Redefining Protocol: Chapter 1

Strangers bursting into tears upon meeting him had stopped surprising Thomas roughly sixteen years back, right about when he’d grown immune to camera flashes. There was simply a very specific type of person who broke down in tears when confronted with a member of the royal family. As if they’d cracked open some deeply buried emotional reservoir just by standing near an Arundel, or in his case, an Ashby-Arundel.

Like the woman currently clutching his hand in both of hers.

“I’m just so, so sorry,” she blubbered, mascara-tinted tears pooling at the tip of her nose. Her grip tightened with astonishing force for someone barely five foot nothing. “It’s just… you’re actually real.”

Tommy maintained the perfect royal smile, calibrated through years of practice to convey warmth without encouraging further emotional incontinence.

“I assure you, I’m quite real,” he said, voice gentle. “Though my children would swear I’m just a sophisticated robot fuelled entirely by Earl Grey and clotted cream.”

The woman gave a watery chuckle, her grip mercifully loosening.

“Sir,” interjected Jenkins, James’ Private Secretary, materialising at Tommy’s elbow with the silent efficiency that came from a career hovering at royal peripheries. “Perhaps we could continue the tour? His Majesty is particularly keen to see the new art room.”

Tommy extracted his hand carefully, sliding it free while somehow giving the impression he wasn’t desperate to retrieve his crushed fingers from the woman’s death grip.

“Absolutely,” he nodded, taking a deliberate step back and then another, positioning himself precisely two steps behind his son as protocol dictated.

Two steps behind and slightly to the right of his alpha. The proper omega position. A placement so deeply ingrained in his muscle memory that Tommy sometimes found himself automatically falling into it behind James during family walks around the Clarence House gardens. Augustus had once caught him doing it and hadn’t stopped laughing for hours.

He trailed in James’s wake, maintaining a smooth stride despite the nagging ache in his left ankle. The swelling had subsided somewhat since last week’s disastrous foray into pedestrian life, but the joint still grumbled when he put his weight on it. He’d spent the morning practising his gait before his bedroom mirror, resolute about not limping during today’s engagement. Nothing drew unwelcome attention quite like a royal showing weakness.

The director of the Pembridge Youth Centre, a brisk woman in her fifties with a no-nonsense bob and M&S comfort soles, fell into step beside him.

“I hope your ankle is healing well, Your Royal Highness,” she said, her voice pitched low enough not to carry to the press pack trailing several metres behind. “That video was quite something. Must have given your security team kittens.”

Tommy felt his cheeks warm despite himself. Of course she’d bloody seen it. The whole sodding nation had seen it, judging by his children’s relentless piss-taking. Augustus had changed his text alert to screeching brakes, while Alice had thoughtfully presented him with a Tufty Club road safety colouring book.

“Much improved, thank you,” he replied, resisting the overwhelming urge to explain that he did, in fact, understand the basic mechanics of crossing roads. He simply didn’t have much occasion to do it unsupervised. The last time he’d attempted it had been, what, 1999? Back when Arthur was still a prince and James just a toddler.

Ahead of them, James turned, seeming to sense Tommy’s discomfort through some alpha sixth sense. At twenty-two, his son was the spitting image of Arthur, all broad shoulders and golden hair, though mercifully without the ruthless edge that had defined his father’s early years. James’s eyes swept over Tommy before he extended a hand.

“Dad,” he said, his voice carrying the faint echo of his father’s commanding baritone, “come look at this. They’ve set up an activity I think you’ll enjoy.”

Tommy stepped forward, closing the proper distance, and felt James’s hand come to rest against the small of his back. The gesture was ostensibly affectionate, but Tommy recognised the protective alpha positioning for what it was. James was creating a barrier between Tommy and the curious public, shielding him both physically and socially.

Just like Arthur used to do.

“Lead the way,” Tommy said, settling closer against his son’s side. The director smiled approvingly at their display of royal family unity and gestured toward the gleaming glass doors of the centre’s newest wing.

“Right this way, Your Majesty, Your Royal Highness.”

Tommy squared his shoulders and followed, every inch the proper omega, the dutiful royal, the dignified widower to a king.

The art room exploded with childish excitement as Tommy and James entered, a riot of stage whispers and barely contained squeals. Tommy counted at least fifteen children between eight and twelve, all practically vibrating with the unique energy of small humans straining to behave after being told royalty was popping in.

“Your Majesty! Your Royal Highness!” A young woman with a cloud of dark curls and paint-splattered dungarees stepped forward, her professional smile doing little to disguise the awestruck widening of her eyes. She bobbed into a curtsey. “I’m Priya, the art coordinator. We’re absolutely thrilled you’re joining our session today.”

James shifted subtly in front of Tommy, his broad shoulders forming a physical barrier between his omega father and the overenthusiastic art coordinator. Such a textbook alpha manoeuvre that Tommy nearly rolled his eyes. Instead, knowing eyes were on him, he maintained his proper omega body language, lowering his gaze and adopting the submissive posture hammered into him since his teens.

“The pleasure is ours,” James replied with an easy smile. “Dad’s quite the art enthusiast, aren’t you?”

