Transcription
Sh unseen. Some people spend their whole lives screaming into the void, praying someone will finally hear them. I spent mine whispering to an empty room, convinced that one day the algorithm would smile on me. That one day I'd matter. I was wrong.
My last thought before the headlights hit wasn't about my unfinished video or the hospital bills I'd never pay. It was simpler than that. At least no one will miss me.
But death had other plans. And when I opened my eyes to a world where worth was measured in blood and power instead of views and engagement. I learned something terrifying. Being invisible in one world doesn't prepare you for being hunted in another.
Chapter one. Last upload.
The cursor blinked like a heartbeat at the top of the upload page. Title: The hidden history of pandemics. What medieval plagues teach us about modern outbreaks. My magnum opus or my final waste of time. 30 minutes of polished narration. Months of research jammed between doctor appointments, side effects, and shifts editing until my vision doubled. I trimmed every pause, equalized every level, color graded until my laptop fans screamed. I'd done everything the grow on YouTube in 2025. Guru said.
The panel on the right was brutal. Subscribers 217. Estimated revenue last 28 days zero or so or so. On my desk, a hospital bill glared up at me. The red stamp shouting where my own voice never could. Final notice. 12 IQ47 deals due. Another notification popped up on my phone. RX refill overdue heart meds. I swiped it away. Ignoring it didn't fix anything, but it did make it quieter.
"Just one viral video," I whispered. "Just one." That had been my prayer for years. The pathetic mantra that followed every export bar and every thumbnail I clicked together in Canva. at 3:00 a.m. "Just one." Then I could breathe. Then I'd prove I wasn't a complete waste of space.
I clicked publish. The progress bar slid to 100%. The thumbnail flashed on screen, my face in one corner, the faded painting of a plague doctor behind me. Big yellow text screaming "History Repeats." Uploaded live. 2:47 a.m.
I refreshed. Zero views. I waited five minutes, refreshing like a gambler pulling a slot machine handle. One view, me, another refresh. Still one. My chest tightened. Not metaphorically, literally. A familiar squeeze that started under my ribs and crawled higher, making my breath short. My heart had a way of reminding me I didn't own my own body. The cardiomyopathy diagnosis had sounded like a foreign word when they'd first said it, but the fatigue and pain had translated just fine.
I reached for my pill organizer before remembering it was empty. The pharmacy wouldn't give me another refill until I paid at least part of what I already owed. So, that was a no. The room felt too small. My studio, a generous word for a cramped one room apartment stacked with secondhand gear and unpaid envelopes, smelled like stale coffee and cheap instant noodles. My chair's worn cushion hissed as I pushed back from the desk. Videos cued in my ideas folder stared at me, their little icons like gravestones.
"Okay," I told myself, "Okay, air. You need air. You can't doom scroll your own analytics all night." My jacket hung by the door, thin and fraying at the cuffs. I shrugged into it and paused with my hand on the doorknob. Behind me, my computer screen glowed. The analytics page updated in real time. Views three. All mine. I snorted a humless laugh and stepped into the stairwell.
The night outside clawed at me with cold, wet fingers. Rain hammered the street, bouncing off cracked asphalt and overflowing gutters. The city looked washed out and hostile, neon signs bleeding color into puddles. My sneakers soaked through in seconds, socks going from damp to miserable as I walked. I didn't have a destination. I never did. I just moved, letting the rhythm of my footsteps beat in time with questions I'd never manage to answer. What am I doing wrong? Why doesn't anything I make stick? How do you matter in a world that doesn't even notice when you're gone?
Cars hissed past, tires slicing through water, a bus roared by, its windows fogged, a slice of someone else's life hurtling away. Another notification buzzed against my thigh. I ignored it. If it was important, it would be bad news. That was the pattern. My vision blurred at the edges. A mix of exhaustion and the kind of hunger you stop noticing when it's constant. I shouldn't have skipped dinner. I shouldn't have skipped the pills. I shouldn't have spent the last of my money upgrading a microphone for an audience that didn't exist.
A horn blared, sharp and furious. I turned my head. Headlights ate the world. There wasn't time to jump or scream or even think. Just a single clear thought floating up through panic. At least no one will miss me.
Impact erased everything. Then there was nothing at all.
Chapter 2.
Pain built me from the inside out. Not the sharp, clean pain of a broken bone or a cut. This was a ripping, a tearing, like someone was unspooling my nerves and yanking them to just to see when they'd snap. Voices poured around me, muffled at first, then sharpening into words my brain shouldn't have understood. "A disgrace to the pack. An Omega. The moon goddess mocks Alpha Thane with this. Omega. Pack. Moon goddess."
Those weren't hospital words. I forced my eyes open. Stone ceiling. Flickering fire light. Shadows dancing in jagged patterns. I was kneeling. My knees burned where stone bit into them. My wrists were bound behind my back. Rope scratching raw grooves into skin that wasn't mine. My hands were narrower than I remembered, scarred, the nails bitten down and torn. The skin a deeper brown than mine had been with old burn marks curling up one wrist. This wasn't my body.
Panic surged hot and wild, and with it came something else, a memory that didn't belong to me. A girl lying on a dirt floor clutching a feverish arm whispering prayers to a moon that never answered. A woman's voice calling her Zeta with as much affection as someone might use for a stray dog.
"Look at me when I speak to you, Omega." The voice snapped my attention up like a leash jerked tight. The man standing before me was beautiful the way a storm is beautiful if you're standing far enough away that it can't kill you. Tall shoulders broad beneath a dark leather coat. Dark hair pulled back at the nape of his neck. A scar cut through his left eyebrow. A pale line that didn't make him less handsome, just more dangerous. His eyes burned golden in the torch light. Every instinct in this borrowed body screamed, "Alpha!"
"You dare present as my fated mate?" he said, contempt curling each word. "You, a half-shifted, stunted omega who can't even complete a transformation without breaking something."
"Fed mate!" The words hit like another collision. An image shot through my mind. This Alika man reaching toward me, not me, not Aurora, toward Zeta. And something invisible snapping into place between us. Heat, electricity, certainty, and then revulsion.
"I, Alpha Thane of the Shadow Pine Pack," he announced, voice rising so everyone in the ring of watching faces could hear. "Reject you, Zeta of no family and no worth, as my mate and Luna."
The sound that tore out of my throat didn't feel like mine. It was raw and animal, a howl compressed into a single ragged note. Something inside my chest ripped. Not my heart. Something deeper, a bond I hadn't known I wanted until it was being ripped away. The pain was foreign and familiar all at once, layered on top of every time I'd watched my videos die at zero views. Every time a doctor had sighed and said "chronic" like it was a life sentence.
A ring of wolves, people watched me without pity. Some smirked, others looked bored. "She can't even take her rejection with dignity," someone muttered. "Pathetic. The moon goddess has a sick sense of humor."
I tried to speak. "My name is Aurora. This isn't." My mouth shaped different words. "I understand."
Dozens of eyes flicked over me and away. "Already finished." Thane turned his back like I was trash. "By the pack's will, Zeta is banished from Shadowpine territory. Should she return, she will be executed on site. Escort her to the border. Leave her for the wilds."
