#poly! x reader

She was confirmed as an Omega on a Tuesday in March, two weeks after her fifth birthday.

The confirmation process was, in this world, a medical one, a visit from a discreet physician named Dr. Hartley, who came to the house with a small bag and a very proper manner and performed a brief examination that was more about scent markers and the specific biological signatures of designation than anything else. [Name] submitted to this with the patience she had developed for medical procedures, which was considerable, while privately filing away everything she observed about his technique and comparing it unfavorably to what she knew modern endocrinological assessment looked like.

"Omega," Dr. Hartley confirmed to her parents, in the parlor, in the tone of someone delivering news that required delicacy. "Quite clearly. The markers are strong. She will be a powerful one, I believe."

Edmund said nothing, but his hands, clasped behind his back, tightened.

Constance said, "We expected as much. Thank you, doctor."

When Dr. Hartley had gone, [Name] was brought into the parlor, and her parents sat with her on the settle in the particular arrangement that, she had learned, meant a Serious Conversation was occurring. She sat between them with her hands folded in her lap and her expression composed and waited.

"You know what an Omega is," her mother said. It was not a question.

"Yes," [Name] said.

"Do you understand what it means? For your life?"

[Name] considered. She had been thinking about this for approximately four years, which gave her a certain advantage in the conversation. "It means I will have heats," she said carefully. "And that I will eventually find a mate. An Alpha. And that some people will think that means I need more protecting."

Edmund made a sound that was not quite a laugh and not quite a sigh.

"Some people will think it means you need managing," Constance said, with the precise careful enunciation of someone who had strong opinions about a thing and was deciding how much of them to share with a five-year-old. "Your father and I do not think this."

"Good," [Name] said.

"But some of the world will disagree with us," her father added. "And it is important that you understand that, so you can navigate it."

"I understand," [Name] said.

And then, because she was five years old and had decided that this was a moment to invest in honesty with her parents: "I am not afraid."

Her father looked at her. That look again, the one she had seen from her very first days, the one that said he saw something in her that surprised and moved him. "No," he said softly. "I don't believe you are."

"I just want to be prepared," she added. "I want to learn things. I want to know as much as possible about everything that's relevant."

Her mother exchanged a look with her father above her head, the look of two people communicating volumes in a glance, and then Constance smiled, the particular smile she wore when she was genuinely pleased. "Well," she said. "Then we shall make sure you have access to every relevant resource."

It was, [Name] thought, an excellent start.

By seven, she was working through material that was typically considered appropriate for children of twelve.

She was discreet about it, but her mother, who had, by this point, concluded that her daughter was quite simply the most extraordinary person she had personally encountered, and had stopped being surprised by this and started being quietly, fiercely proud, had arranged for a governess of exceptional quality. Miss Pemberton was a woman of forty, unmarried, Beta, possessed of a first-rate education that she had been permitted to pursue because her father had been an unusual man and because she was very intelligent and had quietly found ways to learn things that women of her era were not typically taught. She had strong opinions about the education of girls, which aligned almost perfectly with [Name]'s strong opinions about her own education, and within the first month of their acquaintance they had established a working relationship that was less teacher-and-student than it was colleagues with a significant age difference.

"You've already read this," Miss Pemberton said, the second week, setting down the arithmetic primer she had intended to begin with and looking at [Name] with the expression of someone recalibrating rapidly.

"Yes," [Name] said.

"When?"

"Last year. I found it in Father's study."

"And you understood it?"

"Most of it. I had questions about the trigonometric components, but William explained them." This was true. William had not entirely understood why she was asking, but had answered thoroughly, and she had filed the explanations carefully.

Miss Pemberton was quiet for a moment. Then she said, with admirable composure: "What haven't you read?"

[Name] thought about it. "I haven't had access to much natural philosophy. Or anatomy." A pause. "I would very much like to read anatomy."

Miss Pemberton looked at her for a long moment. "You are seven years old," she observed.

"Yes."

"Most seven-year-old girls want to learn embroidery and French."

"I want to learn French too," [Name] said agreeably. "And I don't object to embroidery in principle, though I suspect my fine motor development hasn't caught up with my ambition yet. But I would also like anatomy."

Miss Pemberton, who would later tell Constance that teaching [Name] Ashworth was the most stimulating professional experience of her career, said: "I'll see what I can source."

She was as good as her word. Within a fortnight, [Name] had been provided with a copy of a basic anatomical text, a natural philosophy primer three levels above where most children her age were working, and a French grammar that Miss Pemberton had annotated with her own extensive notes. She worked through all three with the focused intensity of someone who was not learning these things for the first time but deepening an existing foundation, her past life's medical knowledge was present in her mind, but it was knowledge without context, without the vocabulary of this era, without the theoretical frameworks that connected it to what was currently understood about the human body. She needed to build the bridge between what she knew and what was knowable here, and she did it methodically, brick by brick, with the same careful attention she had always brought to learning.

She was happy. That was the thing she noted most, in those years, the warm, simple happiness of a child who was loved and engaged and growing in an environment that made room for her. She had expected to feel the weight of her past life as a shadow over her present one. Instead, what she felt was something more like integration, the two lives settling into each other, the woman she had been informing and enriching the child she now was, without erasing the child, without diminishing the genuine, immediate joy of a summer morning or a good book or the particular triumph of finally perfectly executing a French subjunctive construction.

She laughed easily. She made friends readily, with the children of her parents' acquaintances, with the household staff who had largely concluded that she was their personal favorite human, with Miss Pemberton, who maintained professional formality in public and in private allowed herself to laugh freely at [Name]'s observations. She was warm by nature and curious by design and she had the particular quality of genuinely caring about the people around her, asking after their concerns, remembering the small details they mentioned in passing, following up in ways that made them feel, reliably and truly, that they mattered.

This was not a performance. It was not a strategy, though it was certainly useful. It was simply who she was, in this life as she had been in her last, someone to whom other people's wellbeing felt genuinely important, for its own sake, without needing a reason.

"You have a gift," her father told her once, when she was eight, after she had spent an afternoon talking with his elderly mother-in-law who was visiting and whom everyone else in the household found demanding and difficult. [Name] had found her fascinating, sharp beneath the querulousness, lonely beneath the demands, and had listened to her stories about a life that spanned most of the century with genuine attention.

"She's interesting," [Name] said.

"She says she's never had such a good conversation," Edmund said, looking at his daughter with an expression of wonder. "She said you asked her exactly the right questions."

[Name] shrugged. "She knows things I don't. Why wouldn't I ask her?"

Edmund was quiet for a moment. Then: "You are going to be remarkable, my love."

"I'm going to try," she said, which was more accurate.

She was nine years old when she first heard the Bridgerton name spoken in a context that meant something.

She had, of course, known they existed. She had been waiting, with the patient anticipation of someone who knew the broad structure of events without knowing the precise timing, for the family to become relevant to her life. She had also been carefully not-thinking about what, precisely, relevant might eventually mean, because she understood enough about herself to know that thinking too much about certain things before they became necessary was a reliable pathway to anxiety, and she had work to do.

The context was a dinner party at a friend's house, the family of one of Charles's schoolfellows, which meant the gathering was primarily adults, which meant [Name] had been permitted to attend because her parents were progressive in their approach to including their children in social contexts and because, as her mother put it, [Name] could be trusted to conduct herself appropriately.

She sat between her mother and a woman she didn't know, ate her dinner with the careful attention to table manners that Mrs. Potts had drilled into her for years, and listened.

The conversation moved around her the way conversation did at these events, in the organized chaos of multiple concurrent exchanges, fragments surfacing and submerging, a word here and a name there. She caught most of it, sorted it, kept what was useful and released the rest.

