Chapter 2: Cleaned

Dean didn't like April from the moment he first laid eyes on her. She was pretty enough, slim with Greek-pale skin and light brown hair with a hint of auburn, but there was a harshness in her muddy blue eyes that hinted at a dissatisfaction with her current position in life. She was a slave, the same as him, but as a female beta she had significantly more rights, and it was clear that the woman ruled the spacious apartments allocated to the prince's harem.

Uriel grumbled something as he entered the room, April arching up like a furious cat, her scent blackening with her dislike of the Africana beta. Dean entered the room and waited silently as April rose to her feet, leaving behind the two other female betas who had been sitting on the cushions with her. "Uriel," April snapped, flipping her hair over her shoulder. "What can I do for you today?"

"Watch the attitude, princess," Uriel hissed back, reaching into the bag by his side and passing over a scroll. "Here's the poetry you requested."

The gift seemed to soothe the prickly beta, and she tucked the scroll into a pocket of her pale blue tunic before turning to face Dean. "So Castiel has chosen a new concubine?"

"An omega," Uriel pointed out, almost purring as he offered up that tidbit of information.

April's eyes widened. Male omegas were incredibly rare in the Roman Empire, and most betas didn't have the olfactory prowess to detect them at range. Dean waited patiently as the young woman scented him, the other two concubines moving close enough to confirm Uriel's words. "Well," April purred, running her fingers through her hair, "we've never had an omega here. I knew that Naomi was searching for one to take over when Inias's contract expires, but I didn't truly think she would be successful. What's your name and family, boy?"

"Dean, son of John Winchester of Roma and Mary Campbell of Athenae."

"John Winchester? I know that name." The concubine who spoke, a small woman with dark brown hair and eyes, reached out and just barely brushed Dean's bare arm with her fingertips, catching a hint of his scent and leaving some of hers behind. She seemed nice enough, though her speaking pattern was strange, and her scent wasn't muddy like April's. "Your father fought in the Gallic Wars. I thought you joined the army."

April rolled her eyes and headed back to her cushions, the dark-haired woman staying with Dean while the other one followed the Head Concubine. "Un, no, my brother is joining up, though. If I had been an alpha, I'm sure I would have."

"Well, you aren't, so welcome to the harem," April replied. "Uriel, the boy will need suitable clothes if he's to stay here; you know I don't like that plain white tunic look. We'll be taking him to the bathhouse immediately, also, so make sure it's stocked."

Uriel rolled his eyes and sighed. "Wow, April, it's like I've never delivered a new concubine into your capable care before."

"Just do as you're told," April snapped back.

Uriel made a rude gesture and left the room, two other women entering the main chamber. The dark-haired beta led Dean to the cushions, helping him settle down as the other women moved close enough to catch his scent. "Girls, this is Dean, Castiel's newest concubine. Dean, I'm April as you've guessed, that overly friendly girl is Meg, this is Hester, and that's Hannah and Daphne." Hannah was dark-haired like Meg, but with bright blue eyes, Daphne was similar to April, but with chestnut colored hair, and Hester was older, blonde, and vaguely unpleasant-looking. Despite the variance in age and appearance between the betas, it was clear that Castiel had a type, Grecian. Even Dean had ancestry from that ancient empire, though Naomi probably hadn't been looking for that trait specifically due to the rarity of his subgender.

"Hi, Dean," Hannah greeted, smiling warmly as Daphne nodded her own greeting. "We have a male beta here, but he won't be spending time with us today. Hester got bitchy at him the last time Cas had a rut and we haven't seen him much since."

"It's ridiculous that Castiel pays a male beta instead of letting us help him with his ruts. He has four a year; that would be one for each of us."

Dean looked up at that, wondering why Castiel had told him that the beta females didn't want to assist with his ruts when Hester was angry that they weren't invited to join him. Was the prince not interested in women? Everyone had a preference, of course, but they rarely eschewed the presence of the other subgenders. Dean tended to prefer males, which he had never let his father know, but now that might work out for him since Castiel was a gorgeous alpha. Male omegas were rarely sold to females, as most female alphas liked to pair with betas.

