Eight years later, the omega dorms still smelled faintly of boiled cabbage, damp stone, and resignation.
“Kaia! Up, girl, up!” Brenna shouted from the doorway, banging a spoon against the metal frame. “Moon and stars, you’ll be late again.”
I groaned and shoved my face deeper into the flat, lumpy pillow. “I’m up,” I muttered.
“You’re *not*,” she said cheerfully, stomping in. “You’re pretending. Again.”
The thin blanket was ripped away.
I flailed, blinking against the gray predawn light that seeped through the narrow windows, turning the dust motes into lazy ghosts. Brenna loomed over me, a wooden spoon in one hand, her mass of tight black curls piled on top of her head with a fork. Her apron was already streaked with flour and something that looked suspiciously like porridge.
“Come on.” She nudged my bare foot with her knee. “Breakfast won’t cook itself, and I am not getting yelled at because Miss Too-Pretty-To-Be-An-Omega wanted fifteen more minutes in dreamland.”
I pushed up to sit, my hair falling into my face. “Don’t call me that.”
She smirked. “What? Miss?”
“Pretty.”
She snorted. “Oh, shut up. If I had cheekbones like yours, I’d never stop looking in reflective surfaces.”
I made a face and scrubbed at my eyes. The mirror shard nailed to the wall above my narrow trunk didn’t show much in the murky light—a too-sharp chin, wide dark eyes, a scatter of freckles across my nose. My hair, loose and wavy and bronze-dark like my mother’s, was a tangled disaster around my shoulders.
Pretty.
That was one word for it. Useless was another. So was unwanted.
“Fine,” I said. “Miss Useless it is.”
Brenna’s expression softened. She dropped the spoon on my blanket and sat next to me, the bunk creaking. “Don’t start that.”
“It’s true.”
“It’s bullshit,” she said, crisp. “You work harder than half the ranked wolves put together. You’re more useful than—”
“I have no wolf,” I cut in, because we both knew where the sentence ended. “That’s all that matters.”
Her lips pressed together.
In our world, rank was everything. Alpha, Beta, Gamma. Warriors. Hunters. Healers. Omegas. Each place in the hierarchy carved in tradition and power. Wolves were everything—your other half, your weapon, your birthright.
And mine had never come.
The first shift was supposed to happen at sixteen, under your birth moon. For weeks before, pups barely slept, buzzing with anticipation, dreaming of paws and fur and shared minds. Stories spread of first runs, glorious and terrifying, every sense lit up like you’d grown a second body.
My sixteenth birthday had come and gone with no fur, no cracking bones, no second voice in my head. Just unease in the pack and whispers following me wherever I walked.
Some wolfs woke late, people said. Sometimes it took a few extra moons. There had been hushed speculation, nervous hope.
A year later, I was seventeen and still wolfless.
“I’m fine,” I told Brenna now, lying through my teeth and forcing a smile as I swung my legs over the side of the bunk. The stone floor was cold under my feet. “Really. I just love sleeping.”
“You love avoiding the dining hall when the warriors are there,” she said dryly. “And the kitchen when Head Cook is in a mood. And the laundry when the Beta’s daughter feels like practicing her aim with wet towels on your face.”
I stood and stretched, my thin sleep shirt riding up over my ribs. “You keep such a detailed log of my cowardice.”
She snorted and snatched the spoon off my bed. “Not cowardice. Self-preservation. Now move. Half the visiting packs are already here for the Summit and if Alpha Rhys finds the omegas behind…again…” She trailed off ominously.
“Got it,” I sighed.
The Summit.
The word made my skin prickle.
Once every few years, the northern packs gathered in one of the larger territories to discuss borders, treaties, rogue activity, and trade. This year, it was our turn. Redwood Shadow was hosting, which meant every ranked wolf within fifty miles was in a froth of anxiety and self-importance.
It also meant the omegas were doing triple work.
Brenna herded me toward the washroom, where a few other omegas were already in various stages of scrubbing their faces and tying back their hair. I splashed cold water on my skin, teeth chattering, and tried not to dwell on the quiet murmur of rumors that had been buzzing through the dorms.