"...the Bridgerton boys," someone said, across the table. "Have you seen the eldest? Must be fifteen by now..."

"Anthony," someone confirmed. "Yes, quite extraordinary. Alpha, strong one, his father is immensely proud..."

"And the middle one, Benedict, isn't it? The artistic one. Quite different from his brother..."

"There's a third as well, isn't there? Colin, the youngest of the boys? Still young, only eight or nine..."

[Name] set her fork down very carefully and took a sip of water.

There they are, she thought.

There they are.

She did not seek them out. She was nine years old and they were fifteen, thirteen, and nine respectively, and the social mechanics of the Ton meant that there was no natural intersection between their lives at present. But she filed what she knew carefully, and she waited, and she continued the business of growing up with the focused efficiency she brought to everything.

She grew. The sunshine personality that her household had been noting since her earliest months deepened and expanded as she did, she was warm and bright and easy to love, and she loved easily in return, with the generosity of someone who understood how quickly things could be taken away and who had therefore decided not to be careful or strategic about affection. She gave it freely. It was returned, mostly, in full.

She was also, increasingly, someone to take seriously. Miss Pemberton had long since stopped thinking of their sessions as teaching and started thinking of them as collaborative inquiry, they worked through problems together, argued competing interpretations of texts with the mutual respect of intellectual equals, and [Name] had begun occasionally to know things that Miss Pemberton did not, which she managed with the tact she had developed for navigating situations where her knowledge exceeded what her age should have allowed.

The anatomy had become, gradually, medicine. She had worked through every text she could access, and what she could access in London at the close of the eighteenth century was limited but not negligible, there were physicians in her parents' acquaintance who, when they understood what she was actually asking and that she was genuinely able to engage with the answers, began to lend her texts and include her in conversations that were not, strictly speaking, appropriate for a girl of nine or ten or eleven. She absorbed everything. She asked precise questions. She cross-referenced what she learned here against the comprehensive medical knowledge stored in her memory from her past life, building the synthesis carefully, identifying where the understanding of this era was correct, where it was incomplete, and where it was wrong in ways that had consequences she could not ignore.

She kept notes. Extensive, careful, ciphered notes in a personal notation system she had developed at age six, which lived in a locked journal that she treated with the same security consciousness she had once brought to patient records.

She was not ready to use what she knew yet. She understood that. She was a child, and an Omega girl-child at that, in a world that had very precise ideas about what children and Omega girl-children were supposed to know and not know and do and not do. Timing was everything. She had always been good at timing.

She waited, and she learned, and she grew, and she loved her family with the whole of her extraordinary heart.

She was sixteen the first time Lady Danbury looked at her with the expression of a woman who had found something genuinely interesting.

It was at a concert, one of those interminable musicales that the London Season generated in vast quantities, where one sat on uncomfortable chairs and listened to performances of varying quality and the real business of the evening, which was the social exchange happening in the spaces between the music, proceeded around the performances like water around stones.

[Name] was there with her mother and, as chaperones often were, somewhat bored. She had positioned herself near a window where she could observe the room without being directly in the center of it, and she was doing what she always did in situations she found less than fully engaging: watching people. The small tells. The microexpressions. The way a woman's smile tightened when she greeted someone she found threatening, the way a man's posture shifted when his Alpha instincts were triggered. She had always been good at reading people. Years of medical practice in her past life had honed it to something very fine.

"You're watching everyone," said a voice beside her, and she turned.

Lady Danbury was exactly as she had expected her to be, which was to say formidable, sharp eyes, sharp tongue, the posture of a woman who had decided long ago that she would not apologize for occupying her space and had maintained this decision through sheer force of will for several decades. She was looking at [Name] with frank, unabashed curiosity.

"It's more interesting than the music," [Name] said, before she could decide whether to be more diplomatic.

Lady Danbury's eyes lit. "Well," she said. "An honest answer. Those are rarer than they should be." She studied [Name] for a moment. "You're Pemsley's girl. [Name]."

"Yes, my lady."

"Sit down. No, not there, here. I dislike shouting." She indicated the chair beside her with her cane. "You were watching Lady Cresthaven. What did you see?"

[Name] sat, and thought, and decided that honesty was still the best policy with this particular woman. "That she's exhausted. She's been managing her smile since she arrived, and real smiles don't require management. Her shoes are half a size too small, she keeps shifting her weight. And she's worried about something with her son; she looked at him three times in the last ten minutes and each time her expression did something involuntary."

Lady Danbury was quiet for a moment. "Her son," she said, "has been spending money he does not have."

"Ah," [Name] said. "That would do it."

"How old are you?"

"Sixteen, my lady."

"And are you always like this?"

[Name] considered. "Like what, specifically?"

"Like someone who is paying more attention than everyone else in the room."

"I don't know what I'm like when I'm not paying attention," [Name] said honestly. "I'm not sure I've ever done it."

Lady Danbury looked at her for a long moment, and then she laughed, a real laugh, short and sharp and genuine, the laugh of someone who was genuinely surprised and pleased. "Pemberton tells me you're a remarkable student," she said.

"You know Miss Pemberton?" [Name] said, surprised in spite of herself.

"I know everyone worth knowing. She told me about you some years ago. I've been waiting to meet you." A pause. "You didn't disappoint."

It was, [Name] understood, very high praise from a woman who gave it rarely and meant it always.

"Thank you, my lady," she said.

"Come to tea on Thursday," Lady Danbury said. "We will talk. I find most people insufferably dull and I am in need of stimulating conversation. You will do."

It was also, [Name] recognized, not quite a question.

"I would be honored," she said.

She was seventeen when she met them properly for the first time, and she had been preparing for this meeting, in the loosest sense, for approximately twelve years.

The occasion was a ball, the Featherington ball, as it happened, one of the early events of the Season, which placed her precisely in the year the story began, the year Daphne Bridgerton made her debut. She knew the broad shapes of what was coming. She also knew, with the grounded self-awareness she had developed over seventeen years of an extraordinary life, that the broad shapes of what she remembered were not a script but a map, useful for orientation, unreliable for navigation at the level of individual moments.

She arrived with her mother and her father, who had procured her a dress in a particular shade of deep rose that her mother insisted complemented her complexion beautifully, which [Name] had accepted without protest because the dress was genuinely beautiful and because she had learned, over years of being her mother's daughter, that some battles were worth having and some were not. She was in the latter category of fashion opinions. Her hair was arranged by the household's excellent lady's maid in a style that was elegant without being effortful, which was her consistent preference.

She had grown into herself over the last year in the way that seventeen-year-olds do, not suddenly, but with the quiet accumulated inevitability of many small changes arriving all at once. She was not the conventional beauty of the season, in the way that Daphne Bridgerton was conventionally beautiful, that particular combination of features and coloring that the Ton had collectively decided was the ideal. [Name] was something different: striking, warm-faced, with the kind of presence that made people instinctively turn toward her the way plants turned toward the sun, less because of the arrangement of her features and more because of the quality she projected, something that had no proper name but was made up of warmth and intelligence and a certain joyful aliveness that seemed, in rooms full of people performing their pleasantness, genuinely and refreshingly real.

She was also, and had been increasingly aware of this for the last two years as the biological realities of her designation had become more impossible to ignore, unmistakably Omega. Her scent, which she managed carefully with the various suppressants that existed in this world, nothing like the pharmaceutical precision she would have preferred but functional enough, was like warm honey and something green, like new leaves in early spring, and even suppressed it carried a quality that Alphas in particular seemed to register with something in their nervous system before their conscious awareness caught up.

She was, in the language of this world, a presenting Omega in her first Season.