Tommy glanced up, catching the flash of cameras from the members of the rota allowed to trail them inside. What a perfect tableau for tomorrow’s papers: the young alpha king protective of his omega father, the widowed duke finding comfort in simple artistic pursuits.

“I dabble,” Tommy replied modestly, knowing full well that the three-thousand-square-foot studio he’d had built in the east wing of Clarence House hardly qualified as ‘dabbling.’

Priya led them to the centre of the room where easels had been arranged in a loose circle. “Today we’re exploring self-expression through visual metaphor,” she explained, her voice taking on the slightly over-enunciated quality of someone who’d rehearsed this speech forty-seven times in front of her bathroom mirror. “The children have been working on paintings that represent something important to them.”

A small boy with a gap-toothed smile thrust his painting toward James. “I did a football because I’m going to play for Arsenal someday!”

“Excellent career choice,” James replied with practised warmth, crouching down to examine the slightly lopsided red and white blob. “Though I’m more of a Chelsea man myself.”

The collective gasp of betrayal from half the children would have been comical if it hadn’t threatened to devolve into a Premier League debate in the presence of international media.

“Perhaps we should get started,” Tommy interjected smoothly, moving toward the two empty seats clearly reserved for royal posteriors. The communication team had no doubt spent hours determining the exact angle that would provide the most flattering photo opportunities.

Priya brightened. “Yes! We’ve prepared everything you might need. Please, Your Royal Highness, this easel is yours.”

Tommy settled onto the stool, surveying the pristine canvas and array of acrylic paints with a critical eye. The familiar scent of pigment and medium triggered an almost Pavlovian response, his fingers itching to mix colours, to create something real. But years of training kicked in as he calculated the precise level of artistic competence appropriate for this setting.

Too good, and the tabloids would run tedious pieces about the ‘secret talents of the Duke of Clarence.’ Too poor, and there’d be sneering comments about his expensive education being wasted. The sweet spot was technical competence with deliberate mediocrity, the artistic equivalent of beige wallpaper.

Tommy dipped his brush into a safe middle blue, his mind drifting to the half-finished canvas waiting in his studio at home. A grotesque, hyperbolic baroque mansion with impossible architecture and staircases leading nowhere, inspired by the absurdity of growing up in houses with more toilets than actual residents. It was part of his ‘Monuments to Aristocratic Excess’ series, which his grandmother would have absolutely loathed.

That had been the plan, once. Oxford. Art History. A life of academic pursuit and creative expression. Instead, he’d spent the years between his eighteenth and twentieth birthday perpetually pregnant, producing three alpha heirs in swift succession, his body transformed into a royal breeding machine so that Arthur could preen for photographers outside the Lindo Wing as he showed off each new addition to the Line of Succession.

“Whatcha painting, Dad?” James asked, his canvas already dominated by what appeared to be a tyrannosaur with questionable anatomical proportions.

Tommy glanced down at his own canvas, realising he’d automatically begun painting the outline of one of his architectural monstrosities. He quickly adjusted, transforming the beginning of a twisted spire into the stem of a flower.

“Just some flowers,” he replied, reaching for a pleasant pink. Flowers were safe. Flowers were appropriate. Flowers were exactly what everyone expected an omega princely duke to paint.

James leaned over, studying Tommy’s canvas with exaggerated seriousness. “Very pretty,” he declared, and Tommy heard the echo of Arthur in that assessment, the faint note of alpha condescension wrapped in proprietary affection.

“Thank you, darling boy,” Tommy replied, adding another utterly inoffensive bloom to his bouquet while mentally replacing it with the grotesque architectural fever dream he’d rather be creating. “And your dinosaur is… quite fierce.”

The children nearby nodded approvingly at both assessments. Of course they did. The alpha king created something powerful and commanding, while the omega prince produced something pretty and delicate. The proper order of things maintained for another day, another photo opportunity, another performance of roles assigned before birth.

“Lovely flowers, Your Royal Highness,” Priya commented, appearing at his elbow with the slightly manic smile of someone whose career trajectory depended on the next thirty minutes going smoothly. “You have quite a natural talent.”

Tommy added a perfectly forgettable leaf to his perfectly forgettable composition and smiled his perfectly rehearsed smile. “How very kind of you to say so.”

Tommy added a final flourish to the canvas, wondering when exactly his life had become an endless series of carefully crafted performances. There was the Supportive Father Performance. The Dignified Widower Performance. The Perfect Royal Consort Performance he’d maintained for two decades with Arthur (the public seeing only the demure omega consort while behind closed doors he’d been the highly appreciative recipient of the royal knot, often on all fours with a mouthful of silk sheets). And today’s special, the Creatively Fulfilled But Not Too Threateningly Talented Omega Performance.

He contemplated adding another flower to his bouquet. Perhaps a daisy? No one had ever started a revolution with a daisy. No one had ever been accused of having complex inner thoughts while painting daisies. Daisies were safe. Daisies were appropriate. Daisies were bloody boring.

