The cry cuts through everything.

I'm elbow-deep in dinner prep , potatoes half-peeled, the stew barely simmering , when it reaches me. High and broken, the sound of something small in unbearable pain. A pup. Young enough that the whimper hasn't hardened into a howl yet.

Ignore it. You have curfew in twenty minutes.

I peel another potato.

The cry comes again, sharper this time, edged with terror.

My hands go still.

The kitchen hums around me , the other omegas moving efficiently, ladling soup, slicing bread, preparing the long table where the Stonecrest Pack's ranked members will eat their fill in exactly forty-three minutes. No one else pauses. No one else even looks up. The sound of a suffering pup is just background noise here, apparently.

I set down the peeler.

The forest swallows me fast.

The light is already going, the trees bleeding from gold to gray as I push through the undergrowth, following the sound. I know these woods. Every root and hollow, every place where the rogue scent clusters near the eastern border. I've been sneaking out here since I was twelve, long before I understood why the trees felt like the only place in Stonecrest where I could breathe.

The crying gets louder. Then it stops.

That's worse.

I find him in a narrow gully near the border markers , a pup, maybe four months old, rust-brown fur matted with blood. Three deep gashes across his flank, the kind made by adult claws. Rogue claws. The scent hits me immediately: stale, rank, laced with aggression. Whoever did this is long gone, but they were here recently. Too recently.

You need to get out of here right now.

I drop to my knees anyway.

"Hey." My voice comes out low and steady, the way I've learned to speak to frightened things. "Hey, I've got you."

The pup's eyes are glazed. His breathing is shallow, each inhale a visible effort. The wounds are deep , one of them dangerously close to his spine. A pack doctor might be able to stabilize him with an hour of work and the right herbs. He doesn't have an hour.

I press my palms flat against the worst of the gashes.

The warmth comes from somewhere I've never been able to locate or explain. It rises up through my sternum, travels down my arms, gathers in my hands like held sunlight. I feel the moment it enters him , the pup flinches, then goes utterly still, a soft sound escaping him that isn't pain.

It never gets less strange, this thing I can do. I've had it as long as I can remember, long before the age when wolves are supposed to feel anything beyond basic instinct. My wolf , the wolf I'm told doesn't exist, because I've never shifted, because I've never heard her speak to me in the way others describe , apparently has opinions about broken things. She wants them fixed.

The gashes close. Not perfectly, not instantly, but fast enough that I watch the deepest wound seal itself from the inside out, the inflamed edges pulling together like drawn curtains. The pup lets out a long, exhausted breath and buries his nose against my knee.

I sit back on my heels.

That took more than you had to give.

The dizziness confirms it. My vision swims at the edges, the familiar drain settling into my bones like wet concrete. Every time I heal something this significant, I pay for it. My body treats it like blood loss, like I've given something real and finite, and right now I've already been running on empty since yesterday's dinner service.

I scratch the pup behind the ears. He's already asleep.

"Go find your pack," I whisper. "Don't come back to the border alone."

The lights are blazing in the pack house when I break the tree line. Through the kitchen window I can see the warm gold of candles, hear the low rumble of conversation, smell the meat that I prepped and I won't eat. Twenty-seven minutes past curfew. The dizziness is making the path sway slightly under my boots.

I reach for the kitchen door.

It opens before I touch it.

Eleonora Vance fills the doorway, and the temperature drops by several degrees.

My mother is a beautiful woman. Everyone says so. Luna of Stonecrest Pack, graceful and composed at every official function, the kind of woman who receives compliments with a modest tilt of her head. At home, in private, her face does something different. Right now it does the thing I grew up dreading , the jaw tightening, the nostrils flaring, the eyes going flat and cold like ice over a very deep lake.

"Twenty-seven minutes," she says.

"I'm sorry, I ,"

The slap is fast and practiced. It rocks my head to the side, my cheek igniting, my ear ringing. I don't raise my hand to my face. I learned years ago not to do that , it makes her angrier.

"Sorry." The word drips from her mouth like poison. "You're sorry. The table waited on those potatoes because the one useless creature I was cursed with couldn't be bothered to be present for the one task she's given."

"The potatoes were already done. I checked before I ,"

"Don't." Her voice drops to something quieter and far more dangerous. "Don't you dare stand there and talk back to me like you have any standing in this house. You have none. You have nothing. You are a seventeen-year-old girl who has never once produced a wolf, who has contributed nothing to this pack, who eats our food and wears our clothes and has the audacity to disappear at curfew." She steps closer. "Where were you?"

"Walking," I say. "Just walking."

She reads the lie , I can see it , but she doesn't pursue it. What she says instead is worse.

"Get inside. Serve the table. And be grateful anyone lets you near it."

By the time the ranked members have eaten, the kitchen looks like a disaster zone. Bones and bread crusts and smeared plates, soup pots scraped to the sides. I move through it all in a fog, stacking and washing, my arms heavy, my cheek still hot. The omega girls finish their work and slip away quietly, not looking at me, which is its own kind of language. They pity me but they won't show it where anyone can see.

The stew pot is empty.

I lift the lid and look inside for a long time. There's a darkened residue along the bottom, the kind of thing you scrub out, not eat. My stomach contracts , a full, insistent clench that makes me close my eyes.

You gave too much tonight. You need to eat something.

I look at the plates stacked by the sink. Seraphina left half her bread. One of the warriors didn't finish his stew.

I eat standing at the counter with the water still running, scraping together what's left from other people's meals. The bread has gone slightly cold. The leftover stew is congealing at the edges. I eat it anyway, mechanically, staring at the wall, because the alternative is going to bed with my head spinning and my hands shaking, and tomorrow I'll need them steady.

This is my life. This is Tuesday.

The hallway between the kitchen and the master bedrooms is quiet when I carry the fresh linens up at half past nine. The house has settled into its evening sounds , low conversation, the creak of floorboards, the distant thud of music from Seraphina's room. My father's study door is cracked open, warm light spilling in a thin line across the hallway floor.

I hear his voice first.

",two days. The ceremony will be held here, at Stonecrest."

A pause. Someone else speaking, too low for me to catch.

"Seraphina's match with Silverwood has been public knowledge for months." My father's voice is even and businesslike, the tone he uses when he's already decided something and is merely informing others. "It would destabilize both alliances to change that arrangement now. Besides, Kalen Blackwood doesn't need beauty. He needs a bride on paper , someone the High Council will accept without scrutiny. Seraphina would cause complications."

Another pause. I'm not breathing.

"The arrangement stands. The bride is Anya."

The linens fall.

I don't hear them hit the floor. My pulse is a single, massive impact that shuts out every other sound , the distant music, my father's continued speaking, the soft snore of the old hound sleeping at the end of the hall. There's only those four words, reverberating somewhere behind my sternum:

The bride is Anya.

Kalen Blackwood. Heir to the Crimson Fang Pack. I've heard the name the way everyone in a three-pack radius has heard it , spoken low, the way you speak about storms. Twenty-three and already more feared than alphas twice his age. The kind of man entire packs reroute their territory to avoid.

In two days.

My heart stops.

Offered to the Cursed Alpha: The Moon-Born Omega's Secret — Chapter 2: The Bartered Daughter and the Only Choice

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