She was also, in her own language, a grown woman with a medical degree and twelve years of careful preparation and absolutely no intention of being managed.

She entered the Featherington ballroom on her father's arm, and she felt it, the subtle shift in the room's energy that she had learned to recognize, the way certain Alphas' attention moved toward her involuntarily, the way the air seemed to carry a new frequency. She kept her expression pleasant and her posture easy and she scanned the room with the systematic thoroughness she brought to any new environment.

She found them within the first five minutes.

Anthony Bridgerton was the easiest to locate because he was the kind of man rooms organized themselves around whether he chose it or not. He was tall, she had remembered the description, but the reality was its own thing, with dark hair and eyes that were nearly black and a quality of compressed authority that was specifically Alpha in a way she recognized, the deep, settled confidence of a dominant Alpha in his element. He was twenty-two, she calculated. The eldest. The Viscount. The one who was responsible for everything and carried that responsibility in the set of his shoulders the way some men carried old injuries.

He was talking to another man she didn't recognize, and he was not smiling, and even not smiling he was—

Handsome, she thought, with the dispassionate acknowledgment of someone noting an objective fact. Very handsome. Noted. Moving on.

Benedict Bridgerton she found a moment later, near the edge of the room rather than the center of it, in the way of someone who was present without being invested in being seen. He was twenty, dark-haired like his brother but with a quality about him that was less compressed, more open, something in his face that suggested he was looking at the room the way she looked at the room, taking it in rather than performing in it. He had a sketch pad half-hidden at his side, which she recognized from her memories of the character, and he was, she noted, watching a woman across the room with the focused attention of someone observing something beautiful.

He wasn't looking at the woman the way a man looked at a woman he desired. He was looking at her the way an artist looked at a subject. There was a difference, and she could read it.

Colin Bridgerton was sixteen and looked it, gangly with the particular awkwardness of a boy who had grown fast and hadn't finished growing, still not fully inhabiting the height that was going to be his eventually. He was talking animatedly with a group of young people near the refreshments, his hands moving in the expressive, emphatic way of someone who got carried away by what he was saying, and even across the room she could see that he was funny, that the group around him was laughing with the helpless, genuine laughter that came from someone who was actually, organically amusing rather than performing humor.

She looked at all three of them in the space of approximately four minutes, with the comprehensive attention she had developed over seventeen years of doing this, and she thought: Yes. There they are.

And then Anthony Bridgerton turned, and his eyes met hers across the ballroom.

She did not look away. She was not the type to look away. She held his gaze with the calm steadiness of a woman who had held eye contact with a great many more intimidating things than a handsome Viscount in a ballroom, and she gave him the small, polite smile that the situation warranted, and then she looked away first because she had other things to do and she was not going to organize her evening around the fact of a pair of dark eyes.

But she noticed, in the part of her that she kept meticulous track of, the way something in her chest had responded when their eyes met.

She noted it. She filed it. She moved on.

The formal introduction happened approximately an hour later, through the mediating architecture of the Ton's social system, a mutual acquaintance, a conventional exchange, the careful choreography of a world that had very precise ideas about how people were and were not supposed to meet.

"Lady [Name]," said Lady Bridgerton, Violet, warm and beautiful in the way of women who had genuinely loved and genuinely lost, with the instinctive approachability that she remembered from the character, "allow me to present my sons. Anthony, my eldest. Benedict. And this is Colin."

"My lady," Anthony said, with the formal bow of a man who had done this a thousand times and brought the same careful precision to the thousandth as the first. His voice was exactly what she had expected, low and certain and the kind of voice that rooms quieted for, and close up the quality of his Alpha presence was more intense than it had been across the room, the particular weight of him like standing near something with significant gravity.

"Lord Bridgerton," she said, with the appropriate curtsy.

"Lady [Name]," said Benedict, with slightly less formality and slightly more curiosity, his eyes moving over her in the way of someone who was looking at her the way he had been looking at the woman earlier, not with desire but with interest, the interest of someone noting something worth noting.

"Mr. Bridgerton," she said.

"Lady [Name]!" said Colin, and she liked him immediately with a completeness that surprised even her, because he said it with the enthusiastic warmth of someone who was genuinely pleased to meet a new person and had never developed the studied coolness that the Ton considered appropriate to his age and station. He bowed with slightly less polish than his brothers and slightly more sincerity. "Are you enjoying the evening?"

"I am now," she said honestly, and was rewarded with a grin that was like a door opening.

She could see, in her peripheral vision, that Anthony had looked at her sharply at that. She did not address it.

"My mother speaks very highly of you," Violet said, and [Name] looked at her with a warmth that was completely genuine. Lady Bridgerton, she had always thought from her memories of the show, was one of the best things in it, a woman who had loved with her whole heart and carried that love forward after loss as a form of living.

"Lady Bridgerton has been very kind to me," [Name] said, and meant it.

"I am told you are something of a scholar," Benedict said, and his voice had a quality of careful interest, genuine, not performative. "Miss Pemberton's student."

"Her colleague, she insists," [Name] said. "Though she taught me everything worth knowing."

Benedict smiled. It was a different smile from Colin's, quieter, more reserved, reaching his eyes in a way that suggested it was earned. "What are you reading at present?"

"Natural philosophy," she said. "And a French text on botanical medicine that a friend in Paris sent through my father's contacts."

Benedict blinked. "Botanical medicine."

"Plants used in treatment," she said helpfully. "The therapeutic applications of—"

"I know what it is," he said, and he sounded, she thought, slightly delighted. "I simply did not expect—"

"What?" she said, and kept her voice perfectly pleasant.

He had the good grace to recognize the trap. "Nothing that would sound well if I said it aloud," he said instead, and this time the smile was full and real and she found herself returning it before she made the conscious decision to.

Anthony, who had been watching this exchange with an expression she couldn't fully read, said: "Are you out this Season, Lady [Name]?"

"I am," she said, turning her attention to him with the same pleasant composure she had brought to the conversation with his brothers. Close up, his eyes were very dark and very focused, and she had the sense that he did not look at most things as closely as he was looking at her, and that this was likely not something he was doing on purpose.

"Your first?" he asked.

"Yes."

"I hope it proves enjoyable," he said, which was the appropriate thing to say and said in the appropriate tone, formal and correct, and she would have thought nothing of it except that underneath the formality there was something that she was not going to name yet, something her Omega instincts recognized before her conscious mind fully caught up.

"I expect it will be interesting," she said, which was honest.

She curtsied and moved on, because she was not going to organize her first conversation around staying in it, and she had learned a long time ago that the most effective exit from any interaction was a graceful one.

But she thought about it, afterward, for longer than was strictly practical.

She had not expected to meet Queen Charlotte in her first Season.

Lady Danbury had arranged it, which was to say Lady Danbury had decided it was happening and had informed the relevant parties, including [Name], after the arrangements were already made. This was characteristic. In the two years since their first meeting at the concert, [Name] had developed a genuine and deep fondness for Lady Danbury that she was fairly sure was mutual, expressed in the form of Lady Danbury continuing to seek her company and occasionally saying things about her to other people that were very close to complimentary when filtered through the particular translation layer of Lady Danbury's communication style.

"The Queen wishes to meet the Season's more interesting prospects," Lady Danbury informed her, over tea on a Wednesday morning two weeks into the Season. "I have told Her Majesty that you are the most interesting prospect and she is inclined to take my word for it. She will see you Thursday."

"I see," [Name] said.

"You are not afraid," Lady Danbury observed.

"Should I be?"

"Most girls are terrified. It's tiresome." A pause. "Though if you are not afraid, don't perform fear for her benefit. She can smell performance at forty paces and she finds it offensive."