Do you think the visiting alphas will notice she has no wolf?
I heard the Stormrise Pack’s Alpha is single. Pity for him if he catches *her* scent.
Maybe they’ll take her off our hands.
More likely, they’ll use her as a cautionary tale. Don’t be like Redwood Shadow. Don’t let your pack breed weaklings.
“You’re grinding your teeth again,” Brenna muttered as we walked toward the kitchens, our steps echoing down the narrow stone hallway.
“Sorry.”
“Just…pretend it’s any other day,” she suggested.
Any other day.
Any other day where I rose before dawn, chopped vegetables, scrubbed floors, and stayed out of sight of wolves whose eyes went cold when they landed on me.
Any other day where I was careful not to walk too close to the warriors’ barracks, not to look too long at the sparring rings, my fingers aching with the urge to hold a blade, my skin itching with the need to *move*.
My parents had been warriors and trackers. They’d taught me how to throw a knife, how to read the forest, how to move silently over snow. I’d grown up certain that one day, I would join them, running through the trees on four paws, howl rising with the others.
Instead, I scrubbed their armor.
It wasn’t that omegas were worthless. *Most* of them, anyway. The elders who’d been born to it took pride in their work, in feeding and clothing and quietly managing the inner workings of the pack while the fighters played at heroics. They said every pack needed a heart as much as it needed teeth.
But I wasn’t born an omega. I’d been put here. Pushed down the ladder and left there to stew.
And because I had no wolf, there was no arguing the decision.
The kitchen was already a chaos of steam and noise when we arrived. Head Cook Tomas, a barrel-chested man with a graying beard, was shouting orders as he stirred three cauldrons at once. The scent of porridge, fried eggs, and baking bread made my stomach cramp with hunger.
“Kaia!” he barked the moment he saw me. “Late again.”
“Sorry,” I said automatically, grabbing an apron.
“You’re always sorry.” He snapped his fingers toward a counter laden with vegetables. “Chop. Carrots, potatoes, onions. And try not to cut yourself this time.”
“I *never* cut myself,” I muttered under my breath, taking up a knife.
“What was that?”
“Nothing, Head Cook.”
Brenna elbowed me as she passed, arms loaded with loaves. “Smile,” she whispered. “Visitors.”
I scowled instead.
It wasn’t that I hated outsiders. I’d just learned early that new faces meant new stares, new questions. Most wolves could *smell* each other’s beasts, a subtle, animal sense that prickled when you were near your own kind.
Around me, that sense went…dull.
Some said I was broken. Some said I was cursed. Some, under their breath, wondered if the Moon Goddess had turned her face from me because of what I’d once whispered into my pillow at eight years old.
As if a child’s anger could offend a deity.
As if I hadn’t spent the years since then silently begging for a wolf, for some sign I wasn’t entirely alone inside my own skin.
“Carrots, Kaia,” Tomas snapped. “Not existential despair. Focus.”
I bit back a laugh and began slicing.
We worked in a blur until the first bell rang, echoing through the packhouse. Footsteps thundered overhead as wolves moved toward the dining hall.
“Go,” Tomas grunted. “Serve. And keep your head down.”
I wiped my hands, stripped off my soiled apron, and exchanged it for a cleaner one. The serving omegas were mostly younger, quick and quiet. We filed into the dining hall bearing trays laden with food.
My heartbeat sped up as we stepped into the vast room.
Long wooden tables stretched from one end of the hall to the other, already crowded with wolves in various states of dress—some still in training leathers, others in neat shirts and trousers, all talking too loud. The clatter of cutlery and the smell of meat and coffee and wet wool hit me in a rush.
At the head table, elevated on a low platform, sat Alpha Rhys and Luna Elyra.
He was broad-shouldered and dark, his hair cut short, his beard trimmed close to his sharp jaw. His eyes swept the hall with cool detachment. Nothing escaped his notice.
The Luna wore pale blue today, her silver hair braided down her back. Her expression was serene, but there were lines at the corners of her mouth that hadn’t been there eight years ago.
Beside them sat unfamiliar faces.