"None of which matters because we're concubines and we bow to his whim," April replied, that hint of something wrong in her scent strengthening.

"Of course," Hester replied. "I suppose we need to start working on this one, then, so he's ready when Inias's contract expires. He looks a little older than the ones we normally get."

"My dad was waiting to see how my brother presented."

Hester shrugged. "Whatever, it means you'll be physically big enough to bend over for Castiel a lot sooner than you normally would be. We've never had an omega, so I guess we'll need to track your heats and provide you with someone to help you through them. Castiel wouldn't bother with a slave, but his half-brothers aren't above it and Inias might be available. When was your last heat?"

Dean had seen Castiel's two half-brothers, and he truly hoped that he wouldn't be forced to ask one of them to help him through his heat. It might be better than going through another one alone, though, as the ones he'd had so far had been torture. "I just had one earlier this year, and one when I presented. The physician said that male omegas tend to have long gaps between heats since we aren't fertile, so it will likely be another three years before I have to worry about it again."

"Fine, we'll keep track of that. Meg, take him to the baths and get him dressed in something more presentable, assuming Raphael or Uriel did as they were ordered." Meg nodded and pushed herself to her feet, waving a hand at Dean to follow her deeper into the harem. Not really having any choice, the omega obeyed.

"Don't let April bother you too much," Meg offered softly as the pair entered the ornately decorated apodyterium chamber that led to the harem bathhouse. In the city, the large public bathhouses had separate sections for males and females, but since males were so rare in the prince's harem, there was not a separate section for them. "She's . . . bitter."

"About what?" Dean stripped out of his tunic and folded it neatly, placing it on an overhead shelf with his sandals. There were no capsarii to watch his clothes, but those slaves were often so dishonest in the city that it was a blessing to not have any here. He stared at the fabric for a moment, wondering how he had fallen so far that this was the sum total of his worldly goods, but he shook his head and turned toward the marble arch that led to the tepidarium. There was no point in being melancholy; this was his life now, and a slave had little need for personal effects.

Meg, who had also stripped down to her birthday suit, followed the omega softly. "She was the first of Castiel's concubines, long before Hester arrived. Naomi thought that she would be a sufficient companion for the prince, and for the first two ruts he was content with her. At the time, they didn't employ an omega sniffer here, but they hired a midwife a decade or so ago, and her mate is a female omega. They aren't as rare as males, of course, but the fact that she mated a female beta was news among the nobles for some time."

"Yes, I heard about her. Jody, right? And her mate's name is Donna."

Meg nodded, approaching the nearest bench and taking a seat. The floor of the room was inlaid with beautiful mosaic tiles, showing aquatic scenes in stunning color that were lit by sunlight from the windows overhead. The young woman was pretty enough, Dean mused to himself, but not his type at all. His sense of smell was quite acute, and he couldn't sense any arousal in her aroma so he must not be her type either. "They came to the palace as permanent servants to Caesar, though they are welcome to serve any noble in the city as long as no potential royal pup is left at risk. Donna has a superb sense of smell, and she can detect when beta females cycle, when we are at our most fertile."

Dean nodded as he sat down next to her, enjoying the relaxing feeling of just being warm. He knew that it would prepare his body for the heat of the bath proper. "Yeah, I can smell that, too. It was . . . distressing at first, just after my first heat, but I have gotten used to knowing peoples' fertility and emotions with just a sniff."

"April befriended Donna, asked if she would act as an unofficial sniffer. She's officially the midwife's assistant, but there aren't a lot of pups around here, so she was glad for something to do. A few months after they arrived, Castiel went into heat and Naomi sent for April. Donna had told April just the day before that she was entering the fertile phase of her cycle, and our beloved leader thought that she had found the perfect way to improve her station."

Dean tilted his head as he let the heat of the room seep into his tired body. There were jars and vials of scented oils and soaps on the ledge nearby, and Meg absently played with a few of her favorites as she relayed the story. They would return to this room after soaking in the baths and use strigils to scrape their skin clean, massaging in scented oil afterwards. "She got pregnant?"