"Noted," [Name] said.

She was not, in fact, afraid. She was, if she was being precise with herself, more focused than usual, the way she had felt before significant medical procedures in her past life, the heightened alertness that served performance without impeding it. Queen Charlotte, in her memories of the story, was a woman of considerable intelligence who was carrying a considerable burden that almost no one in her world fully understood, and who had developed a comprehensive armor against a world that mostly didn't try.

She also knew, because she had spent twelve years thinking about it, that this was the point. This was the moment her past life's knowledge became directly, urgently useful in a way that might change things.

She dressed carefully for Thursday. Not elaborately, she had learned, from Lady Danbury and from her own extensive observation, that elaborateness in this context read as trying too hard, and trying too hard with this particular Queen would be precisely the wrong approach. She wore a gown in deep blue, simply cut, with her hair arranged with care but without artifice, and she was delivered to the palace with her mother in a state of approximately controlled calm.

Her mother was considerably more nervous.

"You will be respectful," Constance said, for the second time in the carriage.

"Yes, Mama."

"You will be measured in your speech."

"Yes, Mama."

"You will not say anything that—"

"Mama." [Name] reached over and covered her mother's hand with hers. "I will be fine."

Constance looked at her, that particular look that mothers wore when they were confronting the evidence of how extraordinary their child was and finding the evidence simultaneously wonderful and slightly overwhelming. "Yes," she said softly. "I know you will."

Queen Charlotte received her in a private salon, without the full court apparatus, which was itself a kind of signal, an indication that this was intended to be an actual conversation rather than a ceremonial presentation. Lady Danbury was present, standing to the side with the quiet satisfaction of someone who had arranged something they are pleased about.

[Name] curtsied with the form her mother had spent weeks drilling into her, perfectly executed, and then straightened and looked at the Queen directly, with the respectful attention she gave to everyone she considered worth attending to.

Charlotte was watching her with the sharp, assessing quality that she had expected, the look of a woman who had spent decades reading people and had developed, through that practice, an accuracy that was very nearly clinical. She was resplendent and contained, beauty and authority combined in the way of someone who had been performing both for so long that the performance had become something else.

"Lady [Name] Ashworth," the Queen said.

"Your Majesty," [Name] said.

"Lady Danbury tells me you are exceptional."

"Lady Danbury is very kind, Your Majesty."

"Lady Danbury is never kind," Charlotte said, without particular inflection. "She is accurate. There is a difference." A pause. "You are aware of it."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

Charlotte's eyes narrowed slightly, not with displeasure but with the sharpening attention of someone who had received an unexpected answer. "Sit down," she said. "I dislike conversations where I must look up."

[Name] sat, with the ease of someone who had spent two years having conversations with Lady Danbury and had therefore been extensively trained in the management of formidable women.

"Lady Danbury tells me you have an interest in medicine," Charlotte said.

"In natural philosophy and the treatment of illness, Your Majesty. Yes."

"An unusual interest for a young woman of your station."

"Perhaps, Your Majesty. I find the usual alternatives less compelling."

"Embroidery and music."

"Music I enjoy very much. Embroidery I respect in principle but find insufficiently challenging to hold my attention for long."

There was a pause. And then, quietly, like something that had not been planned, Queen Charlotte smiled. It was small and brief and genuine, the smile of a woman who found something actually amusing rather than the performed pleasure of court smile, and [Name] felt it land with the significance of something rare.

"You are honest," Charlotte said.

"I try to be, Your Majesty. I find most other approaches require too much maintenance."

Charlotte looked at her for a long moment. Lady Danbury, to the side, was doing a very good impression of someone who was not deeply, smugly pleased.

"Tell me," Charlotte said, "what do you know of nervous afflictions? Of the mind's effects on the body?"

The question was precise and she landed on it with the controlled response of someone who had not expected to be asked it in exactly those terms but had been thinking about it for years. She felt the particular sharpening clarity that had always come over her when a difficult diagnostic question arrived, the way the whole of her knowledge organized itself around the problem, the relevant pieces surfacing, the irrelevant receding.

"A great deal, Your Majesty," she said carefully. "In a theoretical capacity. I have read extensively, everything available, and some texts in French and German through correspondence with scholars my father has been kind enough to facilitate."

Charlotte was very still. "And what does your reading suggest?"

"That the mind and body are not as separate as current understanding tends to treat them," [Name] said, keeping her voice even and measured. "That certain afflictions which present as bodily have their origin in the nervous system and in its interaction with experience. And that—" She paused, choosing her next words with the care of someone navigating delicate terrain. "That many such conditions, which are currently considered untreatable, respond to specific intervention. If the intervention is correctly identified and applied consistently."

The silence in the room was very complete.

"You seem," Charlotte said slowly, "to be speaking about something specific."

"I am speaking generally, Your Majesty," [Name] said. "About the state of current understanding. Which I believe has significant room for development."

Charlotte looked at her. The sharpness in her gaze had become something else, something more complex, more layered. Something that was very close, [Name] thought, to hope, carefully controlled so as not to become desperation.

"I believe," Charlotte said, "that you should come to court again."

"I would be honored, Your Majesty."

"Not for a presentation. For a conversation." A pause. "I have a particular interest in the subject you describe."

"I am aware, Your Majesty," [Name] said gently. And then, because she had decided that honesty was her only real option with this woman, and because she believed that this moment mattered: "I came prepared to speak about it, if Your Majesty wished."

Another silence.

And then Charlotte said, very quietly, as if the words required careful handling: "I think, Lady [Name], that you and I are going to understand each other very well."

In the weeks that followed her first meeting with the Queen, [Name] came to the palace three times.

The first visit was still largely formal, Charlotte learning the edges of her, the shape of what she knew and how she knew it, assessing with the careful thoroughness of a woman who had been disappointed by people who seemed promising and had learned to verify before trusting. [Name] submitted to this assessment without impatience. She understood it. She understood Charlotte, from the outside in a way that Charlotte could not know and that she was very careful about handling gently, not using what she knew as a lever, but as a guide. A way of finding the right words for the right moments.

The second visit was different. Charlotte dismissed her ladies, which was itself a signal, and looked at [Name] across the tea service with the directness of a woman who had decided to stop testing and start speaking.

"My husband," she said, without preamble.

"Yes," [Name] said.

"What do you know."

It was not a question.

[Name] took a slow breath. This was the moment she had thought about for years, not with dread, but with the careful, sobered awareness of its weight. "I know," she said, choosing each word with precision, "that what afflicts His Majesty is a condition of the nervous system. That it is not a failure of character, nor of intelligence, nor of sanity in the manner in which it is sometimes spoken of. That it is a physiological reality, something that exists in the tissue of the brain and in the chemistry of the blood, and that it is made significantly worse by certain things and somewhat better by others."

Charlotte was very still. "The physicians—"

"The physicians are doing what they can with what they have," [Name] said, with the honest fairness she brought to all assessments. "What they have is not yet sufficient to fully address the condition. But—" A pause. "There are things that help. That are not currently being tried, or not being tried in the right combination."

"What things?"

[Name] reached, carefully, into the small bag she had been permitted to bring with her, and produced a document she had spent three weeks preparing, handwritten, clear, organized with the systematic precision of a differential diagnosis and treatment plan, translated into the terminology of this era with the care of someone who understood that effective communication required meeting the audience where they were.

She set it on the table between them.

Charlotte looked at it. Then she looked at [Name]. "You prepared this."

"I have been preparing it for some time," [Name] said honestly. "I hoped for the opportunity to share it."

Charlotte picked up the document and read it, slowly and completely, while [Name] sat with her tea and waited with the patience of someone who had sat through very long ward rounds and understood that the management of silence was a skill.