Visiting alphas, I guessed. Betas. Representatives from other packs. Their varying scents tangled in the air—forest and rain and cold stone, a thousand subtle notes that made my nose twitch. I recognized none of them.
“Kaia.”
The low, oily voice slid over my skin like something damp.
I tensed before I turned.
Beta Corin stood near the head table, his arm slung around his daughter Lyra’s shoulders. Once, he’d been handsome—tall and ash-blond, with the easy smile of someone born to power. The years had sharpened him. His eyes had gone flat and hungry. His smile never reached them anymore.
“Beta,” I said, dropping my gaze automatically.
“Serving in the hall, are you?” he drawled. “Upgrading from cleaning latrines.”
A few warriors at the nearest table snickered.
My cheeks flushed. “Head Cook assigned me, sir.”
“Hm.” His gaze traveled down my body in a way that made my stomach twist. Not hungry, not lustful exactly. Evaluating. Assessing. “Remember your place, omega. Don’t forget to bow if an alpha looks your way.”
Lyra, pressed against his side, smirked. She was a year younger than me, small and slim, her hair a sleek sheet of pale gold. Her wolf had emerged right on time, her first shift a moonlit spectacle everyone had oohed and aahed over.
It had been the worst night of my life.
“Try not to spill anything on our guests,” she said now, her voice sweetly poisonous. “I hear they value competence.”
“Unlike some,” one of the warriors muttered.
Heat burned behind my eyes. I dropped my gaze further, focusing on the grain of the wooden floor. “Yes, Beta. Yes, Lyra.”
“Go on, then,” Corin said, already bored. “Do your duty.”
I moved away, my hands steady despite the shaking in my chest.
At least the humiliation was familiar.
I threaded through the tables, refilling coffee, sliding plates in front of hungry wolves. Most ignored me. A few looked me over with curiosity, noses twitching, their brows furrowing when they smelled…nothing.
“Is she human?” I heard one visiting warrior murmur to another.
“Can’t be. She smells…pack. Just…wrong.”
“Don’t stare,” the other hissed back. “If the host pack treats her like that, there’s a reason.”
I kept my gaze on my tray and my feet moving.
“Thank you,” a soft voice said as I set a bowl of porridge in front of a small girl with curly brown hair and too-large eyes.
“You’re welcome,” I said, forcing a smile.
Her parents flanked her, both in plain clothing that marked them as lower-ranking, though not omegas. The little girl studied me with frank curiosity.
“Are you a warrior?” she asked.
A few wolves nearby snorted.
“No,” I said evenly. “I’m an omega.”
“But you’re tall,” she insisted. “And you have the arms of someone who lifts heavy things. My papa says warriors are strong.”
“Cora,” her mother hissed. “Don’t be rude.”
“I’m not,” the girl protested. “I was just asking—”
“It’s all right.” My smile felt brittle. “I wanted to be a warrior once. But the Goddess had other plans.”
Or no plans at all.
I moved on before they could respond.
By the time the hall was full and noise was at its peak, my nerves were stretched thin. The tray was a weight digging into my shoulder, my apron already splattered.
I was pouring coffee into an empty mug at the end of the long central table when the hair on the back of my neck prickled.
The sensation shot down my spine—a shiver that had nothing to do with cold.
I straightened slowly.
At the far end of the hall, near the doors, a group of late arrivals had just entered—four men, all tall and broad, wearing dark, travel-stained clothes. Their presence hit the room like a pressure wave.
Conversation dipped, then resumed at a higher, more excited pitch.
The man at the center of the group drew the eye first.
He was taller than the others, his shoulders more heavily built, his black hair pulled back into a low tie at the nape of his neck. His jaw was strong, shadowed with dark stubble, his nose a little crooked as if it had been broken once and never fully set.
His eyes—
I couldn’t see their color from this distance, but I felt the weight of them as they swept the hall, assessing, measuring, taking everything in. The air around him seemed to thicken, his aura heavy, electric, like the charged silence before a storm breaks.
Alpha, my instincts whispered, though I had no wolf to *confirm* it.