A roar of approval went up around us. My stomach rolled, hands clamped on my arms, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise. They dragged me across the stone floor, my knees caught on rough patches, sending little shocks of pain racing up my thighs. No one slowed down. I dug my heels in. "Wait," I gasped. "I don't—"
This wasn't a fist slammed into my stomach. Air exploded out of my lungs. My vision went white around the edges. "Shut it," one of the guards snarled. "You don't speak unless spoken to. Omega."
Omega. The word sat heavy and wrong on my shoulders. In Zeta's memories, Omega meant bottom of the pack. The weakest, the ones who took every kick and every chore, and thanked their betters for it, because at least they were allowed to breathe.
The doors to the hall loomed ahead, heavy wood reinforced with iron. They creaked open to a curtain of rain and darkness. The guards tossed me forward like they were discarding kit willow scraps. I hit mud and pine needles. Cold soaked into my bones instantly. The door slammed shut behind me with a final echoing boom. The sound of a life ending.
Chapter three.
Rain turned dirt to sludge under my knees. I stayed in it, hands bound, head hanging long enough for numbness to start edging out pain. The rope around my wrists chafed with every tiny movement. The cold crept under my soaked clothes, an invasive thing that didn't care what world I'd come from. I raised my head. Trees crowded close on all sides, trunks black with wet, their branches knitted together overhead, blocking any glimpse of a sky I didn't recognize. The air smelled like earth and rot and something musky under it all. Animal wild.
"Okay," I whispered, voice wrong. Zeta's voice. "Okay, think." In my world, I would have Googled how to survive being dumped in an enchanted murder forest by your ex-wolf mate. Here, my only resources was Zeta's flickers of memory and the useless trivia vault of my own brain. Shelter, water. Don't eat anything you can't identify. Avoid being eaten yourself. That last bit seemed optimistic.
I tried to stand. My legs shook like I'd run a marathon. My muscles felt wrong. There was a low-level tremor under my skin. A constant hum that might have been magic or might have been Zeta's damaged ability to shift, like her body was forever halfway between forms and never fully at home in either. My breathing went shallow. If this was a coma dream, my subconscious had done its research.
I staggered to my feet and almost fell again when something sharp stabbed through my chest. An echo of the bond tearing. My hand went instinctively to the spot, fingers digging into borrowed skin. "A mate bond," Zeta's memories whispered. "Gift of the moon. You only get one." Except she hadn't gotten one. She'd gotten a glimpse and a rejection.
"Join the club," I muttered. The universe had been rejecting me for years. It just hadn't used a public ceremony. A branch snapped to my right. I froze. Two golden points glowed between the trees. Then two more, then three, low to the ground, moving closer with the patient confidence of predators who weren't in a hurry. Why rush when dinner had nowhere to go? Wolves. Real ones this time. Not like the people in the hall. Quadripedal. Fur slicked back by rain. Teeth bared.
My heart thudded against my ribs. "Run." Something inside me urged. Zeta's instinct. Omega or not. She was still wolf enough to know when to bolt. I ran. My balance was off. Every step a negotiation between muscles that didn't fully belong to me. Roots grabbed at my ankles. The forest blurred past in streaks of brown and black and green. Behind me, the wolves followed, not sprinting, just tracking. They knew I would slow. They heard every labored breath, smelled the exhaustion pouring off me.
I risked a glance back, tripped over a hidden root, and went down hard. My chin hit mud and copper exploded across my tongue where I bit it. I rolled onto my back as the first wolf closed in. It was huge. Its fur was mottled gray and black, eyes bright with a hungry intelligence that wasn't human, but understood exactly what I was. Prey. It snarled, showing teeth longer than my fingers. I threw my bound hands up purely on impulse. Part of my brain screaming that this was pointless. That rope and thin wrists wouldn't stop a wolf.
A roar shook the forest. The wolf's ears flattened. It took a hesitant step back. Another roar closer this time. Not an animal sound. Something deeper threaded with command that vibrated inside my bones. The wolves whined, nerves breaking, and bolted into the trees, disappearing like they'd never been there. Hoof beats thundered through the underbrush. Men on horseback burst through the trees, forming a ring around where I knelt in the mud. They wore armor blacker than the night around us. Matt plates that swallowed what little light there was. Swords hung from their hips, hilts worn from use.
At their center on the largest horse, sat a man who made Alpha Thane look small. He took the scene in with a single sweeping glance. Wet Omega, rope, fresh bond wounds, still bleeding pain into the air. Power radiated off him, heavy and cold. King Olex. I knew him instinctively. Zeta's memories whispered his name with equal parts terror and reluctant awe. The Wolf King, ruler over all packs, judge, executioner, a nightmare rolled into one. He looked exactly like the stories said, tall, broad-shouldered, face carved in harsh lines that might have been beautiful on someone else. On him, they were just severe. His hair was dark, cropped shorter than Thane's with a single silver streak at his temple. His eyes his eyes were a pale glacial blue, not warm sky blue. Ice over deep water.
"Interesting," he said, voice flat. "What is an Omega doing alone at the edge of the witherlands?"
One of the riders dismounted, moving toward me with efficient steps. "Sia. She stinks of rejection. Fresh Shadowpine's scent on her. Banishment."
Ul's gaze sharpened. "Thane is throwing his trash into my borders now."
I swallowed, throat dry. My tongue felt too big in my mouth. Words crowded there anyway, punching through fear. "Please," I managed. "I'll I can work. I can do anything. Just don't leave me here." It came out wrong. Too desperate, too familiar. I'd said the Aliky thing to debt collectors, to landlords, to myself at 3:00 a.m. when my chest hurt, and I thought about how easy it would be to just stop trying.
Ul studied me like I was an unfamiliar insect pinned to a board. His gaze felt heavy, weighing, measuring. "Omegas are cheap," one of the warriors said, "especially broken ones. Let the forest have her."
Something in me flinched. Not Zeta's instinct, mine. The part of me that had uploaded video after video into silence suddenly refused to accept one more dismissal. "I'm not cheap," I said. The words out before I could catch them. "I'm quiet."
The warrior snapped, backhanding me. The blow sent me sideways into the mud. Stars burst behind my eyes. Copper filled my mouth again. Ul's voice cut the silence that followed. "She speaks without permission."
"Won't happen again, your majesty," the warrior said quickly, drawing his foot back to kick.
"Stop." The boot froze a hair's breath from my ribs. For a heartbeat, the only sound was rain. King Ul dismounted with unhurried precision. He walked toward me, each step sure measured. The world seemed to narrow to the sound of his boots against wet earth. Up close, he was even more overwhelming, taller than Thane by an inch or two, broader in the shoulders. His coat hung heavy with rain, dark as spilled ink. Power coiled around him like another layer of clothing. He crouched in front of me, not close enough to touch, but close enough that I could see faint lines at the corners of his eyes. Signs of age that didn't match the rest of him.
"How old are you?" he asked. My mind scrambled. Zeta's age came up first. "9?" A simple question. A trap somehow. Two names battled on my tongue. One belonged to a girl in a hospital bed. One belonged to the body I was in. Or I swallowed Zeta.
Ullex tilted his head, studying my face with an intensity that made my skin itch. "You hesitated."
"I hit my head," I said, which technically was true. "I'm not thinking clearly."
"M." He made a non-committal sound and glanced at the warrior who'd hit me. "If she has a concussion, striking her again is inefficient. I punish inefficiency."
The warrior paled. "My apologies, your majesty."