When she finished, Charlotte looked up. Her expression was something complex and layered that [Name] could not fully name, parts of it were relief, and parts of it were grief, and parts of it were something that was almost anger, the anger of someone who had been waiting too long for an answer that should have arrived sooner.

"Who else has seen this?" Charlotte said.

"No one, Your Majesty."

"It must remain so."

"I understand."

"If this works—" Charlotte stopped. The controlled herself with the visible effort of a woman who had been managing the appearance of composure for so long it had become structural. "If this works," she said again, more steadily, "I will owe you a debt that I am not certain can be adequately repaid."

"I ask nothing in return," [Name] said, which was true. "He is suffering. You are suffering. If I can help, then I should."

Charlotte looked at her for a long moment. Something in her expression shifted, not softened exactly, because Charlotte was not a woman who softened, but opened, slightly, the way a room opened when a window was lifted.

"You are," she said slowly, "a remarkable young woman."

"I have been told so," [Name] said. "I try to deserve it."

The third visit, six weeks after the first, Queen Charlotte received [Name] not in the public salon but in her private sitting room, the inner chambers that very few people outside the immediate royal household ever entered. It was a privilege so unusual that even Lady Danbury, when informed of it, was briefly and expressively speechless.

[Name] sat with the Queen and drank tea and they talked for two hours, and some of what they discussed was the King and the careful, slow work of implementing the interventions [Name] had outlined, adjusted and refined through the ongoing consultation between them. Some of what they discussed was other things, books, and philosophy, and the management of a world that did not always make room for women who thought clearly and acted on what they found.

At the end of the two hours, Charlotte said, with the directness that [Name] had come to understand was her highest mode of respect: "I intend to make it known that you are under my particular regard. This will smooth certain paths for you."

[Name] understood precisely what this meant. Queen Charlotte's favor was one of the most significant social currencies in the Ton. To be under her particular regard was not simply an honor, it was a form of protection, a signal to the social architecture of London that this person was not to be casually dismissed or managed. For an Omega girl in her first Season, it was transformative.

"I am grateful, Your Majesty," she said.

"Don't be grateful," Charlotte said crisply. "Be useful. Continue being as remarkable as you are. That is what I require of you."

"I can do that," [Name] said.

Charlotte looked at her, and the expression on her face was the expression of a woman who believed her.

Author's Note:

Thank you to everyone who liked my story! I decided to make the chapters a bit longer so the story doesn’t get cut off so abruptly. I really appreciate all the support and hope you enjoy the next updates.

We finally introduced the Bridgertons, the Queen, and my beloved Lady Danbury in this chapter!

P.S. If you’d also like to be added to the taglist, just say so!

Also I totally underestimated how many tabs I’d have to open just to search for richer vocabulary lol.

Stu, ever the golden retriever of chaos, was bouncing on the balls of his feet, spilling some of his beer as he laughed at something Jen whispered in your ear. "This is awesome," he yelled over the music, slinging an arm around both you and Jen, pulling Billy in with his other hand. "Best party ever!" Billy just rolled his eyes, but the fondness in them was undeniable as he took a swig of his drink, his gaze lingering on the way Jen's ass pressed against your hips.

Hours later, the party was dying down. The music was lower, the crowd thinner, and the four of you stumbled out into the cool night air, a giggling, tipsy mess. "My place," Billy declared, his arm wrapped possessively around your waist, his other hand tangled in Jen's hair.

Back at the house, the energy shifted. The frantic party vibe melted into a lazy, intimate haze. "Boring," Jen announced suddenly, flopping dramatically onto the couch. "I have an idea." She shot up, a mischievous glint in her eyes. "Let's go to the roof. Let's get high."

You and Billy shared a look. "Jen, you can't even get high," you reminded her, a smile playing on your lips.

"Details, details," she waved off. "C'mon, it'll be fun." Stu was already on board, grabbing the stash from a kitchen drawer. "Roof sesh! Yeah!"

The night air on the roof was crisp, carrying the scent of cut grass and distant exhaust. The town of Woodsboro spread out below you, a sea of sleepy lights. You passed the joint around, the smoke curling up into the darkness. Jen took a long drag and held it, blowing out a perfect smoke ring with a frustrated sigh. "See? Nothing. It's like smoking air. You guys are all gonna be giggly and I'm just gonna be… here."

"Aw, poor baby," Stu cooed, pulling her into his lap and nuzzling her neck. "I'll share my buzz." He kissed her, deep and messy, and she giggled, pushing him away playfully.

It was then that Stu's gaze drifted over the edge of the roof, then back to the three of you. A slow, wicked grin spread across his face. "You know," he said, his voice low and conspiratorial. "We should have roof sex."

Your eyes widened. "Stu, are you insane? We could fall."

Billy, who had been quietly watching the exchange, snorted. He moved from his spot against the chimney and knelt in front of you, his hands cupping your face. "Who cares?" he murmured, his voice a rough velvet that sent a shiver down your spine. "Live a little." And then he was kissing you, a hard, demanding kiss that tasted of beer and smoke and pure Billy Loomis. It was an argument you couldn't win, a surrender you didn't want to fight.

That was all it took. Billy's hands were impatient, tugging your shirt over your head before his mouth was back on yours, hungry and possessive. Jennifer and Stu were a whirlwind of motion beside you, a tangle of limbs and soft curses as they shed their own clothes. The cool night air pebbled your skin, raising goosebumps wherever Billy's hands weren't touching you. He laid you down carefully on the flattest part of the roof, the rough texture of the shingles a strange, exciting contrast against your bare back.

"Stu, get over here," Billy commanded, his voice low and husky. "She needs something to keep her mouth busy." Stu grinned, all eagerness, and knelt by your head, his long, thick cock already hard and pointing at the sky. You didn't need to be told twice. You turned your head, taking the tip of him into your mouth and swirling your tongue around the head, savoring his salty taste. He groaned, his hands tangling in your hair as you began to bob your head, taking him deeper with each stroke.

Billy, meanwhile, had settled between your legs. He didn't rush. He kissed his way up your inner thighs, his stubble a delicious burn against your sensitive skin. "So fucking wet for us already," he murmured, his breath hot against your core. "You like this, don't you? Like knowing anyone could look up and see what a dirty girl you are." You moaned around Stu's cock, the vibration making him thrust deeper into your mouth. That was all the encouragement Billy needed. He flattened his tongue and licked a long, slow stripe from your entrance to your clit, circling the sensitive bundle of nerves before sucking it into his mouth.

Your hips bucked off the roof, a silent plea for more, but Billy held you down, his hands pressing firmly on your hips. He ate you out with a focused intensity, his tongue delving into your folds, fucking you with it before returning to your clit, alternating between broad, flat licks and quick, flicking movements. It was overwhelming, a perfect, hedonistic spiral of pleasure.

Jennifer wasn't content to just watch. With a wicked grin, she straddled your stomach, her slick heat pressing against your skin. She leaned forward, capturing one of your nipples in her mouth and sucking hard, her teeth scraping gently against the sensitive peak. The dual sensations of Billy's mouth on your clit and Jen's on your nipple was almost too much. You could feel your orgasm building, a tight coil in your stomach.

"Not yet," Billy growled, pulling away just as you were about to tip over the edge. He looked up at you, his chin glistening with your arousal. "I want to feel you come on my cock." He positioned himself at your entrance, teasing you with just the head, pushing in slightly before pulling back out. "Please, Billy," you begged, pulling off Stu's cock for a moment to gasp the words.