Meg nodded, stretching and smiling as her spine popped, releasing some tension she had been carrying that morning. "Yeah, she did. Castiel had befriended Donna and Jody without April's knowledge, and they told him that April had known full well that she shouldn't have attended him during his rut. He was furious, his parents were furious, even his brothers were furious. He told April that she would be demoted to a kitchen slave in Gaul for the rest of her life, and she just freaked out. She was so stressed that she lost the pregnancy, barely two months in, and our beloved prince finally calmed down. He didn't want a bastard pup, and he has always put a lot of effort into not having one. He can't really risk a pup with a concubine before he has one with a legitimate mate, anyway; you remember what happened with the last Caesar."

Dean nodded, running his hands through his hair. "Yeah, that was a bloody mess." The former emperor had three bastard alpha sons before siring his only legitimate one, Chuck, and his omega twin Amara. When Caesar died, the three other sons had fought Chuck for control of the throne, and he had been forced to kill his half-brothers and their sons to ensure his own rule. He would not kill their mates, but the women had been banished to live as servants to the gods somewhere in Hispania. "So Castiel forgave April, let her stay?"

"After a fashion. She can stay, she can rule the concubines and keep what little power that gives her in the palace, but she can never again grace his bed. He won't take any female during his rut now, hence the contract with Inias, but for April that punishment is the worst of all."

"Have you, uh, graced his bed?"

Meg shrugged, leaning back against the wall and staring at the windows overhead. "Only a few times. He's not . . . he doesn't really seem as interested in sex as his older brothers. Gabriel is a known hedonist, Michael is slowly making his way through the middle class female population of Roma, and there are very few slaves in the palace that Lucifer hasn't tried to mount. He's not supposed to approach us without our permission, but he rarely follows that rule unless Castiel is in the palace."

"He protects you from his brother?"

Meg hummed an affirmative. "I don't mind Lucifer most of the time. I've helped him with his ruts on occasion, but you can be sure that I visit Donna ahead of time and make sure it's safe. If one of us gets pregnant by someone other than Castiel, heads will roll. That's why all of the harem servants, the only males who really spend time with us, are Africana. You give birth to one of their pups, everyone will know."

Dean shook his head and rose from the bench, swiping at the thin sheen of sweat on his arms. He headed for the caldarium and the hot water it offered, slipping into the broad pool gratefully as his fingers traced some of the mosaics embedded in the heated floor. "That's not so much a problem for me, though I doubt I will ever bend over for one of the servants or Lucifer. But you . . . do you want a pup someday?"

"Sure I do." Meg slipped into the water and leaned back to wet her bouncy hair, scrubbing her fingers against her scalp to free any dirt. "I was promised to an alpha back home, just after I presented, but there was some sort of fighting with the Caledonians on the northern border and my uncle had to pay Rome a pretty penny to send enough soldiers to quell the uprising. Caesar sent Gabriel's legion, and they crushed the enemy soundly. Part of the payment was either one male omega or five female betas to be slaves in the palace. My people protect their male omegas fiercely, value them much more highly than the rest of Rome does, and our original agreement with Julius Caesar ensured that our omegas could not be sold off our island. My uncle took that to mean that they should not be allowed to leave at all, so he sent five female betas."

"What happened to the others?"

"Well, Charlie was promoted to the Empress's Head Servant, Muriel is personal servant to Princess Anna, and Ellen and her daughter Jo are cooks in the kitchens. They're pretty famous, actually, and the Head Cook sings their praises."

"Why are you still a concubine, then, if they all got promoted out?"

"Someone has to watch out for Castiel. I'm fond of the guy, and he enjoys my company in a non-sexual way. We've become good friends over the years, and I worry that he would be too alone if I left. He needs a mate and some pups to settle him down. Once he has those, once I'm sure he's happy, I'll take him up on his offer for a ship home."

Dean smiled and dunked his head in the water, brushing the wet strands of hair off his face. "You miss Britannia, huh? My dad said it's a lovely island, if a bit foggy and wet most of the time. I always kinda wanted to see it."

Meg tilted her head curiously, examining Dean as if there was some secret just below the surface that she might understand by staring long enough. Something in her scent sweetened before fading, but it was so subtle that Dean almost missed it. "You're the first male omega I've spoken to since I came to the palace. They've become so rare in the southern half of the empire that someone could go their entire life without meeting one. It's not the same where I come from."