Head Cook Tomas’s warning about bowing echoed in my mind.
I should have looked away. I should have dropped my gaze, bent my neck, gone back to pouring coffee.
Instead, I stared.
Because for a split second, as the new alpha’s gaze passed over the room, it snagged on me.
Our eyes met.
The world…lurched.
It was like being plucked out of my own body and dropped into someone else’s heartbeat. Something punched through my chest from the inside, the breath whooshing out of my lungs. My fingers spasmed around the coffee pot.
His eyes were…storm-gray. Not the soft gray of dawn mist, but the violent gray of thunderheads rolling over the mountains. They widened, just slightly. His nostrils flared as he inhaled.
My own senses went haywire.
His scent hit me a heartbeat later—a mix of pine smoke, cold rain, and something darker, wilder, threaded through with an undercurrent of ozone that raised goosebumps on my arms.
Heat unfurled in my belly, shocking, bewildering.
I’d never felt anything like it.
My wolfless body reacted as if something buried deep within it had just been startled awake.
Then someone jostled my elbow.
Hot coffee sloshed over the rim of the pot, splashing onto the hand of the warrior whose mug I’d been filling.
He cursed and jerked back. The pot clattered to the table. Coffee spattered across my apron and skirt, hot enough to sting.
“Watch it, omega!” he snapped.
“Sorry,” I gasped, tearing my gaze away from the door, from the storm-eyed stranger. “I’m so sorry—”
“Well, look at that,” another warrior drawled. “The curse got distracted.”
Laughter rippled.
My face burned. I grabbed a cloth, hastily wiping the spilled liquid. Someone stuck out a foot as I turned; my heel caught and I stumbled, the tray on my shoulder slipping.
It all happened too fast.
The tray tipped. Plates slid. Time stretched into slow, horrible clarity as a full bowl of porridge flew through the air—
—and landed with a wet splat on Beta Corin’s lap.
Silence slammed into the room.
Every eye turned toward us.
Corin froze. Thick porridge slid slowly down his expensive black trousers, steaming.
Beside him, Lyra’s hand flew to her mouth. She shook with the silent effort of not laughing.
“Kaia,” Corin said, his voice very soft. Very calm.
The most dangerous tone of all.
My heart jackhammered. “I—I’m sorry, Beta, I—”
“You,” he said, still in that frighteningly mild tone, rising to his feet with exquisite slowness. Porridge dripped to the floor. “Are a walking disaster.”
“Beta—”
“You shame this pack,” he continued, louder now, so the entire hall could hear. “In front of our guests. In front of alphas and betas who came here expecting competence, not—” He flicked a contemptuous hand at me. “This.”
A murmur swept the room.
“Corin,” the Luna began, her brows drawing together. “It was an accident—”
“An accident that would never have happened if she were where she belongs,” he snapped. “In the scullery. Out of sight. Out of—”
He broke off.
My skin prickled.
The charged sensation I’d felt earlier intensified. It was like static building in the air before lightning strikes. The tiny hairs on my arms stood on end.
“Is there a problem?”
The new voice cut through the tension, low and rough and cool as mountain water.
We all turned.
The storm-eyed alpha stood a few paces away now, his hands loose at his sides. Up close, his presence was even more overwhelming, a tangible weight pressing down on the room. His gaze flicked from Corin’s porridge-stained lap to my pale face.
And then—very slowly—to my eyes.
Our gazes locked again.
The second impact was worse than the first.
My knees nearly buckled. Heat roared through my veins, something inside me surging up like a trapped animal smelling open air. A low hum started in my ears, rising and rising, vibrating in my teeth.
His pupils blew wide.
“Who,” he said very quietly, “poured that?”
His voice did something to me I didn’t have words for. It vibrated through my bones, settled in my pulse. My tongue felt thick.
“I—I did,” I managed, forcing sound past my suddenly dry throat. “Alpha—”
“Tiernan Voss,” he supplied, eyes never leaving mine. “Stormwake Pack.”
Tiernan.
The name didn’t fit in my mouth yet. It lodged somewhere behind my ribs.