"Since you asked so nicely," he smirked, and then he was pushing into you, a slow, deliberate stretch that burned in the best way. He didn't stop until he was buried to the hilt, his pelvis flush against yours. He held still for a moment, letting you adjust, his dark eyes locked on yours. "Fuck, you're tight." He started to move then, a slow, deep grind that hit a spot deep inside you that made your toes curl. Each thrust was deliberate, powerful, designed to drive you insane.

Stu took the opportunity to slide his cock back into your waiting mouth, his hips setting a matching rhythm. You were trapped between them, filled from both ends, a perfect, willing vessel for their pleasure. Jennifer, still perched on your stomach, began to rock her hips, sliding her wet folds against your skin, Billy put two fingers in her cunt feeling how wet she was. She leaned down, her mouth finding yours in a messy, three-way kiss with you and Stu. "You look so good like this," she panted against your lips. "All full of cock."

Billy's pace began to quicken, his thrusts becoming harder, more erratic he started stroking Jen with his fingers even faster. He reached down with his other hand , his thumb finding your clit and rubbing it in tight, fast circles. "Come for me, y/n," he demanded, his voice rough with lust. "Come all over my fucking cock." That was all it took. The coil in your stomach snapped, and your orgasm crashed through you, a blinding, all-consuming wave of pleasure. You cried out, your back arching off the roof as your walls clenched around Billy's length.

Billy followed you over the edge with a guttural groan, his hips stuttering as he spilled himself deep inside you, and took his fingers out of Jen. Stu wasn't far behind, pulling out of your mouth and fisting his cock, his come painting your lips and chin in hot, sticky stripes. Jennifer, with a final, sharp cry, came against your stomach, her body trembling with the force of her release.

For a long moment, the four of you just stayed there, a tangled, breathless heap under the stars. The only sounds were your ragged breaths and the distant hum of the town below. Then, with a coordinated effort that was both clumsy and intimate, you disentangled yourselves and collapsed onto the slightly flatter part of the roof, a mess of naked limbs and sated smiles.

"Okay," Jen said, her voice husky as she laid her head on your stomach. "That was better than getting high."

"Lily... Lily, wake up sunshine." You played gently in her hair and whispered ever so slightly in order for her to not wake up in a bad mood. Today was a big day. You were finally going to bring Lily watch her father's match. Something that you had always waited for. Tashi was also excited but was too worried about Art actually performing to get over the moon about it. Art was more than excited to show his little girl how good he could play. It was a motivation that was needed for him.

You had seen him play once or twice before becoming the nanny to his child. That's how you had met them both. Somehow, hanging out in a place full of rich married couples could lend you a well paid job... You had accepted their offer and were now travelling all around the country with the couple and their amazing daughter Lily. She was a sweetheart and loved you to death. While taking care of her, you had fallen in love with her parents. Let's admit it, they were so kind to you and extremely attractive.

Nothing had prepared you for that one night where you were leaving for a week to go see your family for Christmas.

They had let you have a week off and you were packing your things in the bedroom that was reserved to you in their mansion. Suddenly, they both came in without knocking. "Y/n?" You turned around slightly surprised that they were both in your room and smiled at them. "You scared me." You giggled. They smiled and motioned for you to sit down. "Have a seat." You were confused. Why did they want to talk to you right now? "Is something wrong? Did Lily wake up? I can go put her back to sleep if you both want..." They got closer to your bed on which you were sitting and shook their head no at the same time. They were so captivating.

"No... We wanted to ask you something. But, we don't want it to change anything about this nanny contract. Lily values you too much for that." Tashi said while holding Art's hand. "Of course, ask me anything. Did I do something wrong?" You asked them, starting to worry. "No. God, everything except that, Y/n!" Art exclaimed. You looked in his eyes and was reassured by his sincere gaze.

"Do you know what polyamory is?" Tashi asked you and sat down to your right. Your eyes grew wider. "Yeah..." you felt exposed somehow. What were they thinking? "Do you like us Y/n?" Art then asked while sitting to your left. You nodded shyly. "Use your words, sweetie." Tashi said and gently rubbed your thigh. "Yeah." "Both of us? You like both of us the same?" Art started to rub your left thigh and it was all overwhelming. You got up and away from them. "Yes and I'm sorry! I don't know what's wrong with me. You two are married it's wrong of me. I'll be more subtle I swear! Just... please don't fire me. I need this job." They were now looking at you attentively while you shed some tears. "Baby... don't appologize. We're not mad, we just wanted to make sure. Because, we like you too..." Art admitted and got up closer to you to offer you comfort.

"What?" You were now very much confused and mixed up. "Y/n, we took some time to talk and we came to the realization that we want to try something out with you. We would be happy to add a beautiful and amazing woman to our relationship. If you want to try it out that is?" Tashi elaborated and you once again nodded to which the couple laughed softly. "Uh, yeah my words... sorry. Of course I would. Are you sure? When will we start? Does something like this even start?-" You were rambling again until Art put his hand on your right forearm. "When you come back from your Christmas break, we would love to take you on a date. Would you want that, sweetie?" Tashi offered and you smiled brightly. "I would love that." You aknowledged and they both wrapped you in their arms at the same time. "It's a date then." Art pointed out and kissed your cheek. You blushed and hummed yes.

The rest was history.

You had started dating them 1 year ago but it was all a secret to the media. People wouldn't understand and you were not pressed for them to do so. You were happy being their lover and being apart of this incredible family officially.

Lily had finally woken up and smiled at you. "Y/n/n?" Lily knew you were dating her parents. When she learned it five months after you started dating, she wrapped you in her arms and said thank you to her parents which made the three of you tear up. "Yes, Lil?" You took her in your arms and brought her to the bathroom to start the day. "Is dad going to win?" She asked you with worried little eyebrows while you made her sat on the sink counter. "I don't know, Lily. It never is a sure game. Especially the final match." She frowned while you handed her her toothbrush and motioned for her to brush her teeth. "But... I personnaly think he will beat the other guy. But don't say to anyone I said that. Okay?" You whispered and she finally smiled. She nodded excitedly and put her little hand on her heart. "Pinky swear?" You asked her while extending your pinky to her. She lifted hers up and you crossed them together.

When she was done in the bathroom, you helped her get dressed and got dressed yourself. Tashi had bought Lily a cute little, white tennis dress from Tommy Hilfiger that matched hers. You were wearing a pair of beige trousers, a white blouse and some loafers from Tommy too that you had picked up in the store with the help of your two partners. You took Lily's hand and left the hotel to drive up to the tournament.

When you both arrived there, there was no place to walk, litterally. Everybody was screaming and fighting their way to maybe have an autograph of the players. You took Lily in your arms and held her closely to make sure she didn't get hurt. "Y/n/n?" The girl asked for you in a tiny voice. "Yes, Lil?" You rubbed her back with your hand and tried to push through the crowd to get where the security was. "I'm scared..." Lily announced, which broke you're heart. "It's okay sweetie. I've got you, I promise. We're almost there."

When you got to the security you realized that you had forgotten your VIP pass and cursed to yourself making sure Lily didn't hear you. "Hey, I'm sorry?" You said to a guard that had his back facing you. He turned around and looked at you unimpressed. "Hi, sorry. I am VIP but I forgot my pass. Do you maybe have a list with names? I'm on there, I swear." You tried to explain but he was unfazed. "No pass, no entry." He went to turn around but you pleaded. "Please, I am with a child here..." "And what does that do? We've had this a lot. Please just wait like everyone else and don't make me use force." He answered and you groaned after Lily sobbed harder as the fans shouted more. "I'm begging of you, this child is about to have a panic attack. You do not want Art Donaldson and Tashi Donaldson's daughter having a panic attack because of you, trust me."

