He Broke the Omega: The White Wolf's Revenge

Alessia POV:

I used to be an artist.

Before the cage, before the silver, I could paint the wind. My grandmother told me I had the "sight." I could see the colors of a wolf's soul.

Now, my hands trembled as I tried to hold a glass of water. The nerve damage from the silver cuffs was deep.

I checked the time. Two days left until the boat. I just had to survive forty-eight hours in this house without killing anyone.

I walked downstairs. I needed food. The prison fed us nutrient paste that tasted like wet cardboard. I craved an apple. Just a simple, red apple.

Laughter drifted from the dining hall. The crystal chandelier was lit, casting a warm, golden glow that I hadn't seen in years.

My mother, Isabella, was there. My father, Marco. My older sister, Giuliana. And in the center, sitting on a velvet cushion like a queen, was Chiara.

She looked healthy. Her skin was glowing, her hair shiny. For someone with a "cracked spiritual core," she looked remarkably vibrant.

Dante was sitting next to her. His eyes looked slightly glassy, pupils dilated, as if he were running on autopilot.

I walked into the room. The laughter died instantly.

My mother wrinkled her nose. "What is that smell?"

"It smells like antiseptic and rust," Giuliana sneered. "And low-grade wolf."

It was the scent of the Silver Prison. It clung to my pores.

"I'm hungry," I said, my voice flat.

"The kitchen staff will prepare a plate for you," my father said, not looking me in the eye. "Eat it in your room. We are celebrating Chiara's recovery month."

Chiara looked at me with wide, innocent eyes. "Oh, Alessia! You're back! I'm so sorry I couldn't visit. The doctors said the negative energy of the prison would shatter my core."

"It's fine," I said.

Chiara suddenly gasped, clutching her chest. A sweet, cloying scent filled the room. It was pheromones. She was releasing a synthetic distress signal, mimicking a heat.

Dante's head snapped toward her. The biological instinct of an Alpha to comfort a distressed female took over.

"It hurts, Dante," she whimpered. "I'm too weak to peel this grape."

Dante, the fearsome Alpha of the Blood Moon, the man who could crush a skull with one hand, picked up a grape. He carefully peeled the skin and fed it to her lips.

A sharp pain ripped through my chest.

It was the Mate Bond.

Seeing my mate serve another female triggered a primal rejection in my biology. My inner wolf, who had been comatose for seven years, stirred. She let out a low, mournful whine.

*Mine?* she asked weakly.

*No,* I told her. *Not ours.*

Dante paused. He rubbed his chest, frowning. He felt it too. The pull. The magnetic snap of the bond trying to connect us.

But he looked at me-gaunt, smelling of prison, wearing rags-and then he looked at Chiara. He blinked hard, shaking his head as if trying to clear a fog.

He shook his head, clearing the feeling, and turned back to the grape.

I turned to leave. I couldn't watch this.

"Where are you going?" my mother snapped. "Show some respect to the Alpha."

"I am showing respect by not vomiting on the table," I said.

My mother stood up, her face twisting in rage. She spoke in the Ancient Tongue, the old language of the first lycans, assuming I was too stupid or too "Omega" to understand.

*"Kala'ni ro ta,"* she hissed. *Soulless waste of blood.*

The room went silent. They thought I didn't know the high dialect. They thought I was just the spare part, the genetic mistake.

I stopped. I turned around slowly.

I looked my mother dead in the eye. The air around me seemed to drop ten degrees.

*"Ni'ka la so'ra, ma'ti,"* I replied in perfect, fluent Ancient Tongue. *The blood you waste is the blood that saved you.*

My mother's jaw dropped. My father dropped his fork. Dante froze, his eyes widening in shock.

The Ancient Tongue was reserved for high-ranking wolves and scholars. An Omega shouldn't know it. An Omega shouldn't be able to speak it with such perfect accent.

I didn't wait for their reaction. I walked out the front door, into the night.

It was my twenty-fifth birthday. The day a wolf fully matures.

No one had remembered.

I walked to the edge of the garden. The moon was full and bright. I looked up at it, and for the first time in seven years, I felt a spark of heat in my belly.

It wasn't the heat of a mate. It was the heat of something older. Something white.

My inner wolf didn't just whine this time. She howled.

*