"Accepted." Ul straightened. "Bind her properly. She'll work off her debt to the crown."
Relief and dread tangled in my chest. "What debt?" I whispered.
"The debt of existing in my territory," he said without turning. "If I don't leave you for the wolves, you owe me the rest of your miserable life. Make it worth my investment." It wasn't mercy, but it was survival for now.
Chapter 4.
They tied my wrists in front this time instead of behind, which somehow felt less like kindness and more like practicality. Easier to make a prisoner haul, scrub, carry. The ride to the keep blurred into pieces. Rain, cold, and endless. The clank of armor and jingle of tack. The smell of wet leather and fur. My muscles ached in ways I recognized from my own life. Overuse layered on top of baseline weakness. Zeta's body, like mine, had been failing long before this night.
We crested a ridge as dawn smeared gray across the sky. The obsidian keep rose from the landscape like a wound. Black stone jutted from a jagged hill. Its walls and towers defying logic. Parts of it were too thin, too tall, held together by something other than physics. Magic or sheer cruelty. Windows were narrow slits like the whole structure disapproved of light. A shiver crawled down my spine that had nothing to do with cold. In Zeta's memories, the keep had always been far away. A threat used by alphas to keep packs in line. "If you disobey, the king will hear. If you stray, the king will find you." Now I was riding through its gates.
Inside the air tasted different, thinner, heavy with the scent of stone, smoke, and too many bodies packed into too little space. People moved with purpose through the courtyard, warriors in training, servants carrying buckets, messengers darting from one doorway to another. No one looked at me twice. Invisible here too, then. They hauled me off the horse and marched me across slick flag stones. My legs nearly gave out. A hand shoved me between my shoulder blades, keeping me upright out of pure impatience.
We stopped near a doorway where a woman waited, arms crossed. Brena. I didn't know her name yet, but I knew her role the instant I saw her. Every workplace had someone like this. The gatekeeper, the one who knew every rule, written and unwritten, and enforced them with zero mercy. She was in her 50s, maybe, sturdy and hard-eyed. Scars marked her forearms in pale lines. Her gray hair was pulled back in a functional knot.
"A stray?" she asked, voice like gravel. "You keep bringing me strays, your majesty. We're not running a shelter."
Ullex didn't even slow his stride. "Omega Shadow Pine's trash. She belongs to the keep now. Find a use for her." Then he was gone, swallowed by stone corridors and the gravity he carried with him.
Brena looked me over like she was appraising a rotten vegetable. Her gaze landed on the rope, the bruises already forming along my jaw, the way I swayed on my feet. "Great," she muttered. "Rejection on her like smoke. Can't stand upright. Looks like a strong wind would carry her off. Just what we needed. Another mouth to feed. And then bury."
I swallowed. "I can work," I said. "I learn fast."
"Rule one," she cut in. "You don't talk unless you're asked a direct question. Rule two, you don't look his majesty in the eye. Rule three. You do what I tell you the first time I tell you or you'll beg to go back to the wolves. Understand?"
"Yes," I said. Her hand snapped out and cracked across my cheek. It wasn't as hard as the warriors hit, but it stung worse somehow. More precise.
"I said only when asked a direct question," she said. "Now, do you understand?"
"Yes," I said again, making sure the word stayed small.
"Better." She jerked her head toward the doorway. "Come on, Omega. Time to learn what work means here." She led me through the keep, the corridors twisting and climbing, like the inside of a labyrinth, designed by someone who hated joy. Blutinted torches burned in brackets, casting strange shadows. The air cooled the deeper we went. Everywhere I looked, people were already in motion. A boy, not much older than Zeta, scrubbed a step with red, cracked hands. A woman with hollow cheeks carried a stack of linens so high she disappeared behind them. No one spoke unless spoken to.
"King Olex's house does not tolerate laziness," Brena said as we walked. "You work, you sleep, you eat if there's food left. If you're hurt, you keep going unless something's falling off." In my old life, that might have been hyperbole. Here, I wasn't sure.
"What happens if you can't keep going?" I asked before I could stop myself.
Brena gave me a thin smile. "You stop permanently."
We reached a narrow door at the end of a short hall. She opened it with a key from her belt. "Your quarters," she said. The room inside was barely wider than the doorway itself. A thin mattress lay on the stone floor. A bucket sat in one corner. There were no windows. I stared, throat tight. My crappy apartment suddenly looked like a luxury suite.
"You sleep here," Brena said. "When you're not sleeping, you're in the kit willows, the washrooms, or wherever I decide to dump you. You don't leave your post. You don't wander. And you sure as hell don't go above the third level unless summoned."
"Summoned by who?" The question slipped out, her eyes hardened.
"You really want to ask that?"
"No," I murmured.
"Correct." She stepped back. "You get 1 hour, then report to the Kitwillows down two levels. Follow the smell of boiled misery." She closed the door. The lock clicked. The silence that followed was thick enough to choke on. I sank onto the mattress. It crinkled like old straw under Zeta's thin weight. My heart pounded a too fast rhythm that didn't match the steady beat I remembered from my own chest. I pressed my palms over my face and laughed once, the sound harsh and wrong in the tiny room. I'd spent years invisible. Now I was hyper visible. Every failure examined, every weakness cataloged, every breath monitored by people who wanted me gone. And the worst part, a small traitorous part of me whispered that maybe they were right. Maybe I'd always been this fragile, this useless, this easy to discard.
"No." The thought came sharp and sudden, cutting through the spiral. "You didn't survive 26 years of being ignored just to die as someone else's punchline." I wiped my face with shaking hands and stared at the ceiling I couldn't see. Aurora had been invisible. Zeta had been disposable. But whoever I was now, whatever hybrid of broken girl and borrowed wolf, I wasn't going to be either. I was going to survive, even if it killed me.
Chapter 5.
The Kitwillows existed in a permanent state of controlled chaos. Steam billowed from massive pots hung over open fires. The air was thick with smoke, grease, and the sharp tang of unwashed bodies working too close together. Voices barked orders, knives thudded against cutting boards in arithmic bursts. Everything smelled like onions, burnt fat, and desperation. A woman with flower-dusted hands shoved a bucket into my arms the moment I stepped through the doorway. "You," she said, not bothering with my name. "Water, fill the barrels. Keep moving until someone tells you to stop."
The bucket was wooden, warped with age, and heavier than it looked. I gripped the handle with both hands and followed the line of servants, hauling water from a stone well in the courtyard. The well was deep, the rope was frayed. Every bucket that came up sloshed half its contents onto the ground before you could pour it into the transport barrels. I worked. My arms screamed after the first dozen trips. My shoulders locked up after 20. By the time the sun reached its peak, a pale disc behind gray clouds, my hands were raw, blisters forming and popping in the alike motion.
No one spoke to me. A few servants shot me glances, their eyes flicking to my neck, where the bond scar sat invisible, but somehow readable to wolves, rejected, contaminated. I kept my head down and worked. When the water barrels were full, they sent me to scrub floors. When the floors were done, I peeled vegetables until my fingers bled into the peelings. When the vegetables ran out, someone handed me a pile of rags and a bucket of something that might have been soap and sent me to the sleeping quarters to scrub bunks.