The guard looked you up and down and sighed. "Call them." He told you coldly. "What?" You asked bewildered. "If they asnwer, then they can prove that they know you. Otherwise..." He tsked at you and you pulled out your phone with difficulty having Lily in your arms. The phone rang and rang and Tashi didn't pick up. Fuck... "You can wait like the rest." Th bodyguard turned around after seeing your exposed face. "No wait-" You were about to make another compromise when you realised it was no use. He wasn't going to listen to you anymore.

That's when you heard it. A fan... "Omg look! That's the Donaldson's daughter!" The girl shreaked and pointed towards Lily in your arms. Then, a plethora of fans made their way towards you two and you held Lily closer. "Can we get a picture?" One boy asked to which you shook your head. "No, I'm sorry but that's a no." The fan's face changed quickly and he frowned. "Who even are you?" He asked and a lot of fans around agreed to his question and you knew it would turn bad.

"Please, I'm her Nanny... She is very anxious right now, it's not the time to cause a scene." You tried to reason with them only for a girl to scream from your left. Lily' sobs were louder and you rubbed her back soothingly trying to keep yourself calm too. "She's kidnapping the Donaldson's daughter! Stop her!" Your eyes blew wide as they all approached you dangerously with death glares.

"Y/n?" A tiny voice whispered afraid in your ears and a tear fell down your face. "I'm so sorry, Lily" While they got closer, you closed your eyes and kept Lily close in your arms.

"Get the fuck away from them!" You heard a familiar voice thunder from behind you. You didn't dare open your eyes afraid you had been dreaming it. You heard footsteps gather away from you and you finally opened your eyes. The fans had gotten away and were looking behind you with scared eyes. You turned around and were met with two sets of eyes. Art and Tashi. You had been right. It had been Tashi ordering them away. They saw your tear streaked face and hurried closer to you.

When Tashi had returned your call from earlier only for it to go to voicemail, she decided that she would come find you. Art had tagged along since his match was only in an hour.

"Y/n?" Art called you while looking at you worried. "Come on let's go..." He whispered when he put his hand on your back. Tashi got closer too and analysed you and her daughter. "Take Lily from my arms, please..." Your voice sounded weak to them and they looked at you turn by turn. Art had a worried expression on his face and Tashi looked more angry. Art took Lily in his left arm and put his right hand on the small of your back from your left. Tashi pur her left hand on top of his and guided you towards the same guard line as before. "Did you try to get through?" She softened her tone for you. You nodded and sighed. "But I forgot my pass at the hotel. I'm so sorry. It's my fault and-" You were explaining when she rubbed your back to reassure you. "Did you try to explain to a guard your situation?" You nodded once more and her jaw ticked. "Okay... let's get you two safe for now." Art proposed when he saw how pissed his wife was.

He lead you four to his locker room and as soon as you were behind closed doors, you broke down in full tears from it all. Art sat down with Lily in his arms that was now asleep from exhaustion from crying so much and Tashi was comforting you. "I'm sorry. I thought I could keep her safe. She could've been hurt." You hiccuped while looking at Lily and sobbing harder. "But she didn't because of you sweetie." Art said and locked eyes with you. You could sense he was getting mad. He had every right to be. Who would forget such an important thing like a pass? "Don't do this. Don't stay in your head... Talk to us?" Tashi asked of you when she started to notice you overthinking. "I know you're both mad at me. I would be too! I put Lily in danger-" Art cut you off at that. "Wow, wow, wow... we're not mad at you!" He was quick to explain.

You now had a confused look and Tashi kissed your lips quickly. "You thought we were mad at you, baby?" You nodded and she giggled to lighten the mood. "Oh god no! We're mad at the stupid guard and crazy fans. Come here!" She opened her arms and you sighed in relief. "Okay now, let's all relax a little before my match and then we can head to the field and have a great time. Yeah?" Art said while rubbing Lily's back and smiling at the two of you. You nodded and sat down with Tashi in front of him. She held you closely while you steadied your breathing.

The match had went well. Lily had woken up and was smiling from ear to ear while her dad made points. It was funny seeing her little frown, looking like her mom's, when the other player made his points. In the end, Art had won and you three cheered from the sideline while he was taking his winning pictures.

That night, at the hotel, Tashi put Lily to bed while you were cuddling with Art in yours. He was peppering mindless kisses all across your forehead and whispering sweet nothings. "I love you, Y/n/n. You know that we love you right? Today I got scared. I was mad, not because of you, but because I didn't know how to help you see that it wasn't your fault. I could never be mad at you, sweetie." He explained while locking his gaze with yours. "I know... I love you more though." You tried to admit while Tashi entered the room in her black babydoll. "Now, what has you lying like that?" She smiled mischeviously at you and got on the bed behind you.

This had always been how you all slept. You in the middle, Art to your left and Tashi to your right. Of course, sometimes that arrangement changed... But primarily, that was the one. "I'm not lying." You said with a smile yourself while getting on your knees to face them easily on the bed. "No... I think you're a little liar." Art said while sitting up and putting his hand on your right knee. He looked at you with desire and your mouth opened slightly. "Don't you think so too, Babe?" He asked Tashi who was also sitting up now and held your left knee. "Oh I think she is..."

Art got closer to your face and kissed your lips harshly. He held the back of your neck with his free hand and Tashi caressed your upper left leg while looking at the both of you. "We don't like liars..." She whispered in your ear and you shivered.

They shouldn’t, Harry thinks, inhaling deep breaths of your bed sheets grasped tight against his nose. The sweet scent of your washing powder and something entirely your own singeing his nose hairs deliciously and pulsing through to his hard cock.

Draco groans behind him, chin nestled between the crook of Harry’s neck and ruts his hips lewdly against the curve of his jean clad ass. “Fuckin’ look at her, Potter, slidin’ her little fingers through her tight pussy. Putting on a show just for us.”

Harry swallows his whine through clenched teeth and spits down on Draco’s waiting hand just barely touching the underside of his weeping cock. You’re sopping by the time you press your dildo against your slit, slick pooling down your asshole and your pretty fingers in sticky strands. You tease the head up your clit and down to your hole once, twice and Harry feels the effect of it through Draco’s teasing palm and the quiver of your brows.

You blunt teeth reach for your lip when it catches just right against your rim and finally – finally his cock is gripped tight in a warm, slick enclosure, relieved of your sadistic torture – you pressure its length through your lips and halfway in you.

“Christ.” He moans, hips stuttering into Draco’s grip. “Fuckin’ christ, Draco, s’fuckin good.”

Draco scoffs meanly. “As pathetic as our girl, Potter, she can’t keep her pretty little mouth shut either.” His grey eyes shimmer silver against the pale luminance of moonlight, reflecting just barely off your closed window. Harry can’t help the vicious twitch his cock gives at the thought of you seeing too and scrambling for cover. Eyes wide and wild with fear, your breasts heaving with increased breath.

Your moans leak through your thin cottage walls and flimsy window frames with each thrust of your hand, sensual melodies that have beckoned them back to your window time and time again. A siren song that makes Draco’s blonde lashes flutter closed and his cock ache for the lap of your sweet tongue.

Your mouth forms words they can’t quite make sense of but they know you well enough to know what pleas you utter under your breath when you brink the edge, have stalked close enough to catch your “please please please”.

Harry gasps when Draco’s thumb rolls over his slick head with mastered precision, readying him for your teary release. Your thrusts stutter and slow with the clench of your lower abdomen and Harry imagines his hips in place of your hand. Cock twitching in your depth, pace faltering with oncoming pleasure as you choke down Draco with wide watery eyes and a clenching cunt.

Draco quickens the flick of his wrist with a tightened grip.