"No?"

"In the major cities in Britannia, we have almost a thousand times as many male omegas as Roma does. I wonder if something is wrong with the Roman and Grecian stock that you're slowly dying out. You guys have smaller families than we do, on average, so maybe that's part of it. I was thinking that maybe Castiel can sell you to me when he gets his mate and I can take you to Britannia and grant you your freedom. You aren't allowed that here, but my uncle would let you have a peaceful life."

Dean smiled and ducked his head under the water, drawing shapes on the edge of the bath when he came back up. "That's very kind of you, Meg, but I know my brother. When he's a bigshot in the Roman Army, he'll come back here and offer to buy me from Caesar, who by that time will be Castiel. I won't ever have a family or pups of my own, but I want to live my life with him and his family. I wish you luck in your plan to return to Britannia, though."

Meg nodded, an odd sadness in her eyes as if there had been so much more to her request than was on the surface, but the moment passed before Dean could think of a way to ask. They moved on to lighter topics after that, but the omega never stopped wondering what was so special about the northernmost Roman territory that Meg wanted him to see so badly?

April sighed and shook her head. "No, that color clashes with his eyes. Let's just stick with the dark green one with blue accents." From her tone of voice, it was clear that the head concubine doubted that Dean could ever look nice, so she had dropped her goal to "presentable". Dean just shrugged and switched tunics again, in general unconcerned with the amount of time he had already spent nude in this woman's presence. He belted the green one and pulled the dark blue sash over his shoulder, glad that this tunic was long and could keep him warm even in the cooler hallways of the harem.

"Ok, now that you don't look like you just walked in off the street, we'll work on some rules. First, of course, you can never look anyone ranked above you in the eye. That's not really so different from out there, but in here we're pretty much at the bottom of the totem pole. The harem and kitchen servants don't count, but anyone else does. Second, you are allowed to leave the harem only if you are accompanied by Uriel, Raphael, or Victor. They pretty much protect you and ensure your . . . virtue among the rest of the staff."

Dean snorted at that. "Virtue? I'm sterile; what does it matter?"

April growled in that watery, kinda not really scary female beta way, narrowing her eyes as Meg hid a grin behind her hand. "You still belong to Castiel and only he is allowed to use you. He may, in time, allow you some freedoms since you are only here for his ruts and since you are useless for breeding, but you may not make that choice on your own."

"When do I get to meet him again?"

"Not for years, at this rate," Hester answered absently, reading one of her favorite books and barely paying attention to the new concubine. "He doesn't like when a slave talks back, and talk is all you seem to do. You want to meet him, learn to keep silent."

April nodded at the observation. "Good point. We have some etiquette scrolls you can read, and I do expect you to practice silence the whole time. Daphne will fetch them for you, and you will memorize. Until then, Dean, you stay here."

There were a hundred scrolls total, covering etiquette and social laws for every position in Roman society. Dean wanted to point out that only a handful even applied to him, but one glare from his new taskmaster silenced his protest. Sighing, the omega settled into the cushions of the harem library and began to read.

Hours later, his stomach doing cartwheels under his ribs, Dean was finally allowed to put his scrolls down and stand. Hester watched him critically as he stretched his aching back, scoffing as he half-limped after her to the covered doorway in the back of the main room. "Where are we going?" Dean didn't expect an answer, having already learned in his short time as a slave that the tall blonde wasn't fond of questions, but she surprised him.

"The kitchen. The others are already there, waiting. We eat after the other servants, but before the rest of the slaves. If nothing else, we have rank amongst them. While we're waiting our turn, you are welcome to speak to the kitchen staff since they barely rank above slaves anyway."

Dean nodded, having read in the scrolls not to offer a verbal response when one would not advance the conversation at all. Monosyllabic sentences were to be avoided at all cost; they showed that he could not hold an intelligent conversation and concubines were expected to be able to entertain their owners in non-sexual ways when needed. As the son of Caesar and his heir apparent, Castiel certainly would expect intelligent conversation.