Hours blurred together. My vision swam. My legs shook. The weakness I'd lived with my whole life, chronic, unexplained. The kind doctors shrugged at and said, "Maybe it's stress." had followed me into Zeta's body like a curse I couldn't outrun. Or maybe Zeta had always been this weak. Her memories were fragmented. But pain was a constant thread through all of them. Pain when she tried to shift. Pain when she worked too long. Pain is baseline. The thing you measured good days against.
"Move faster, Omega." A passing guard snapped, kicking my bucket hard enough to spill half of it. I bit my tongue and started over. The sun was gone by the time Brena found me again. I was on my knees in the corridor outside the barracks, scrubbing at a stain that might have been blood or wine or both. My hands had gone numb an hour ago. I was operating on muscle memory I didn't own.
"Get up," Brena said. I tried. My legs didn't cooperate. I made it halfway before my knee buckled and I caught myself on the wall. Brena's expression didn't change. "Pathetic."
"I'm trying." Her hand whipped out and grabbed my chin, forcing my head up. Her grip was iron. "You've been here 8 hours, and you're already falling apart. At this rate, you'll be dead in a week. Is that what you want?"
"No," I gasped.
"Then stop trying and start doing." She released me and I nearly collapsed again. "You eat now, then you sleep. You've got 4 hours before the next shift."
"4 hours?" I wanted to laugh or cry. I didn't have the energy for either. Brena led me to a low ceiling room where other servants sat on benches, spooning thin stew from wooden bowls. The conversations died when I entered. Eyes tracked me. Some curious, most hostile. Brena handed me a bowl. "Eat fast. Don't talk."
The stew was more water than substance. A few pale chunks of something that might have been turnip floating in a greasy broth. It tasted like nothing, but my stomach clenched with desperate hunger. I ate around me. The whispers started. "That's her, the reject from Shadow Pine. Fain tossed her like trash. She won't last. Look at her skin and bones. I give her three days." I kept my eyes on the bowl and ate every drop, even scraping the sides with my finger when the spoon gave up. When I finished, Brena pointed toward the door. "Back to your cell. Don't wander."
I didn't have the strength to wander. I barely made it back to my room before my legs gave out completely. I collapsed onto the thin mattress, my body screaming in six different ways. The door locked behind me. In the dark, I finally let myself break. Not loudly, quietly. Tears that slid hot and silent down my cheeks while I pressed my face into the scratchy fabric and shook. I'd spent years invisible. Now I was hyper visible. Every failure examined, every weakness cataloged, every breath monitored by people who wanted me gone. And the worst part, a small traitorous part of me whispered that maybe they were right. Maybe I'd always been this fragile, this useless, this easy to discard.
"No." The thought came sharp and sudden, cutting through the spiral. "You didn't survive 26 years of being ignored just to die as someone else's punchline." I wiped my face with shaking hands and stared at the ceiling I couldn't see. Aurora had been invisible. Zeta had been disposable. But whoever I was now, whatever hybrid of broken girl and borrowed wolf, I wasn't going to be either. I was going to survive, even if it killed me.
Chapter 6.
The nightmares started on the third night. I dreamed of headlights and impact, my body folding like paper, bones snapping in sequence. I dreamed of hospital machines beeping out of sync while faceless doctors wrote DNR on charts I couldn't read. Then the dream shifted. Fur and teeth and running on four legs that didn't quite work right. Bones grinding in their sockets. Muscles tearing with every stride. Pain so complete it became its own entity, a beast riding my back. I woke gasping, drenched in sweat that smelled wrong, sharper, muskier. The room was still dark. My shift didn't start for another hour. I lay there, pulse hammering, and realized something had changed. My senses felt sharper. I could hear conversations three rooms away. Smell the difference between the torch oil in the corridor and the grease in the kit willows. My vision adjusted to the darkness in a way it shouldn't have. Details emerging from shadows.
"Oh no." Zeta's memories whispered the truth. My body was trying to shift and it was doing it wrong. The first cramp hit like a fist to the gut. I curled onto my side, biting down on my arm to keep from screaming. My bones started to move. Not breaking, just shifting. Joints dislocating and relocating in wrong configurations. My spine arched, my jaw cracked, teeth sharpened in my mouth, cutting my tongue. But the shift didn't complete. I was stuck halfway. Human skin stretched over bones that wanted to be wolf. Muscles seizing in confusion. My body at war with itself. The pain was biblical. I clawed at the floor, nails scraping stone, and tried to breathe through it. In Zeta's memories, shifting was supposed to be natural, instinctive, like breathing. For her, it had always been agony. For me, wearing her skin, it was worse. The partial shift lasted 10 minutes or an hour. Time lost meaning under that kind of pain. When it finally released me, I collapsed in a heap, shaking and gasping. My body was human again, mostly. My nails were still too sharp. My teeth didn't quite fit. I touched my face with trembling fingers and felt the wrongness. Bones slightly too prominent, jaw slightly too wide.
The door rattled. "Move it, Omega. Work starts now." I forced myself upright, every muscle screaming, and opened the door. Brena took one look at me, and her expression flickered. Surprise, maybe, or something close to concern. It vanished fast.
"You shifted," she said flatly.
"Tried to," I managed.
"Did it complete?"
"No."
"Good." The king doesn't allow failed shifts in his keep. If you can't control it, we put you down before you hurt someone." She stepped closer, lowering her voice. "So, if you feel it coming again, you bite your tongue and you hold it back. Understand?"
I nodded because what else could I do? "Get to the kit willows," she said, already turning away. "You look like death, but that's not my problem."
The day was worse than the previous two combined. My body felt like it had been through a blender. The partial shift left everything bruised from the inside out. My joints ached. My muscles twitched at random, misfiring signals I couldn't interpret. I dropped a pot of boiling water because my hands cramped at the wrong moment. The scalding liquid splashed across the stone floor and across the foot of a passing guard. He roared, spinning on me with murder in his eyes.
"You stupid." His fist caught me across the temple. I went down hard, vision exploding into stars. Blood filled my mouth again. The floor tilted sideways. "Clumsy Omega bitch," he snarled, drawing his boot back.
"Enough!" The voice cut through the kit willow noise like a blade through silk. King Olex stood in the doorway. The entire room froze. He wasn't in armor this time, just dark clothing that fit close enough to show the breadth of his shoulders and the economy of his build. No wasted muscle, no softness. His pale eyes swept the scene, landed on me, bleeding on the floor, and moved to the guard. "Explain," Ul said. "One word spoken quietly."
The guard stammered. "She spilled boiling water on me, your majesty. I was just disciplining my property without permission." The temperature in the room dropped. The guard paled. "I, your majesty, I didn't mean—"
"You're dismissed from service. Effective immediately." Ul's tone didn't change. Still that Alica flat calm. "If you're still in the keep by sunset, I'll assume you're volunteering for the fighting pits." The guard fled.
Ulc stepped further into the Kitwillow. Servants scattered, pressing themselves against walls. His gaze returned to me. "Stand," he said. I tried. My legs wouldn't hold. I made it to my knees before my vision grayed at the edges. He moved closer, each step deliberate, and crouched in front of me just like he had in the forest. Up close, his eyes were unnerving. Too pale, too sharp, like they could peel back skin and see the architecture of your soul.
"You tried to shift last night," he said. Not a question, a statement.
I nodded, not trusting my voice.
"And failed." Another nod. His head tilted slightly, the gesture almost curious. "Interesting. Most wolves who can't complete a shift die young. You're still here. Why?"
