They broke me first

ted before I eve

iving at the bottom of the Ashford Pack hierarchy, and this was not it. It was more like pressure. Like something behind my sternum had been asle

dark of my room and

d was quiet. The Ashford Pack slept in shifts like all packs did, with the perimeter guard rotating through the night hours and the rest of the hierarchy arran

eet on the cold stone and wa

d not

beat that had decided this morning was the moment to make itself known. My wolf stirred underneath it, not with alarm but wit

I told

turned e

nce for it. No precedent. The Ashford Pack did not celebrate Omega birthdays. There would be no acknowledgment from the hierarchy, no change

it with the focused attention of a body that

of existing in the Ashford Pack without anyone reminding me where I stood in it. I pulled on dark trousers and a grey shirt and tied my hair back in the low bun that had become

in the small mirr

I had never been able to fully account for - something that shifted when I was emotional, though I had learned not to b

I had worked very h

ag and went out

e currently occupied. I passed the closed doors without sound, my footsteps calibrated by years of practice,

rth. I stood in the courtyard for a moment and breathed it in and felt the pulling in my chest respond to th

and took the covered wal

em before

upied. I registered the sound and my body did the thing it had learned to do over three years of this - a subtle recalibration, a

he corner and t

ery clear that whatever was in front of him was beneath his sustained attention. He was twenty-one, tall enough that the covered walkway felt smaller around him, and carrying the parti

ul blankness he wore in public, which was a different kind of weapon than Damien's and in some ways a sharper one. Griffin Colton n

looking dir

ood leverage and trajectory. Reid just came straight at it, full speed, like a wall that had decided to be a projectile. His hazel eyes - somewhere between green and gold, a

as, and a female Omega two years younger than me who had learned in her first month that the safe

t wal

precise architecture of their cruelty, that the only response that cost me nothing was the one that acknowledged nothing. I could not match them in rank or resources or the social weight of three Alpha heirs who had grown up

oing it for

ll and stepped into th

top

hysically making contact and physical contact was the one variable I had never fully solved for. He was six foot one and built lik

g with the particular quality of attention that witne

before, the way he looked at you with those shifting eyes like he was calculating something, like there was

Omega Hayes. Yo

d not

ght." His voice carried the particular quality of performa

cific laugh of someone who was not sure what was funny but

gaze for exactly long enough to register that I was doing

ile in others. Damien's cruelty was architectural, planned, executed with precision. Griffin's was the weaponised absence of intervention. But Reid's had always had a quality of de

what he was trying to drown out. I had the pr

d not

nk I heard t

From the centre of the walkway, Dam

two words in exactly the

and was staring at the ceiling the way people stare at the sky whe

dvancing. He said: "You know what I think, Hayes I think you wake up every morning an

at him

Because whatever you are - whatever strange, wrong thing you are -

counting was useful when someone was doing their best to make y

rrow margin between the walkway wall an

let

ath difficult but they could not make me stay. Whatever authority they had over my status and my resources and my standing in the pack h

ossed the second courtyard and went into the meal hall and found a seat at the far end of

t had intensified whil

er fear response I had to the Coltons and replaced it with something more efficient - a k

three of them simultaneously, and it was only now, at the far end of the meal hall with thirty f

about it to anyone, because the

g the thing,

oked

g that was more or less coffee in the other, and she was looking at me with the expression she wore when she h

hing,"

t of me. I had not asked for it. She had brought it because this was what Maren did - she paid attention and then acted on what she sa

lkw

ei

in the

d natural hair she wore in a high puff and eyes that were constitutionally incapable of hiding what they were thinking, which meant her

haven't han

is a category. Within that catego

d of th

rently satisfied, went back to her porridg

the particular warmth of being known by someone who chose to know you in a contex

you,"

that was unmistakably the shape of a piece of cake, wrapped in the paper

ar

ty of someone who had made a decision and was entirely at p

at her. I said: "You stole fr

"The distinction is phil

me. I felt it like a small flame - brief, real

t enough to notice - and I put my hand to my sternum under th

e morning, with Maren across the table explaining the philosophical distinction between steali

The compound was filling with sound and footstep and the particu

lling in my chest and thoug

ent that would come in the great hall that evening, or the face I would be unable to look away from across a room full of wolv

know any

ling. And I knew th

instincts since she was six years old and had nothing else to trust, that by the time this d

shed t

face the