After My Alpha Made Me an Omega for His Mistress

The reply came the next night at 2:14 a.m.

I had pulled the stone out only to check. I told myself I wouldn't hope. Then the screen lit up in my hands, and my heart slammed so hard it hurt.

*The Raven accepts. Await instructions.*

Four words. No name. No price. No questions about my sister or my mate or why a Luna was hiding a spy's phone behind a wall.

I read it ten times. Then I pressed the phone against my chest and shook, and I didn't know if I was laughing or crying. Maybe both. Selene didn't stir. I spoke to her anyway.

*Someone heard us.*

She stayed silent. But for one breath, the cold place in my neck felt a little less cold.

---

The instructions came in pieces over the next two weeks. Always late at night. Always short.

*Day fourteen. Moonrise plus two hours.*

*A rogue raid will hit the eastern border. Loud. Real scent. Your warriors will run.*

*No one dies. Not even them.*

I stared at that last line for a long time. I hadn't asked him to spare anyone. Some ugly part of me had wanted him to burn the whole border down.

Then came the exit. *Southern tree line, the split oak. Leave blood. Leave something they'll know is yours.*

Then came a list. Twelve herbs. Exact weights. Cook times. A scent-suppressant paste strong enough to wipe a wolf off the face of the earth.

Three of the herbs were kept behind the healer's steel lock. One of them was wolfsbane.

Of course it was.

---

I became the perfect Omega.

I scrubbed the kitchen floors at five. I carried Sofia's tea at six. I kept my eyes down and my voice soft. When she spilled it, I knelt. When she called me clumsy, I said, "Yes, Miss Warren."

She got bored of me by the fourth day. That was the point.

And every afternoon, the old healer washed his hands at the sink. Every afternoon, his key hung on the hook for exactly two minutes.

Two minutes was enough.

I took a little at a time. A pinch of root. A few dried leaves. I hollowed out the false bottoms of the wolfsbane jars and hid the paste inside, because nobody in Shadowfang wanted to touch those jars. Not since Naomi.

The first time I opened one, my hands shook so hard I spilled powder on the counter. I smelled it. Sweet and burnt. My throat closed like it was me on that floor.

I touched the bracelet under my sleeve. I breathed. I measured again.

On the ninth day, the healer caught me.

He came back early, his hands still wet. He looked at the open jar. He looked at me. His mouth stayed shut, the way Adrian's command had sealed it.

Then he picked up a clean cloth and slowly wiped the spilled powder off the counter. He hung his key back on the hook. He walked away.

I had to sit down on the floor for a minute after that.

That night, The Raven sent one more line. It wasn't about herbs or timing.

*Are you eating?*

I frowned at it. Spies didn't ask that. Nobody in this pack had asked me that in weeks.

I didn't answer. But I ate the heel of bread I had been saving, every crumb.

---

On the fourteenth night, the moon rose fat and white.

Two hours later, the howls hit the east.

They were wild and close and full of rogue stink. The pack house woke up all at once. Doors banged. Boots pounded. Adrian's voice roared through the halls in Alpha tone, and every warrior ran toward it.

Nobody looked at the Omega quarters.

I went out the kitchen door with three things. The phone. The bracelet. A small paring blade from the cook's drawer.

The southern tree line was dark and wet. I found the split oak. My breath came out in white puffs.

I pushed up my sleeve and cut.

It hurt less than I thought. Less than the rejection. Less than kneeling on that stain. I let the blood run onto the dirt and leaves until my head went light and the ground looked like something terrible had happened there.

Then I took out my Luna pendant.

Adrian had clasped it around my neck on our marking night. His hands had been warm. He had whispered that the Moon Goddess made me for him.

I set it on a flat rock and brought my heel down hard.

It cracked into three pieces. I dropped them in the blood.

Then I opened the jar and covered myself in the paste. My hair. My neck. My cut arm. It burned and stank like dirt and smoke, and then, slowly, it smelled like nothing at all.

I stepped past the tree line.

Something in my chest pulled tight. That last thin thread of the bond. The one that still tied me to him, even hollow.

I took another step.

It stretched. It shook.

Far behind me, through all the howling, I heard one voice break. Adrian. Not giving orders. Just shouting my name.

The thread snapped.

The silence afterward was clean. It was the first quiet I had felt in weeks that didn't hurt.

I didn't look back.

I walked into the forest with my sister's moon against my pulse and the antidote formula already burned into my memory. Behind me, Shadowfang was about to find a dead Luna.

Ahead of me, the dark trees opened like they had been waiting.