"Stubborn," I whispered.
Something flickered in his expression. Not quite amusement. Not quite anything I could name. He stood and addressed Brena, who'd appeared from somewhere, looking tense. "Reduce her workload by a third. If she dies from exhaustion, she's worthless to me."
"Your Majesty," Brena said carefully. "She's an omega. They're meant to—"
"I don't recall asking for your opinion on omega biology." His gaze shifted back to her, cold and final. "Do it."
"Yes, your majesty."
He turned and left, without another word. The room exhaling in his wake. Brena hauled me to my feet, her grip surprisingly gentle. "What?" she muttered. "Did you do to catch his attention?"
"I have no idea," I said honestly.
"Well, uncatch it fast. The king's attention is the last thing you want." But as she led me to the washing stations to clean the blood off my face, I couldn't stop thinking about the way Ullex had looked at me. Not with pity, not with contempt, with curiosity. And in a place like the Obsidian Keep, curiosity could be more dangerous than cruelty.
Chapter 7.
They moved me out of the Kit Willows after that. Not to somewhere better, just different. I was assigned to the lower halls. Endless corridors that needed sweeping, walls that needed scrubbing, torches that needed replacing. It was still brutal work, but it was solitary. No one kicked my buckets or spat in my direction. I was beneath notice again, invisible. I told myself that was safer. But isolation had its own teeth.
I started noticing things. The keep wasn't just a stronghold. It was a living entity, full of secrets, stuffed into cracks and buried under stone. Voices carried through ventilation shafts. Shadows moved in alcoves where no one should be standing. Doors I'd swear were locked one day would hang open the next. And people talked, not to me, around me like I was furniture.
I learned that King Ullex had ruled for over three centuries. That he'd taken the throne in a blood bath no one spoke about directly, only in fragments. "The culling," they called it, voices dropping to whispers. I learned that he'd never taken a mate, never shown interest in anyone. The court had tried for decades to push noble daughters his direction. He'd ignored every single one. I learned that Chancellor Aldrich, the grey-haired man I glimpsed occasionally in the upper corridors, had been Ullex's right hand for a century. That he was brilliant, ruthless, and rumored to have wanted the throne himself once. And I learned that wolves didn't age the way humans did. Ullex looked maybe 35. He was over 300. Time meant nothing to creatures like him.
That realization hit me harder than I expected. Aurora had been dying at 26. Time running out in increments measured by heartbeat irregularities and unpaid bills. Here, time stretched so far it became meaningless. Would I live that long, trapped in Zeta's skin? Did I want to?
I was scrubbing a corridor on my eighth day. When I heard voices approaching, low male, edged with tension, I pressed myself against the wall, head down, trying to disappear.
"Too risky," one voice said. Chancellor Uldrich, I recognized the clipped aristocratic tone. "If Thane is consolidating power in the southern territories, then we crush him before he becomes a real problem."
The second voice was younger, harder. "Shadowpine is weak. Their alpha just rejected his fated mate in front of his entire pack. That's not strength. That's stupidity or desperation."
"Thane's father built Shadow Pine into a powerhouse," Aldrich murmured. "Thane's been Alpha for 3 years and hasn't won a single major conflict. Rejecting an Omega mate might have been his way of proving he's still in control."
They were talking about Thane. About me? Well, about Zeta. I kept scrubbing. Slower, quieter.
"Do we know where the Omega ended up?" the younger man asked.
"Dead presumably. The Witherlands don't leave survivors." A pause. "And if she's not dead," Aldrich's voice dropped lower, and I had to strain to hear. "If she somehow finds her way back to Thane, she won't, but if she does..."
The younger man's tone went cold. "We make sure she doesn't survive the reunion."
They passed by without noticing me, their boots echoing down the corridor. I stayed frozen, rag dripping in my hand. They thought I was dead. Everyone thought I was dead. Except I wasn't. I was here scrubbing floors in the king's keep. Invisible but alive. And apparently I was a loose end someone wanted tied.
Chapter 8.
On the 10th day, someone left a package outside my door. I almost tripped over it when I stumbled out for the pre-dawn shift. A cloth-wrapped bundle, small and nondescript. I glanced up and down the corridor, empty. Every instinct screamed, "Trap!" But curiosity, Aurora's curse, made me pick it up.
Inside the cloth was a small loaf of bread, real bread, not the thin gruel we got in the servants' hall. It was still warm, the crust golden, the smell rich enough to make my stomach clench. A scrap of paper was tucked underneath. "You look half dead. Eat." No signature.
I stared at the bread, turning it over in my hands. Was this kindness or poison? In my old life, I would have Googled how to tell if bread is poisoned. Here, my only resources were paranoia and hunger. Hunger one. I tore off a piece and ate it. The taste was so far beyond anything I'd had in days that I nearly cried. I ate half the loaf, standing there in the hallway, stuffing it into my mouth like an animal, crumbs falling everywhere. Then I waited. No stomach cramps, no dizziness, just the faint, unfamiliar sensation of not being hungry. I wrapped the rest carefully and hid it under my mattress. The next night there was another package. This time dried meat. The night after a small pot of honey. Someone was feeding me secretly regularly. I didn't know if I should be grateful or terrified.
Chapter nine.
The sickness started in the lower quarters. First a servant collapsed during the meal. Then another. By the third day, a dozen people were bedridden, fevered and delirious. Brena moved through the halls like a general, barking orders. "Burn the linens, boil the water, keep the sick separate from the healthy." But it spread anyway. I watched it happen with a creeping sense of déjà vu. This wasn't random. This was predictable.
On the fifth day, I was hauling water from the courtyard well, when I noticed something. The water smelled wrong. Not obviously, just a faint sour undertone that didn't belong. I stopped mid-step, bucket swinging, and thought about the video I'd made, the one that got zero views. "The hidden history of pandemics," contaminated water, medieval outbreaks, cholera, dysentery, typhoid. I set the bucket down and walked to the edge of the well, peering over. The water was dark. Too dark.
"Move, Omega." A guard snapped, shoving past me. I moved, but my mind was racing. I knew what this was. I knew how to stop it. The question was, would anyone listen to a rejected Omega slave, or would I die with everyone else, my knowledge rotting unused in a borrowed body?
Chapter 10.
I didn't sleep that night. I lay on my thin mattress, staring at the dark ceiling while my mind churned through everything I knew about waterborne diseases. The symptoms matched. The timeline matched. The spread pattern matched. The well was contaminated. Had to be. But who would listen to me? Brena. She'd probably slap me for wasting her time. The guards. They'd laugh me out of the room if I was lucky. That left one option. One terrifying, potentially suicidal option. King Ullex.
My stomach twisted at the thought. He'd shown me a fraction of mercy. Sure, reduced my workload, stopped a guard from beating me to death, but mercy in the obsidian keep was a scalpel, not a blanket. It was precise, calculated, and it could be withdrawn just as quickly. Still, people were dying, and I knew how to stop it. You didn't survive a car crash and a rejection ceremony and 10 days of hell just to watch people die from something preventable. I told myself when dawn broke gray and cold through the crack under my door. I made my decision. I was going to find the king and I was probably going to die for it.