Hester, who had warmed slightly toward him, nodded toward the cluster of kitchen staff near the big windows where the water was piped in. Caesar's palace was very modern, as Dean would expect, with running water from the aquifers, and a big man with a neatly trimmed beard was washing some fruit under a spout. He dropped the cleaned fruit into a nearby basket and handed it to a rough boy with tousled brown hair, one not much older than Sam. Dean stared at the young slave and felt a tightness in his throat and a prickling behind his eyes. He took a deep breath to halt the onset of tears, reminding himself that he would see his little brother, one day, and maybe they could be together again. The big man, dressed in the fine linen that marked a highly-ranked servant, wiped his hands on his apron and turned away from the rabble near the water, bright blue eyes meeting Dean's watery jade from across the room. Frowning, the man waved toward the omega, beckoning him closer.

Dean glanced at Hester, who had joined April and Daphne near the windows, and shrugged. The woman had told him to make friends with the staff, so he headed over to meet the man near the table where a pack of boys were preparing a sweet fruit desert. He nodded toward the man, noting the laugh lines around his eyes and the tan color of his skin. This man was not from Roma, not originally, and it looked like he had traveled a lot in his life. Remembering his place, so different than it had been as the unpresented son of a noble, Dean bowed his head and avoided the man's intense stare.

"No reason to play politics here, cher," the man greeted, holding out his right arm where Dean could see it. Hesitantly, Dean reached out and grabbed the man's forearm in a greeting amongst equals, eliciting a chuckle from his new acquaintance. This was an alpha, a pretty strong one from his scent, and he was clearly in a position of authority among the kitchen servants and slaves. He must be the Head Cook, a prominent position in Caesar's household. "I'm Benny, of Avaricum, head Cook of Caesar. You're new here."

"Yes, I was . . . sold this morning."

Benny smiled kindly and patted Dean's shoulder, offering some of his strength and warmth to the boy. "The law isn't fair, boy. A person shouldn't become a slave because of his subgender. You're in the harem, right? Your parents must have been noble. You don't deserve this, but I know that you will survive it. I saw you with Hester, so you must be in Castiel's harem, right? He's a good sort. He won't hurt you."

"He, uh, he seemed nice," Dean replied, looking up as someone called Benny's name from across the room, gesturing wildly. The cook nodded in that direction and tapped Dean's arm, asking him to follow. Seeing that the other concubines were still waiting for their food, the young omega obeyed.

"At least you get to eat before the other slaves; most of my staff is much lower on the totem pole. This here is Ellen, my second in command. She's best with the savory stuff, meats and wild greens and the like. Her daughter, here, is Jo, a beast with fish and beer, but awful with anything sweet. She doesn't have it in her."

The mother was a strong beta with similar sun-kissed skin, though her laugh lines were a bit sterner and her temples were starting to gray. Still, everyone moved away when she approached, fish feeling the jaws of a hungry shark. Dean remembered that she had come from Britannia with Meg, and she seemed happy with her place here. "Who is this waif? He looks underfed."

Jo, a young blonde with light brown eyes, turned to sniff in Dean's direction, huffing under her breath before turning back to her table. "An omega. Castiel's, then. Someone is trying to buy favor with the Caesar again."

Ellen reached over from kneading her bread and smacked her daughter on the back of the head. "Don't make it harder on the boy than it has to be. He's an omega; he didn't ask to be a slave."

The younger beta whined but returned to her work without a fuss. There was a hint of sorrow in her scent, an apology to Dean, and he silently accepted it, trying to decipher the threads in her personal aroma. Sweet olive, he thought, and maybe cloves. That could be because she worked in a kitchen, he mused; Dean was still trying to get used to separating individual personal scents from environmental ones.

Benny leaned against Ellen's counter and picked up one of her spice jars. "What's the issue? One of your boys was losing his mind tryin' to get my attention."

"One of your damn sewer brats dropped a bag of silphium. I couldn't sell him for the value of that spice he lost, and don't think I didn't consider it!"

"Breathe, Ellen. How much did you recover? You're a wise woman, and I know you didn't let it go to waste."

Dean watched as the beta woman deflated somewhat, rolling out her ball of dough to prepare it for the oven. "Most of it, yes. And I tanned his hide good, you can be sure of that. He'll never drop a bag again."

