Two nights later, I followed her.
It was a terrible idea.
The kind of reckless, spine-numbingly stupid mistake only an omega with a death wish would make. Or one with a secret bigger than her fear. Because in our world — in this rigid, merciless hierarchy carved from centuries of blood and obedience — omegas like me didn't get to make mistakes. We endured. We obeyed. We kept our heads down and our voices quieter.
There were no second chances. Just punishments, silences, orders wrapped in pretty words like duty and devotion.
But this silence?
This one was different.
This silence would've eaten me from the inside out.
And going to someone without proof? Without something solid and damning and undeniable?
They'd laugh. Or worse — they'd pity me.
Oh, poor thing. Still bitter after all this time.
Still obsessed.
Still sore that Mera, bright-eyed darling Mera, used to be an orphan like you and now wears the Beta's mark. The beta you used to have your eyes on if not for dwyn.
They'd say I was lying. Acting out.
That I was just another pathetic, low-ranked girl stirring shadows because the light never touched me.
But this wasn't about rank.
It wasn't even about history.
It was about something else.
Like a needle of ice lodged in my ribs that wouldn't melt, no matter how many times I told myself I was imagining things.
Because something was wrong with Mera.
I saw it in the way she carried herself.
Her smiles landed a second too late. Her eyes stayed too long on doors, corners, windows. Like she was waiting for something. Or someone. Her steps were too precise, like she'd memorized every floorboard in the packhouse. Like she knew which ones creaked.
She was careful.
Careful in the way prey gets when it knows the hunter's already too close.
So I waited.
I watched.
And when she slipped out past curfew, cloakless and barefoot, her dark braid pulled tight like a promise, a satchel strapped to her chest like a secret she'd die to protect—
I followed.
The pack slept around me, breath soft and even, unaware. The wind barely stirred the trees. Even the crickets had gone quiet, like they too understood something was about to shatter.
The path she took wasn't really a path.
Not anymore.
Just a stretch of woods long since claimed by rot and memory — the skeletal remains of the old clinic eaten up by roots and ash. A cursed place. The kind pups whispered about in wide-eyed stories.
Burned it to the ground and left to smolder. Nothing but a broken ruin now — blackened timbers, collapsed beams, the husk of a place that once kept our healers.
And she was walking straight into it.
No hesitation.
No glance over her shoulder.
She moved like a ghost that belonged to the forest — like the trees had made space for her, like the night knew her name. She didn't break a branch. Didn't stumble. She glided.
I, on the other hand, was mud-soaked and shaking.
My slippers were soaked through. My hands throbbed from gripping branches. Every step was too loud, every breath a betrayal. I wasn't trained for this. I wasn't a warrior. I was the girl who collected herbs for the healer and restocked bandages and care for pups, made herself invisible in a room full of snarling teeth.
But I kept going.
Because something deep in my marrow was howling. Telling me if I didn't, Alpha Duskthorn wouldn't live to see tomorrow's dawn.
The clinic rose from the woods like a scar — broken beams jutting toward the sky, walls slumped like bones picked clean. A place that should have stayed dead.
Mera paused at the edge, moonlight spilling over her like silver paint.
She knelt beside a collapsed wall. Unbuckled the satchel with practiced hands.
And that's when he stepped out.
Not from the trees.
From the dark itself.
Tall. Dressed in something that might have once been fur but was now just rags soaked in blood. His skin was the color of snow — pale, bruised, stretched thin over bones like he'd never belonged in it to begin with.
He didn't smell like wolf. Or man.
He smelled like rouge.
Like the underside of the world. Like rot and things that should not have a heartbeat — but did.
My wolf, Circe whimpered, low and broken, curling so tight inside me I thought she might vanish.
I dropped behind a fallen log, bark scraping my cheek, breath locked in my throat like a prayer I didn't know how to finish.
They spoke.
Low. Fast. Their voices didn't carry, swallowed whole by the night.
But I didn't need to hear.
Because I saw what he gave her.
A vial.
Glass so fine it shimmered like spilled moonlight, filled with something wrong. Black. Heavy. Alive.
It moved — like liquid. Not smoke.
It slithered. Coiled. Clung to the glass like it hated being contained.
Whatever it was… it didn't want to stay bottled.
My stomach lurched.
Mera took it with steady fingers. Didn't flinch. Didn't hesitate. She tucked it back into her satchel like it was nothing. Like it was normal. Like she knew.
Then she reached into her cloak and handed him something small. A pouch. Tied tight with red twine.
He didn't check the contents. Didn't nod.
Just curled his fingers around it with the kind of stillness that made my skin crawl.
Payment.
Not for healing.
For harm.
Mera stood. Turned. Walked back the way she'd come — not quickly, not anxiously.
Just calm.
Steady.
Like someone who'd already made peace with the sin she'd committed.
I barely had time to roll into a patch of thorns, biting back a gasp as they tore into my legs and arms, before she passed me. Her expression was unreadable. Her eyes forward. Her mouth set in a line I recognized all too well.
She looked like a woman who'd already practiced the lie she planned to tell.
I didn't breathe until she was gone.
Didn't cry until my hands stopped shaking enough to cover my mouth.
Because now I knew.
This wasn't some fantasy spun by jealousy or old wounds.
This was real.
And if I didn't speak—
Didn't scream—
Alpha Duskthorn wouldn't survive the week.