The keep was a maze designed by someone who hated straightforward thinking. I knew the lower levels, servant corridors, kit willows, washrooms, storage. But the upper levels, forbidden territory, guards stood at every stairwell, checking faces, turning away anyone who didn't belong. I needed a different route. I thought back to the voices I'd heard through ventilation shafts, the way sound carried through stone in strange ways. The keep wasn't just halls and rooms. It was layers, passages, forgotten spaces between the architecture. I found a service corridor near the laundry and followed it until it dead-ended at a narrow shaft. Maybe for waste, maybe for air. It angled upward, rough stone offering handholds.
"This is insane," the Aurora part of me whispered. "Good," the Zeta part answered. "Insane might keep you alive."
I climbed. My arms screamed, my shoulders burned. The partial shift from days ago had left everything tender, and every pull sent fire racing through my muscles. But I kept going, wedging my feet against the walls, dragging myself upward inch by inch. The shaft opened into a storage room stacked with old furniture. I hauled myself out, gasping, covered in dust and probably blood from where my palms had scraped raw. I was on the third level, maybe fourth. The air felt different here. Less smoke, more space. Voices echoed from somewhere nearby. I followed them, keeping to the shadows, until I reached a set of double doors guarded by two wolves in black armor, the council chamber.
My heart hammered. I couldn't just walk up and knock. They'd throw me out or worse. But as I hesitated, the doors opened. Men filed out in twos and threes, deep in conversation. I caught fragments. "23 sick now, spreading faster than we can contain. His majesty wants answers, not excuses." They dispersed down different corridors, and the chamber emptied, except for one person. King Ullex stood at the far end of the long table, hands braced against its surface, staring down at a map, alone, unguarded.
Now or never. I stepped through the doorway before my courage could fail. "Your majesty." My voice came out smaller than I wanted, but it carried in the silence. Ullex's head snapped up, those pale eyes locked onto me, and I felt the full weight of his attention like a physical thing pressing down on my chest.
"How?" He said, his tone dangerously soft. "Did you get past my guards?"
"I climbed," I said honestly, "through the service shafts." His eyebrows rose a fraction. "You climbed in your condition."
"People are dying," I said, the words tumbling out faster now. "I know why. I know how to stop it. Please, just listen."
Silence stretched between us. Then, to my utter shock, he gestured to the chair across from him. "Speak."
I stumbled forward, legs shaking, and didn't dare sit. "The water supply, it's contaminated. That's why people are getting sick. The well in the lower courtyard, something's in it. A dead animal. Waste. Something rotting. It's poisoning everyone who drinks from it."
You studied me with an unnerving intensity. "And you know this how?" Here was the trap. I couldn't say I made a YouTube video about medieval plagues. I couldn't explain germ theory or cholera or any of the things I knew from a world that didn't exist here.
"I read," I said, keeping my voice steady. "Before, in my old pack, there were records, stories of sickness spreading through water." The symptoms match.
"Records," he repeated, skeptical. "Old ones kept by healers." I was making this up as I went, stitching together fragments of Zeta's memories with my own knowledge. "They said to boil water if sickness spreads, to find the source upstream and remove it. To separate the sick from the healthy so it doesn't pass through touch."
Ullex's eyes narrowed. "You're an omega rejected. You can barely stand upright. Why would you have access to healer records?"
"Because no one noticed me," I said. And that at least was true in every life I'd ever lived. I was invisible. So, I read things I wasn't supposed to, learned things I wasn't supposed to. It's all I had."
The silence that followed felt like standing on the edge of a cliff. Then he straightened. "If you're wrong," he said quietly, "I will have you executed for wasting my time during a crisis. Do you understand?"
"Yes," I whispered.
"And if you're right," I hadn't thought that far ahead. "I don't know." Something that might have been the ghost of amusement touched his expression. "Honest. Refreshing." He moved toward the door, then paused. "Come, if you're going to condemn yourself, you might as well watch."
Chapter 11.
King Ul didn't walk. He moved through the keep like a force of nature, and everyone scattered in his wake. I followed three steps
Behind, trying not to trip over my own feet. Guards fell into formation around us. Servants pressed themselves against walls. Whispers chased us through corridors. Why is the king with the Omega? Is she being executed?
Finally, we reached the lower courtyard where the well sat like a dark eye in the center of the stone plaza. Ul gestured to the nearest guard. "Check the well. Look for contamination."
The guard's face went carefully blank. "Your Majesty, the Omega, are you questioning my order?"
"No, your Majesty." He bowed quickly and moved to the well. Two more guards joined him. They hauled up the bucket, lowered a torch, peered into the depths. Minutes crawled by. I stood there shaking while Ullex remained perfectly still beside me, waiting.
Finally, one of the guards straightened. His face was pale. "Your Majesty, there's something wedged against the rocks about 20 ft down. I can't see clearly, but it's large and it's rotting."
The courtyard went silent. Woollex turned to look at me. "What did you say to do?"
My mouth was dry. "Remove it. Boil all drinking water until the sickness stops spreading. Quarantine anyone showing symptoms so they don't infect others through contact."
He held my gaze for a long moment. Then he turned to the guards. "Do as he says. Remove the contamination. Implement boiling protocols immediately. Set up quarantine in the eastern wing." His voice cut through the courtyard like a blade. "Anyone who disobeys these orders will join the sick."
The guard scrambled into motion. Olex looked back at me. "If this works, you save lives. If it doesn't..." he let the sentence hang.
"I know," I said.
"Good." He turned to leave, then paused. "What's your name?"
"Zeta," I said automatically, his head tilted. "You hesitated when I asked before. You hesitate now. Why?"
"Because it's not my name. Because I'm a dead girl from another world, wearing a wolf's skin like a stolen coat."
"It's been a long time since anyone asked," I said instead.
Ulix regarded me for another moment. Something unreadable flickering in those winter eyes. Then he walked away, his guards falling into step around him. I stood alone in the courtyard, shaking so hard my teeth chattered. I just gambled everything on knowledge I shouldn't have. Now I had to wait to see if it would save me or kill me.
Chapter 12.
They pulled a deer carcass from the well 3 hours later. It had been there for weeks, bloated and rotting, wedged so deep no one had thought to check. The stench was unholy. Servants vomited. Even the guards looked queasy. But the water was cleaned, boiled, rationed carefully. Within 2 days, no new cases appeared. Within four, the sick began to recover. I waited for acknowledgement that never came. I was sent back to my corridor scrubbing duties like nothing had happened. Brena didn't mention it. The guards didn't mention it. I was invisible again, and I told myself that was safer.
But things had changed. Servants who used to spit at my feet now gave me a wide berth. Not out of respect, but something else. Weariness maybe or suspicion. The packages of food stopped appearing outside my door. and twice I caught people watching me from doorways, their expressions calculating.
On the seventh day after the well incident, Brener appeared during my shift. "Come with me," she said, her tone unreadable. My stomach dropped. "Why?" "Because I said so." She led me through corridors I didn't recognize. Climbing higher into the keep, we passed tapestries and carpeted floors, actual windows with glass. We stopped outside a set of carved wooden doors. Brena knocked once, then opened them without waiting for an answer. "The Omega, as requested, your majesty."
My heart stopped. The room beyond was clearly a study. Bookshelves lined the walls, heavy with leatherbound volumes. Maps covered a large table. A fireplace crackled with real flames, not the eerie blue torches from the lower levels. And standing by the window, hands clasped behind his back, was King Ullex. He didn't turn immediately. "Leave us."
