He had caught snippets of conversation on his way out about the highwaymen that were plaguing the scenic route to the palace. And almost everyone wanted to take the scenic route. It was clever because the trees provided excellent cover. Veo wondered if he could do something about them. 

It would be bad to let them do as they pleased, obviously. Grunting as he halted the staff before it hit a tree, he cooked up a plan. A very half-baked plan. It would involve some crossdressing and corralling someone in the palace to be his driver.