"Go easy on the kids. They're just street orphans; they try their best."

"Yeah, well, I tasked Ash to watch them closer or I'd tan his hide instead. It should work."

"Hmm, should. You didn't call me over here because a slave dropped a bag of silphium."

Ellen sighed as she wiped the last of the flour from her hands, turning to the filling she was planning to use for the bread. Unlike the common masses, Chuck Caesar and his family wouldn't eat plain, unflavored loaves. "No, not for that. But it is a symptom of a larger problem, my dear friend. That bag he dropped cost twice what it should have. Tell Benny what you heard, Ash."

"I heard that there's a bit of a scarcity in Cyrenaica," Ash replied, the blond carrying a bag of apples into the prep area and placing them near Jo's table. He would slice some up for desert, which Jo actually wasn't terrible at preparing. "A drought in Maghreb is affecting the growing region for the plant, and it can't grow here."

Dean furrowed his brow. He was familiar with silphium, of course; it was an incredibly common herb used in cooking throughout the southern part of the Empire, less commonly in the north and Britannia. He had known in a vague sense that it came from Cyrenaica, but not that it was being affected by a drought in Maghreb. "Why can't it grow here?"

Ash shrugged, barely giving the newcomer any of his attention. "No one knows. We've tried for decades, longer . . . it's so expensive, but everyone wants it. They pray for the drought to end; silphium is the main export of Cyrenaica so they need it to grow as much as possible. It must end eventually."

"This is Caesar's palace; we have priority on silphium shipments," Benny pointed out. "I will see if we can find a better merchant to deliver it if the current one has raised his prices. Where is Gadreel? He normally handles the spice shipments."

"Store room," Ash replied absently. "They brought in a huge supply of honey from the south today and he had to rearrange things to fit it all in there."

"Fine. Dean, it'll be another half hour at least before we serve anyone down here, but if you come with me to the storerooms, I bet we could find a quick snack."

Ellen chuckled as she scored her loaf to create eight evenly sized slices after it was baked. "A new charity case for you, eh, Benny?"

The alpha chuckled as he walked away, Dean close on his heels. No reason not to make friends with the Head Cook, especially when he had no rank or status in the palace.

Benny entered the cool storeroom, shooing a pair of slaves away who had been carrying bags of spices into the hallway to be sorted and returned later. "Gad, what are you doing back here?"

"Organizing," a soft, firm voice replied from the deep behind the stacks of supplies. Benny and Dean waited as the owner of the voice approached the door, bringing with him a tantalizing scent of freesia and lavender, two flowers that Dean was fond of. When the tall, broad man with light brown hair and ice blue eyes appeared, he wasn't holding any flowers, just a bag of lentils. He was dressed in a blue tunic with no collar, so he was ranked as a servant, but Dean knew what his nose was telling him.

"You're an omega," he breathed.

Gadreel's shock filled the room, Benny grabbing Dean's arm and jerking him deeper into the room and shoving him against a pile of grain bags. "How did you know?!"

"He's an omega," Gadreel chided, his shock already fading as he gained control of his emotions. Dean could tell, now that he was getting a second sniff, that the older man wore blockers, oils and lotions that would dilute and mask a person's natural aroma. He might also be taking some sort of medicine orally. Those sorts of things were not technically illegal, though more common in Seres or Maghreb, but an omega using them to hide his subgender certainly was not allowed. It was a crime punishable by castration and slavery for anyone assisting the omega, as well as flogging and the slave markets for the omega himself. "He can scent past my blockers."

"You told me that no one could, Gad," Benny hissed, still watching Dean warily from the corner of his eye. "Donna thinks you are a beta."

"Yes, but a male omega's sense of smell can be ten or more times stronger than a female's. We can scent a single drop of blood on a battlefield; do you think my blockers would fool me?"

"But, why? The penalty for hiding yourself . . . and you're in Caesar's palace, not some inn in Gaul. This is dangerous."