Brena hesitated just a fraction of a second, then bowed and left, closing the door behind her. I was alone with the king in his private study. This is it, I thought wildly. He's going to kill you quietly. No witnesses.
"Sit," Ul said, still not looking at me. There was a chair near the desk. I sat, my legs threatening to give out anyway. Finally, he turned. His expression was unreadable, but something in his posture had shifted, less rigid, more curious.
"You saved 347 lives," he said. "That's the count. 347 people who would have died if the contamination had continued unchecked."
I didn't know what to say to that. "How?" he continued, moving closer. "Does a rejected omega with no formal education know about waterborne pathogens and disease transmission?"
Pathogens? He'd used the word pathogens? That wasn't medieval vocabulary. That was— I shoved the thought aside. "I told you I read."
"You read." His tone suggested he didn't believe me for a second. "Healer records. Yes. And these records used terms like contamination and quarantine protocols." I swallowed. I'd slipped. Used language that didn't belong here.
"The records were old from before when wolves lived differently."
"Before what?"
"I don't know," I said, which was technically true. The records didn't say, they just existed.
Ullex studied me with a piercing gaze that felt like it could strip away skin and see straight through to the lies beneath. Then, surprisingly, he moved to the desk and poured two glasses of something amber from a crystal decanter. He held one out to me. I stared at it like it might bite.
"It's not poisoned," he said dryly. "If I wanted you dead, I wouldn't waste good whiskey on the process." I took the glass with shaken hands. The liquid burned going down, but it was warm, and warmth was a luxury I'd forgotten existed.
Ullex leaned against the desk, watching me. "You're an anomaly," he said. "You survive things that should kill you. You know things you shouldn't. You climb through service shafts half dead just to interrupt a council meeting." He paused. "You interest me. That doesn't happen often."
"I don't want to interest you," I said before I could stop myself.
His eyebrows rose. "No, most people would kill for my attention."
"Most people don't know what your attention costs."
Silence fell heavy and charged. Then, impossibly, King Olex laughed. It was a short, sharp sound, surprised out of him, like he'd forgotten how. It transformed his face for just a second, making him look younger, less carved from ice. "You're right," he said. The ghost of that laugh still lingering in his voice. "My attention is expensive, but you've already paid the price, whether you wanted to or not."
He set his glass down. "You're being moved. No more scrubbing floors. You'll serve as an adviser on domestic concerns."
"What?"
"Medical issues, infrastructure, things my council considers beneath their notice, but clearly aren't." His gaze sharpened. "And you'll tell me where you really learned what you know. Eventually. I'm a patient man."
"I've told you."
"You've told me a story. A carefully constructed one." He moved closer, and I fought the urge to shrink back. "But I've lived three centuries. Zeta, who hesitates over her own name. I know a liar when I see one."
My breath caught. "The question," he continued softly, "is whether you're lying to protect yourself or to protect something else. I'll find out. But in the meantime," he straightened, "you're useful, and I don't discard useful tools."
It wasn't a compliment. It was a statement of fact. I was a tool, property, something to be used until it broke. But I was alive, and in the Obsidian Keep. That was victory enough.
Chapter 13.
My new quarters weren't luxurious, but they felt like a palace compared to the cell I'd been locked in. A real bed with blankets, a small desk, a window that actually showed sky instead of stone, a basin with clean water. I stood in the center of the room, turning slowly, waiting for the trap to spring. It didn't.
Brener appeared an hour later with fresh clothes. Not servant gray, but something closer to what the lower advisers wore. Simple, dark, but made of fabric that didn't scratch. "You're to attend morning council meetings," she said, her tone stiff. "You'll observe unless the king asks for input directly. You'll speak to no one else. You'll touch nothing. And if you embarrass his majesty, I will personally throw you back into the kit willows. Are we clear?"
"Yes," I said.
She left and I changed into the new clothes. They fit better than anything I'd worn since waking in this world. For a moment, just a moment, I caught my reflection in the basin's water. Zeta's face stared back, thinner than I remembered her being in those fragmented memories, haunted. But there was something else there now. Something harder. Survival maybe or the beginnings of defiance.
The council chamber was even more intimidating when it was full. 12 men sat around the long table, all of them radiating power and centuries of accumulated authority. I recognized some from glimpses in hallways. Chancellor Aldrich at Ullex's right hand, gray-haired and sharp-eyed, a scarred warrior with a permanent scowl, a younger man with cold calculation written across his features, and at the head of the table carved from winter itself sat King Olex. I slipped into the chamber and found a corner trying to become part of the wall. Every head turned to look at me anyway. The silence was immediate and hostile.
Aldrich's eyes narrowed. "Your Majesty, why is there an Omega in the council chamber?"
"Because I invited her," Ul said without looking up from the document in front of him. "Continue your report, Chancellor."
Aldrich's jaw tightened, but he obeyed. "As I was saying, the situation in the southern territories is deteriorating. Alpha of Shadow Pine has executed three of his own counselors in the past month. His pack is fracturing."
My head snapped up. "Thain?"
"Fracturing or consolidating?" the scarred warrior asked. "Executing dissenters could be strength, not weakness."
"It's desperation," Aldrich said. "Thain's father built Shadow Pine into a force. Thain's been Alpha for 3 years and has nothing to show for it. No alliances, no territorial gains, just a string of failures." He paused, "including the very public rejection of his fated mate." Several council members chuckled. "The Omega was a disgrace," someone said. "Thain did the pack a favor."
I bit the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste blood.
"Rejecting a fated mate is never a favor," Ullex said quietly. All laughter died. "It's a sign that the alpha values pride over the moon's will. That makes him dangerous."
"Dangerous to whom?" Aldrich asked. "He's barely holding his own territory."
"Desperate animals bite," Ul said. "Next move will be reckless. We need to be ready for it." He finally looked up, his gaze sweeping the table and landing on me. "Zeta, thoughts."
Every head swiveled in my direction. I felt like a mouse surrounded by wolves, which technically I was. "I..." My voice came out too quiet. I cleared my throat and tried again. "If Thain's desperate, he needs a victory. Something big enough to restore his reputation. He'll either attack a neighboring territory or—"
"Or?" Ullex prompted.
"—or he'll come after whoever took something from him."
The room went very still. "The Omega," Aldrich said slowly, realization dawning. "He'll come after the Omega."
All eyes fixed on me with new intensity. "Fain doesn't know she's here," the scarred warrior said. "As far as he knows, she died in the witherlands."
"Then we keep it that way," Ullex said. He looked at me again, something unreadable in his expression. "You stay within the keep's walls. You don't leave. You don't send messages. As far as the world is concerned, Zeta of Shadow Pine is dead. Understood?"
I nodded, throat tight, because hidden in his order was a terrifying truth. I was leverage. A rejected Omega shouldn't matter. But somehow I did. And if Thain found out I was alive, if he found out I was in King Ul's keep, it would give him exactly the excuse he needed to do something reckless. I wasn't just a tool. I was bait.
Chapter 14.
The council meeting ended and I was dismissed with a curt gesture. I fled to my new quarters. My mind racing. Thain was fracturing, desperate. And I was the secret that could ignite whatever powder keg he was sitting on. Good. A vicious part of me thought, "Let him suffer." But another part, the part that remembered the absolute agony of a rejected mate bond, wondered if he was suffering at all, or if he'd moved on the moment I was gone, relieved to be free of an omega who brought him nothing but shame.
