After My Alpha Made Me an Omega for His Mistress

The Omega bell rang at five. I had not slept.

My new room was a stone box under the kitchens. One cot. One hook on the wall. A window the size of a book, high up, full of gray light. Sofia's warriors had torn through my bags the night before. They took my journals and my letters. They even took the notes I wrote for the pack's winter supply orders.

They did not find the phone. I had kept it in my waistband all night, pressed flat against my skin.

They did not find Naomi's bracelet either. I had held it in my mouth while they searched me. The metal tasted like blood and tears.

At six, the head cook handed me a tray. A silver teapot. One cup. One plate of lemon cake.

"For Miss Warren," she said. She would not look at me. "She wants it in the healing ward."

My hands went cold on the handles. "The healing ward."

"She said you'd know the way."

I did.

---

The ward still smelled like her. Valerian and soap and that sweet, burnt edge of wolfsbane under everything. My feet slowed at the door. My body didn't want to go in. I made it.

Sofia sat at the healer's desk in a cream sweater, her legs crossed, warrior rosters spread out in front of her. She didn't look up.

"Set it on the counter," she said.

The counter was by the window. I walked there. Then I saw it.

The stain.

It was a dark ring on the stone floor, three feet from the counter. Nobody had cleaned it. Two days. Nobody had even put down a cloth.

I set the tray down. My hands didn't shake. I didn't know how.

"Pour," Sofia said.

I poured. She took the cup and blew on it softly. She sipped. She turned a page.

"The eastern patrol is too thin," she said to no one. "Adrian should move three men from the south."

She called him Adrian. Not Alpha. In this room. Over that floor.

I stood with my hands folded and said nothing. Selene was silent inside me. That silence was worse than any pain.

Sofia finished her tea. She stood, picked up her rosters, and limped toward the counter. Her limp was heavy today. Then I realized it didn't matter. There was no Alpha here to watch.

Her elbow caught the tray.

The teapot hit the stone. The cup shattered. Hot tea ran across the floor and into the old dark ring, and for one second it looked fresh again. Like it had just happened.

"Oh," Sofia said. "How clumsy of me."

I reached for the cloth by the sink.

"No." Her voice stayed sweet. "Your hands, Omega. That's what they're for now."

I looked at her. She smiled, small and pleasant, the way she smiled in council when she won a vote.

I knelt.

The stone was wet and warm under my knees. Right there. Right where Naomi had lain with her eyes open. I picked up one piece of the cup. Then another. A thin edge sliced my thumb, and a bead of blood ran down to my wrist.

Sofia watched for a moment. Then she got bored and turned back to her papers.

My fingers found the biggest shard. It was curved, with one sharp point. I closed my hand around it slowly. Carefully. I didn't squeeze.

I wasn't going to use it. Not on her. Not yet.

But I held it, and I let my mind go cold and clear.

*Two exits. The main door. The back stairs to the rooftop garden.*

*The restricted stores, behind the healer's desk. Steel lock. The key hangs on his belt. He leaves it on the hook when he washes his hands.*

*And in my room, the third stone from the floor, left of the cot. It moved when I sat down last night. Someone put something behind it.*

I dropped the shard onto the pile with the others. I stood. I bowed my head.

"Will that be all, Miss Warren?"

"For now," she said.

---

That night I waited until the kitchen went quiet above me.

I knelt by the cot and worked the stone with my fingers. My cut thumb throbbed. The stone scraped loose, inch by inch, until it fell into my hands.

Behind it was a plastic bag. Inside the bag was a cheap black phone and a charger wrapped in tape.

I knew who left it. Last spring, our warriors caught a rogue spy working in this kitchen. Adrian had him thrown off the cliffs. Nobody ever searched his room.

The phone had nine percent battery. Enough.

There was one app on the screen. An inter-pack channel. The kind spies and traders used. The kind a Luna was never supposed to know about.

I had a private account. Adrian never knew. I had opened it the year our parents died, for Naomi. For her healer training. For her future.

She didn't need a future now.

I moved every dollar. All of it. My hands typed fast, but my eyes kept blurring. I added the scent code from my old registry card. I added our pack coordinates. Then I wrote one line.

*Former Luna, rejected, sister murdered. Need extraction. Will pay everything.*

I pressed send.

The message went gray. Then it was gone. No reply. No name. Just a black screen and my own face in it, thin and hollow.

I put the phone back. I set the stone back in its place and pushed dirt into the cracks.

Then I slid Naomi's bracelet onto my wrist and pulled my Omega sleeve down over it. The crescent moon sat cold against my pulse.

Tomorrow, Sofia would want her tea again.

Tomorrow, I would watch the healer hang his key on that hook.

Wolfsbane killed my sister. I was going to learn every single thing it could do.

Including how to make a woman vanish.