Omega: Reborn Without Becoming Innocent

CHAPTER ONE

The knife slipped from my fingers.

Steel rang against marble. Plates shattered a second later, porcelain bursting like bone beneath my feet. The sound echoed through the dining hall, sharp enough to make the guards outside the doors stiffen.

Derula didn’t flinch.

He was standing, glaring at me like he didn't just drop bomb on me.

“Eidlene is back,” he repeated, as if he were announcing the weather. “We’ll divorce.”

I stared at the fragments by my slippers. One shard had sliced my toe. Blood welled, warm, quiet. I didn’t feel it. I didn't mourn it.

My blood had ran cold.

Divorce.

My mouth opened. Nothing came out.

Derula folded his arms, crown glinting beneath the chandelier. His eyes—once warm, once mine—were flat, calculating. A king measuring loss like coin.

I'm the coin or ...the loss?

I swallowed.

“You’ll leave by tomorrow,” he continued. “I don’t want you here when she arrives.”

The room tilted.

I gripped the edge of the table. My palms slipped on polished wood. Three years of meals I cooked myself. Three years of sitting alone at this table while he met councils, fought wars, ruled a pack that never bowed to me.

Treated me lesser than his subjects.

I didn't mind that.

But now: Eidlene.

Her name pressed against my ribs, squeezing the breath from my lungs.

“You said…” My voice cracked. I swallowed and tried again. “You said she was gone.” I desperately hung on those words.

“She was.” His jaw tightened. “Now she’s not.”

I straightened, forcing my spine rigid. Queens did not crumble. Even omega queens. Especially omega queens.

“You bonded with me,” I said. “You stood before the pack. You called me your mate.”

“I did.”

The past flickered—his hand clasping mine before the blood moon fire, the howl of approval, the way the pack had gone silent when they scented my weakness.

Omega.

The promises with excitement in his eyes.

What went wrong?

Why did the marriage that I suffered three years for it to take shape...suddenly...my hands dared shake by my sides.

Derula exhaled sharply. “Things change.”

I laughed. The sound startled me more than him. It came out thin, almost hysterical.

“What changed?” I asked. “Was it when I gave you my kidney? Or when I stopped producing pheromones and had to inject myself every month just to be touched by you?”

His eyes flickered. Just once.

Then they hardened.

“That was your choice.”

The words struck harder than any slap.

I remembered the sterile white room. The Blue Moon physician’s mask. The pain tearing through my side while Derula lay pale beside me, unconscious, dying. I remembered signing the consent form with shaking hands because no one else would.

I’m his queen, I had told myself then. This is what queens do.

My knees buckled. I caught myself before I fell.

“It’s not fair,” I whispered.

Derula’s head snapped up. “What’s not fair?”

The edge in his voice made the guards tense again.

I lifted my gaze to his. “You never let me leave. You never let me give up. And now—”

“Eidlene is pregnant.”

The word pregnant fell like an executioner’s blade.

“With my child,” he added.

Silence swallowed the room.

So that was it.

The whispers suddenly made sense—the sideways looks, the pity masked as contempt. The council meetings I was excluded from. The way his mother’s gaze always drifted to my belly and away again.

Childless.

“I can’t abandon her,” Derula said. “The pack needs an heir.”

I nodded slowly, as if my body had forgotten how to rebel.

“Let’s talk,” I said, even as something tore loose inside my chest. “I’m not leaving you.”

“There’s nothing to talk about.” He turned away, already done. “I’ve put up with this long enough.”

Put up with me.

The words replayed while memories bled through my skull.

Standing before the council when he was sick, lying through my teeth to keep the Rangers from sensing weakness.

Kneeling before his parents while they insulted my bloodline, my scent, my worth.

Lying on a table while healers sliced into me again and again, chasing a child my body could no longer make.

Put up with me.

I swayed.

“Eidlene can live here,” I said suddenly. The words tasted like ash. “You don’t need to move out.”

Derula turned back. Surprise flickered across his face—then relief.

“You’re… fine with that?”

I nodded. Once. Twice.

What choice did I have?

“I’m okay with it.”

My nails dug into my palms. Still no tears came.

He studied me for a long moment, then gave a short nod. “Good.”

That was how I lost my crown without ever taking it off.

......

Eidlene arrived at dawn.

She wore white.

The pack gathered in the courtyard, howling their approval as she stepped beside Derula, her hand resting protectively over her stomach. She didn’t look at me. She didn’t have to.

I stood behind them, shadowed, silent, already forgotten.

“She will be your Luna,” Derula announced.

Cheers erupted.

No one noticed when I stepped back.

....

They moved me from the royal chambers within the week.

A smaller room. A colder wing. Servants stopped meeting my eyes. Some laughed when they thought I couldn’t hear.

Derula laughed with them.

He stopped coming home at night.

Then one evening, as I crossed the penthouse balcony, the air shifted.

A presence.

Footsteps behind me.

I turned—

Hands slammed into my back.

The world vanished.

Wind screamed past my ears as the ground rushed up, merciless and fast. I hit with a sound I never heard, only felt—a rupture, a crushing finality.

Pain flared. Then dimmed.

Blood pooled beneath me, warm at first, then cold.

I tried to breathe. My chest refused.

I thought of the girl I’d been before him. Before crowns. Before love.

“I don’t want to die,” I whispered to no one.

The darkness answered.

.......

Voices dragged me back.

Angry. Sharp.

“What did you do to my wife?”

I gasped.

Air burned into my lungs like fire. I jerked upright, pain screaming through every bone. The room swam—silver walls, unfamiliar banners, kneeling figures.

“My king, we—”

“Silence.” The voice was lethal. Controlled. “She’s been unconscious for three days.”

Hands steadied me. Warm. Careful.

“I want everyone fired,” the man said. “Now.”

I blinked.

The scent hit me then—iron, pine, dominance so heavy it pressed against my skull.

Rangers Pack.

Enemy territory.

He turned toward me.

“My queen,” he said softly. “You’re awake.”

I froze.

Lucien.

The Lycan King who had terrorized Blue Moon borders for years. The butcher king. The enemy.

Yet his eyes—gods—his eyes held nothing but relief.

“If anything happens to my wife—” His voice dropped, dangerous. “There will be no place left to hide.”

The door creaked.

I followed his gaze.

Derula stood at the entrance, head bowed.

“My king,” he said to Lucien.

My heart slammed against my ribs.

Lucien’s arm tightened around me.

And for the first time since I fell, I felt something other than pain.

Shock.