A knock at my door jolted me from my thoughts. "Come in," I called, expecting Brena. The door opened. A woman stepped through. She was beautiful in a way that was clearly weaponized, tall, elegant, with auburn hair that fell in perfect waves and a dress that probably cost more than my entire life. Her eyes were green and sharp, and they raked over me with undisguised contempt.
"So," she said, closing the door behind her. "You're the pet."
I stood, instincts screaming. "I don't know what—"
"Don't play stupid. Everyone knows King Ullex pulled you from the gutters and gave you a room. Gave you a place in council meetings." She stepped closer and I smelled expensive perfume and something underneath it. Wild, predatory. "I'm Lady Ava of the Silver Blood Pack, and I need you to understand something very clearly. I'm not."
Her hand shot out and grabbed my throat. Not squeezing, just holding. Her nails sharp enough to draw pinpricks of blood. "Listen carefully, Omega," she said, her voice silk over steel. "King Ullex has never taken a mate, never shown interest in anyone. When he does, if he does, it will be with someone worthy, someone of status, strength, and bloodline." Her grip tightened slightly. "Not a broken, rejected Omega who can barely shift."
I couldn't breathe, couldn't speak.
"You're a curiosity," Ava continued. "A puzzle he wants to solve. Once he does, once he gets bored, and he will. You'll disappear like all the others who caught his attention." Her smile was razor sharp. "So enjoy your moment, little Omega. It won't last."
She released me and stepped back, smoothing her dress like nothing had happened. "Stay away from the king," she said pleasantly, "or next time I won't be so gentle." She left, the door clicking shut behind her. I collapsed against the wall, gasping, hand pressed to my throat where her nails had broken skin. The message was clear. I'd made an enemy. And in the Obsidian Keep, enemies didn't need much of an excuse to make you disappear.
Chapter 15.
The days blurred together after that. I attended council meetings, standing in my corner, speaking only when directly addressed, which was often too often. Ullex seemed to find reasons to pull me into discussions, supply routes, agricultural concerns, a dispute over water rights between two minor packs. Each time I answered as carefully as I could, drawing on YouTube research I shouldn't have and Zeta's fragmented memories of pack life. Each time Aldrich's expression grew darker, and each time I felt Ava's eyes on me from across the room, calculating, but the real danger was quieter. The packages of food had stopped after the well incident. But something else started appearing instead. Notes slipped under my door, tucked into my desk, left on my pillow. "You don't belong here. Mistakes get corrected. Leave before you're removed." I burned them all, but they kept coming.
On the 15th day of my new position, everything changed. I was reviewing maps in my room, trying to understand the territorial boundaries so I wouldn't sound like a complete idiot in the next meeting. When my door burst open, no knock, no warning. A guard stood there, face grim. "Come with me now. What's now, Omega?" He grabbed my arm and hauled me into the corridor. Two more guards fell into step behind us, their hands on their sword hilts. Terror clawed up my throat. This is it, Aldrich gave the order. Or Ava, you're being disappeared.
But they didn't take me down. They took me up higher into the keep than I'd ever been. Through corridors lined with portraits of stern-faced wolves, past rooms that smelled like old power and older blood. We stopped outside a set of massive double doors. The guard knocked once, then shoved me inside. I stumbled into a room that could only be described as a war chamber. Maps covered every surface. Markers indicated troop positions, supply lines, territorial boundaries, and surrounding the central table were King Olex, Chancellor Aldrich, the scarred warrior, and half a dozen others I recognized from council meetings. They all turned to look at me.
"Your majesty," I managed, dropping into something that might have been a bow.
"The thing is moving," Ullex said, cutting me off. His voice was flat. But something dangerous coiled underneath it. "Three battalions marching north. He's bypassed two smaller packs without engaging, which means he's not looking for easy victories. He's coming here," Aldrich finished.
"For her," every eye in the room fixed on me. My blood turned to ice.
"How?" I whispered. "I thought no one knew."
"Someone talked," Ullex said. "Or someone guessed. It doesn't matter. They know you're alive. And he's decided that getting you back or destroying you is worth declaring war on me."
The room spun. This was my fault. My existence had just started a war.
"We crush him," the scarred warrior said. "Thain's forces are a fraction of ours. This isn't a war. It's a slaughter."
"No." Ullex's voice cut through the discussion like a blade. "If we engage directly, the southern packs will see it as northern aggression. They'll unify against us. We need to make Thain look like the aggressor he is."
"How?" Aldrich asked.
Ullex's pale eyes locked onto mine. "We give him what he wants."
My heart stopped. "Your majesty," Aldrich said carefully. "If you're suggesting—"
"We let him think he can take her," Ulex continued, his gaze never leaving my face. "We draw him into our territory, onto our ground, and when he overextends..." he made a gesture like snapping a twig. "We break him."
"You want to use her as bait?" Aldrich said.
"I want to use her as the weapon she is." Something flickered in Ullex's expression. "Thain rejected his fated mate. That's a wound that doesn't heal. Seeing her again, alive under my protection will make him reckless. And reckless enemies make mistakes."
"And if he kills her in the process?" the scarred warrior asked.
Ul's jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. "He won't." The certainty in his voice sent a shiver down my spine.
"This is insane," I said. The words bursting out before I could stop them. "You're going to start a war over a rejected Omega."
"I'm going to end a threat before it grows," Ullex corrected. "Thain has been a problem for years. You're simply the match that finally lit the fire." He moved closer and I fought the urge to step back. "So here's your choice, Zeta. You can hide in the keep and hope Thain gives up, which he won't, or you can help me destroy him permanently."
I stared at him, at the king who'd saved me from wolves and given me work and pulled me into a world of power I didn't understand. At the man whose attention felt like standing too close to a fire. Warm, but one wrong move, then you'd burn.
"If I help you," I said slowly, "what happens to me after?"
"You'll be free," he said. "No more debt, no more servitude. You can leave the keep and go wherever you want."
Freedom. The word tasted strange on my tongue. In my old life, I'd been trapped by debt and illness and invisibility. Here, I was trapped by a body that wasn't mine and a world I didn't choose. But freedom, I didn't even know what that looked like anymore.
"And if I say no?" I asked.
Ulix's expression didn't change. "Then Thain will keep coming. He'll tear through packs trying to reach you. Innocent people will die, and eventually he'll find a way into the keep." He paused, "And I will let him have you because you will have proven you're not worth protecting."
The room was silent. I looked at the maps spread across the table. at the markers indicating Thain's forces moving north like a slow-motion avalanche. I thought about the alpha who'd rejected me in front of his entire pack, who'd torn out a bond that had barely formed and thrown me away like trash. And I thought about the king standing in front of me, offering me a choice that wasn't really a choice at all.
"Okay," I said quietly. "I'll help you."
Ul nodded once. "Good, because Thain's forces will be at our borders in 3 days."
3 days. I had 3 days to prepare for a war I'd accidentally started. 3 days before I'd come face to face with the alpha who destroyed me once already, and absolutely no idea if I'd survived the encounter.
End of part one. If you enjoyed my story, click at the next video for part two. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and leave a beautiful comment.