He inhaled again, deeply, as if confirming something. A muscle jumped in his jaw.
“Of course,” Beta Corin said with a tight smile. “My apologies, Alpha Voss. Our omegas are clumsy at the best of times. This one is particularly—”
“Quiet,” Tiernan said absently.
Corin’s mouth snapped shut.
I blinked.
“What did you say?” Corin asked, incredulous.
“Beta Corin,” Alpha Rhys said sharply from the head table, warning in his tone. “Our guest spoke.”
Tiernan still wasn’t looking at the Beta. He was looking at me.
“Her name?” he asked.
The hall held its breath.
“What does it matter?” Corin demanded. “She’s an omega. She has no wolf. She’s a disgrace we tolerate out of charity and obligation to—”
“Her. Name.” The words were still quiet. But something in them made the air crackle.
“It’s Kaia,” someone offered timidly from the side. Brenna, voice trembling. “Kaia Thorn.”
Thorn.
My father’s name. One of the only things the pack hadn’t stripped from me.
Tiernan repeated it under his breath, tasting it. “Kaia.”
A shiver ran down my spine.
“I’ll clean this up, Beta,” I blurted, desperate to get out from under those storm-gray eyes. “It won’t happen again, I—”
“Kaia,” Tiernan said, and my name on his tongue was a different thing entirely. It was a caress and a command, a question and an answer.
“Yes?” The word scraped out of me without permission.
His gaze held mine as if we were the only two people in the hall. “Come here.”
My heart stopped.
Beta Corin made a strangled sound. “Alpha Voss, there’s no need for you to involve yourself with this—this mess. I will discipline her appropriately—”
“I said,” Tiernan murmured, still staring at me, “quiet.”
Power pulsed under his voice, alpha command layered with something else, something older, deeper. Corin’s jaw clenched. His mouth worked, but no sound came out.
A collective gasp shivered through the room.
You didn’t alpha-command another pack’s Beta. Not in their own territory. Not in front of their Alpha.
Alpha Rhys was on his feet an instant later, hands braced on the table, eyes flashing.
“Tiernan,” he said, his tone deceptively smooth. “Stormwake is welcome here. But do not command my wolves in my hall.”
Tiernan didn’t look away from me. “Then command her yourself. To come.”
My breath hitched.
“She is an omega,” Rhys said coldly. “She obeys without command. Kaia. Go to the scullery. Now.”
Obedience had been carved into me for eight years. My legs moved automatically—
—and locked.
I couldn’t take a step.
Not because of fear. Not because of stubbornness.
Because something inside me refused.
A low, furious snarl rippled through the hall as every ranked wolf present realized what had just happened.
An omega—*I*—had just failed to obey a direct alpha command.
From my own Alpha.
The only way that was possible…
My stomach dropped.
“Interesting,” Tiernan murmured, voice like distant thunder. His eyes burned into mine. “Again. Kaia. Come here.”
The pressure of the command rolled over me. For a heartbeat, I fought it, panic scraping claws down my insides. You didn’t disobey alphas. You didn’t.
But this wasn’t my alpha.
He was *something else*.
And my body—
My traitorous body—
Moved.
One step. Two. Three. The room blurred around me, faces melting into a smear of shock and disbelief. My feet carried me toward him like they belonged to someone else.
I stopped a few paces away, my pulse roaring in my ears.
Up close, Tiernan Voss smelled even stronger—rain on hot stone, pine sap, smoke, and the crackling, electric edge of a storm. His eyes searched my face as if memorizing every line.
“There,” he said softly.
“Alpha Voss,” Alpha Rhys snapped, fury barely leashed. “Explain yourself.”
Tiernan tilted his head, finally breaking our gaze to glance at Rhys. “You haven’t noticed,” he said, genuine surprise in his tone. “All this time, and you haven’t *noticed*.”
“Noticed what?” Corin snarled, face mottled with rage and humiliation.
Tiernan’s gaze cut back to me. His voice dropped into a register only we seemed to occupy.
“This,” he said. “Is my mate.”
The words fell into the silence like a struck match.
The hall erupted.