You thrash against your mattress when your orgasm peaks, hips bucking wildly.

His cock twitches and spurts thick white ropes against your pretty yellow wall as he smothers his whimpers into your stolen sheet. Draco hums a deep groan into his tender neck, bucking against his backside through his own high.

Poly! Ghostface

- Oh they think you're so weird /pos

- Stu is definitely more enthusiastic about your aesthetic, while Billy's the type to admire from afar

- Expect so much teasing from Stu <3

- Imagine him swinging his arm around you and calling you his own Gomez/Morticia Addams <3

- Maybe Fester if he's feeling bold

- Billy is more forgiving, but he won't stop his boyfriend until he's sick of it

- They both are pretty restless and love fidgeting with your accessories

- Give these men some chains and a couple of rosaries and it'll keep them focussed during movie nights

- Billy adores your music taste though

- He's such a sucker for the darker themes and the dramatics of Gothic music

- You were unintentionally the gateway into Billy finding out about the Smiths when he tried finding similar music /j

- While it takes some persuading from you and Stu, both of your boyfriends would let you give them a makeover

- Stu sees himself in the mirror and has two impulses: to give you an obnoxious, black lipstick staining kiss on the cheek and to to Randy's house and scare the shit out of him

- Regardless of your input, they're going to Randy

- You made them look like extra tall demonic vampires of course they're going to use it for evil

Carrie White

- She grew up in a god fearing home it's reasonable to say she was scared of you before you two got together

- But your existence really does breathe a new life within her

- You holding her hand as she explores the dark aesthetics, helping her embrace the romantic side of goth culture makes her so giggly

- It's such an interesting rabbit hole to her and it eases her nerves

- As long as it's not too heavy of topics, she's more comfortable with the lighter n less blasphemous parts of goth

- She'll gladly fall into the stereotype of the alternative kid who writes poetry

- Like !! She could have a journal full of Gothic poetry and if you ask she'd be excited to show you

- As you two grow closer, Carrie would be open to a makeover

- Though it's nothing heavy, maybe some normal eyeliner and her usual wardrobe in black

She became aware of the dynamics of this world gradually, the way one becomes aware of a sound that has always been there, first as a vague background presence, then as something distinct, then as something impossible to ignore.

It was not, she would eventually understand, the ABO dynamics of the paranormal romance novels she had read in her past life, not exactly. The world she had been born into was Regency London in its social architecture, its manners, its dress, its rigid hierarchies of class and gender, but layered beneath all of that was a secondary system, older and more fundamental, that sorted people into designations that carried biological and social weight in equal measure.

Alphas were rare, perhaps one in ten, and tended toward positions of authority and leadership. The scent of an Alpha commanded rooms. Their instincts ran toward protection and provision and dominion. Most of the titled aristocracy were Alphas. It was not a coincidence.

Betas were the majority, seven of ten, perhaps, and were, in the language of this world, simply people. The social middle. The functional mass of society. There was no particular stigma to being a Beta, but there was also no particular mystique.

Omegas were rarer still than Alphas, perhaps one in fifteen, and were, in the biological mechanics of this world, the counterpoint. Where Alphas commanded, Omegas drew. Where Alphas asserted, Omegas pulled. The relationship between an Alpha and an Omega was not merely romantic or even merely biological, it was, at its deepest level, a form of recognition. A knowing. The body of an Alpha responded to the scent of its destined Omega the way a compass responded to north: not through choice, not through decision, but through something more fundamental than either.

Omegas, in this world, were valued, protected, desired, sometimes dangerously so. They were also, in the social architecture of the Ton, subject to a set of additional constraints and expectations layered on top of the already considerable constraints placed on women. An unmated Omega was considered vulnerable. The management of an Omega’s heat cycle, which Ellie’s emerging research suggested was a biannual event of significant physiological intensity, was considered a matter of family management until a suitable Alpha mate could be arranged.

She lay in her crib at five months old and thought about this with the focused attention of a doctor reviewing a complex case.

She was, she had already begun to suspect, an Omega. The confirmation would come later, designations typically became apparent in early childhood, but the instincts were already there, quiet and new, like the first green shoots of something that would eventually become significant.

She was also, she was quite sure, someone who had opinions about how her Omega status was going to be managed.

They were going to be, she suspected, extensive opinions.

Edmund Ashworth was not a complicated man in the way that complicated men advertised themselves. He was straightforward and decent and occasionally oblivious to social subtlety in ways that his wife found either endearing or maddening depending on the day and the circumstance, and he loved his children with the uncomplicated wholeness of someone who had never felt the need to perform emotion rather than simply have it.

He had two sons before [Name], Charles, aged seven when she was born, and William, aged four, both of them Alpha, both of them fair and blue-eyed like their father, both of them currently engaged in the project of being small boys in a large house in the way that small boys always had been: loudly, messily, and with tremendous enthusiasm for activities that alarmed the household staff.

And then there was [Name].

Edmund had held other babies before. He had held Charles and William both, in this same careful way, with this same exaggerated gentleness, and he had loved them immediately and completely. But there was something about [Name] that was different, and he was not a man who believed in such things, he was a practical man, a reasonable man, but he felt it nonetheless from the first moment he held her.

She looked at him like she understood him.

Not in the flattering, wishful way one might project understanding onto a newborn’s unfocused gaze. She actually looked at him, directly, attentively, with an expression of such focused interest that it made the back of his neck prickle with the odd sensation of being genuinely seen by someone who had no business being so perceptive yet.

“She’s watching me,” he said to Constance, the second week of [Name]’s life.

“She’s a baby, Edmund,” Constance said, fondly but firmly. “She can barely focus her eyes.”

“She’s watching me,” he repeated.

He was not wrong.

[Name], for her part, watched her father with the careful attention of someone taking inventory. She was building a picture of him the way she had always built pictures of patients, systematically, from available evidence, without rushing to conclusions. What she found was: a man who was fundamentally kind. A man who smiled at his children and meant it. A man who was Alpha, certainly, she could sense it now, the low warm hum of his designation like the heat from a banked fire, but whose Alpha nature expressed itself not as domination but as a deep, steadfast care. The instinct to protect. The instinct to provide. The instinct to keep.

Her father, she concluded, was a good man.

This was, she understood, not something to take for granted. She had read enough historical fiction and enough real history to know that good fathers were not the default setting of the aristocracy. She had been fortunate in this, as she had been fortunate in other things, and she kept a running tally of her good fortune with the same precision she kept everything else.

Her mother was wonderful too, in a different way — where Edmund was warmth, Constance was brilliance, a sharp and beautiful mind enclosed in the appropriate package of a Countess who knew exactly how to perform the social requirements of her station without losing herself inside them. She read voraciously. She managed the household with the quiet efficiency of someone who had identified the most logical system for every task and implemented it so thoroughly that the household now ran almost automatically. She spoke to her children not as small people to be managed but as people in training, which [Name] found deeply agreeable.

She also, [Name] noticed, spoke to her slightly differently than she spoke to the boys.

Not less kindly. But differently. With an additional layer of something watchful and careful, a particular quality of attention that [Name] eventually identified as the attention of a mother who knew her daughter was an Omega and was already, consciously or not, beginning to think about what that meant.

Constance was a Beta herself. She could not know the experience from the inside. But she was smart enough to have thought about it, and worried about it, and [Name] could read that worry in the slight furrow between her mother’s brows when she looked down at her sometimes, in moments when she thought no one was watching.

I’ll be alright, Mama, [Name] thought, at seven months old, lying in her mother’s lap on a sunlit afternoon while Constance read and the sound of the boys playing drifted through the open window.

I know things you don’t know yet. I’ll be alright.