Benny sighed and stroked his beard, clearly calming his agitated alpha. "I was working fishing boats out west, on the coast of Mare Cantabricum, when my captain bought a dozen slaves to help for the season. They were the leftovers from the market in Lapurdum, all of them scrawny waifs who had been through too many households. Most were betas, of course, but there was one male omega in the lot. He had been orphaned when his father died on the Germanic front and his mother killed herself from grief. The boy was starved and beaten, with years of whip marks on his back from when he refused to bow or obey."

"To become a slave because of how you are born, it is not fair, my brother," Gadreel murmured. Now that Dean was looking closely, he could see the marks on Gadreel's arms from whips, though the faded white scars could easily be explained as rope marks from carrying loads of food or goods, as a kitchen servant would. "I fought every master, sought to escape constantly, but I was always found by my scent, beaten, and sent back to the markets. Benny saved me."

"I fell in love with him," Benny whispered, reaching out to squeeze the omega's hand. "When the season was over, I had earned enough money to buy Gadreel from my captain, and he was all too willing to sell a troublesome slave. We traveled to Avaricum and stopped at a temple to Eros on the way. The priests there, they understood our plight, and they offered to help."

"They gave me some oils and medicines that I can use to block my scent, water it down to a beta level, even if it is a bit sweet, and it covers that omega undertone that would give me away. We created a new identity in Avaricum; I had been given the slave name Ezekiel since I would never give my masters my real name. Now I was Gadreel of Avaricum and Benny claimed that town as his home, as well, become a fine cook and earning accolades throughout Aquitania. When the royal family came through town, Caesar was so impressed by his cooking that he invited Benny to come here, work as Head Chef. Twice a year, in a pattern that neatly covers my heats every three years or so, we take a trip home, traveling together since both our families live there. We have kept this secret for fifteen years."

Dean looked up at Benny, feeling a kinship with this pair. All they wanted was to live a normal life, one not ruled by the laws of male omega slavery, and he could understand that. "You would mate Gadreel if you could?"

"In a heartbeat," Benny replied.

"I won't reveal your secret," Dean promised. "If I wasn't lucky enough to have a father in favor with Caesar, your story could easily be mine. Maybe, one day, you can travel to Britannia; Meg says that male omegas have more rights there, more freedoms."

Benny chuckled. "Could you see me, traveling all the way up north? Maybe, one day, when I retire from here, we will go see the island. For now, we are content with this life."

"Do you get to . . . be together?"

Gadreel chuckled. "My sexual needs are met quite regularly and satisfactorily," he replied wryly. "Benny is Head Cook, so he can have a private room if he wishes, and he did ask that I be permitted to share it, since we have been together for so long as brothers. The Caesar allowed that, of course, and no one questions two men sharing a room. They assume that I am there for his rut, which is certainly something I help him with; an alpha's needs are never ignored."

Benny smiled and clapped Dean on the shoulder. "I will gladly call you friend, Dean, and watch out for you here. Please let me know if there is anything you need."

"I wouldn't refuse a loaf of bread," Dean replied, grimacing as his stomach growled.

Benny chuckled and led the pair out of the store room, pointing toward a table where leftover bread from the morning bake was sitting, some of it torn into but most of it drying for use in other recipes the next day. "I think I can accommodate that request, Chief. Eat up."

Taking a loaf of slightly dry, honey-sweetened bread, for the first time, Dean was able to see a future in this palace. Being Castiel's concubine would occupy almost none of his time, so he looked forward to having friends to talk to when the long months of tedious boredom in the harem started to wear on him. Some of the despair that had weighed on him for weeks since John announced his plans to sell his oldest started to fade, and Dean looked forward to finding happiness in his new life.

AN: Seres is China again, Maghreb is general northern Africa, Cyrenaica or Cyrene is the eastern coastal region of modern day Libya, Lapurdum is a coastal city at the southwestern point of France (pretty much Bayonne), Avaricum is near the modern city of Bourges in central France, and Mare Cantabricum is the Bay of Biscay off the western coast of France. All of the italicized words are the Roman names for the parts & instruments of the baths, so feel free to look those up if you are interested. There were so many types of baths during my research that I simply built out one that could have been used in the palace for the concubines (yes, I know that the Romans didn't have harems, but there is a very specific, historically accurate reason that I chose Rome for this story and added in the harem elements).