Voices surged. Chairs scraped. Someone laughed—high and hysterical. A glass shattered against stone.
My brain couldn’t seem to process the sounds. The word *mate* echoed, and echoed, and echoed, spinning out, trying to find purchase in a mind that had always imagined itself alone.
Mate.
Mate.
My mate.
My vision tunneled. My breath came in short, shallow bursts.
“No,” I whispered.
Because this was wrong.
Because this was impossible.
Because mates were blessings from the Moon Goddess, gifts given to wolves.
And I had no wolf.
Tiernan’s eyes snapped to mine, shock flashing across his face at the word. “You don’t—”
“She doesn’t *what*?” Beta Corin cut in, recovering enough of his voice to spit venom. “She doesn’t *deserve* it, that’s what. This is a joke. A trick. There is no way the Goddess could have bound a powerful alpha to—”
“To *speak* of the Goddess’s choices like that,” Luna Elyra said quietly, rising. Her eyes were on me. For the first time in years, guilt flickered across her cool features. “Is dangerous.”
“Luna,” Corin said, incredulous. “You can’t be entertaining this madness. She has *no wolf*.”
Tiernan stiffened.
Panic flared in my chest. No. No, no, no. Don’t—
“She has no what?” he asked, very softly.
The room held its breath again.
I stared at the floor. At my hands. At the tiny droplets of coffee drying on my knuckles.
I didn’t speak.
Brenna’s voice, tremulous, broke the silence. “Kaia never—her wolf never came,” she said from the side of the hall, as if the words were pulled from her. “At sixteen. Or seventeen.”
Tiernan inhaled sharply, as if he’d been punched.
“Impossible,” one of his own men murmured behind him. “A wolfless mate?”
Tiernan turned back to me, something like fury and fear tangled in his gaze.
“Look at me,” he said.
I couldn’t.
If I looked at him, if I saw that in his eyes, all the fragile, resentful armor I’d built around myself would crack.
“Kaia,” he said again, and this time there was no alpha command in it. Just rough urgency. “Please.”
The *please* undid me.
I lifted my head.
Our eyes met.
Something *broke*.
Not in a bad way. Not like a bone snapping.
Like a dam.
A flood of sensation crashed through me. Heat, light, sound. A voice not my own, rising from somewhere deep in my chest, my bones, my blood—all the places I’d thought were empty.
*Finally,* it sighed, fierce and wild and female. *You stubborn idiot.*
I gasped.
The room fell away.
Fire roared up my spine, arcing into my skull. My knees buckled for real this time. Tiernan moved faster than I thought a man his size could move, catching me before I hit the stone.
I clutched at his shirt, my fingers digging into the fabric as my body shook.
“What’s happening?” someone shouted distantly.
“Get a healer!”
“She’s seizing—”
“No.” Tiernan’s voice was right by my ear, low and rough and oddly steady. “She’s waking.”
*About damn time,* the voice in my head muttered. *We’ve got work to do.*
“Who—” I gasped aloud, my words slurred.
*Me,* the voice said. Amusement and exasperation tangled in the single syllable. *Your other half. Your wolf. Your storm. Hold on, Kaia. This is going to hurt.*
And then the real pain hit.
I’d always imagined the first shift as something glorious, painful but transcendent, bones snapping and reforming under the light of the full moon.
This was…different.
It felt like my *blood* caught fire first, veins turning to molten metal. My skin prickled, too tight. Lightning forked through my muscles, making them spasm. My back arched, a scream tearing from my throat.
“Kaia!” Brenna’s voice.
“Get her outside,” Luna Elyra said sharply. “Now. Before—”
Hands lifted me. The world blurred in streaks of stone and firelight and shocked faces. Tiernan’s scent anchored me—storm and smoke close enough to drown in.
*Breathe,* the new voice in my head ordered. *In. Out. You’ve got this.*
“Who are you?” I sobbed, my teeth grinding as my bones…moved.
*I am you,* she said. *And more. I am everything they tried to bury. Everything they forgot. I am ash and rain and *power*. And I am very, very pissed off.*
Her laugh was raw and wild.
*Let’s introduce you to the world.*
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