But boring was good. Boring was precisely what they needed after The Incident. Tommy had made the grievous error of trending on social media for nearly forty-eight hours straight. His face, frozen in that moment of aristocratic bewilderment, superimposed onto countless tumbling pandas. Videos of red pandas falling off logs with his startled expression digitally added. A particularly creative montage set to Chumbawamba’s “Tubthumping” that even Augustus had forwarded to the family group chat with the caption: “Dad’s big debut as a TikTok star.”

Tommy pretended he hadn’t seen any of it, just as he pretended he hadn’t created an anonymous account on his secret mobile, specifically purchased for the purpose of doom-scrolling through TikTok at three in the morning. It was oddly comforting to see himself reduced to a meme, as if the real Prince Thomas, Duke of Clarence, existed separately from the bumbling panda-man who’d forgotten that cars didn’t magically stop for humans.

“Sir,” Jenkins materialised at his elbow like an anxious ghost, “we’re coming up on time.”

Tommy nodded, grateful for the rescue. He turned the canvas slightly toward the nearest photographer, angling it for optimal bland inoffensiveness. With deliberate care, he signed the bottom corner with a flourish – TOMMY – in a looping script. It felt like a minor rebellion to use his childhood nickname in public.

“Lovely,” said Priya, gazing at his creation with the desperate enthusiasm of someone who would praise a royal fingerpainting as the second coming of Picasso.

“Thank you,” Tommy replied as he got to his feet. “The children’s work is truly inspiring. Such vibrant imaginations.”

He moved through the room playing out the carefully choreographed dance of a royal departure. Thanking staff members by name (each memorised during the pre-engagement briefing). Complimenting specific elements of the programme (noted in bullet points on the laminated sheet Jenkins had provided). Making vague assurances about returning someday (a promise that would almost certainly dissolve the moment they left the building).

“We simply must bring Alice next time,” Tommy told the director. “She’s always had such an interest in youth development programmes.”

Alice’s interest in youth development programmes ranked somewhere between her interest in competitive stamp collecting and underwater basket weaving, but it sounded appropriate, and appropriateness was the bread and butter of his family.

“I think we should be going, Dad,” James said, his hand finding the small of Tommy’s back in that distinctly alpha way that managed to be both protective and slightly proprietary.

Tommy allowed himself to be guided toward the exit, giving one last wave to the assembled children who watched them leave with the wide-eyed fascination of people observing exotic creatures at the zoo.

We are rather like pandas, Tommy thought with a flicker of amusement. Expensively maintained, carefully handled, and utterly bewildered by the normal world outside our artificial habitat.

It wasn’t until they were safely ensconced in the back of the Bentley, privacy screen raised, that Tommy allowed his shoulders to drop by precisely two centimetres. Not a collapse, never that, but the royal equivalent of collapsing face-first onto a sofa and screaming into a cushion.

“Well, that was lovely,” he said. “The children seemed quite talented.”

James beamed at him with a smile so broad and genuinely delighted that Tommy immediately narrowed his eyes in suspicion. His son’s usual post-engagement expression was one of polite relief, not incandescent joy.

“You were brilliant, Daddy,” James enthused, sounding for all the world like Tommy had negotiated world peace rather than painted some mediocre flowers while making small talk with children. “Absolutely perfect. The photos will be magnificent.”

Tommy’s internal alarm bells rang louder. Twenty years of navigating royal life had given him a finely tuned sensor for detecting when he was being buttered up. And right now, James was applying butter with the enthusiasm of a Parisian pastry chef creating the world’s most elaborate mille-feuille.

“The reporters seemed quite taken with your dinosaur,” Tommy deflected, watching his son’s face carefully. “You made some very… creative colour choices.”

“Well, you know me,” James laughed, a touch too brightly. “Never one for biological accuracy. But seriously, Daddy, you were wonderful today. So engaged, so natural with everyone.”

The compliments were becoming increasingly desperate. Tommy mentally reviewed the day’s schedule, trying to identify what catastrophe might be waiting for him at home that required this level of preemptive placation.

“James,” he said, voice dropping to the quiet register that had always made his children confess their transgressions, even as teenagers, “is there something the matter?”

“What? No! No, absolutely not,” James replied, with all the conviction of a man claiming to have never seen a biscuit while actively showering in crumbs. “Just… proud of my daddy. Is that a crime?”

Tommy studied his son, noting the slight flush creeping up his neck, the too-casual way he adjusted his cufflinks, the careful avoidance of direct eye contact. Classic Arthur tells, all of them.

Something was definitely wrong. Something significant enough to warrant this elaborate performance of normalcy and praise.

Tommy considered pressing further, demanding the truth with the quiet authority he’d developed through decades of royalling. But his ingrained omega deference whispered caution. James was his alpha now. His king. If James felt that there was something that he needed to protect Tommy from, then perhaps it was best to trust his judgment.

For now.

“If you say so, darling,” Tommy conceded, turning to gaze out the window at the London streets sliding past, the world of normal people with their normal lives, crossing roads without national media coverage. “I’m glad you enjoyed the engagement.”

In the reflection of the glass, he caught James’s expression of profound relief, followed by a flicker of guilt, then determination. Whatever was coming, Tommy suspected he wouldn’t have to wait long to find out.