Chapter Three

The heavy wooden door slammed shut, plunging her into absolute darkness. The finality of the sound, the heavy thud of the bar locking into place from the outside, echoed in the small space, sealing her in.

For a long moment, she didn't move from the spot on the hard-packed dirt floor where the guards had thrown her. The air was thick with the smell of damp earth and the faint, sweet scent of rot. It was cold. A deep, seeping cold that had nothing to do with the lack of sunlight and everything to do with the utter, soul-crushing loneliness that was now her entire world.

As her eyes slowly adjusted to the sliver of light coming from under the door, the shapes of bulging burlap sacks surrounding her looked like silent, slumped figures—sacks of potatoes and winter vegetables, her only company in the dark.

Lying on the cold ground, a bitter, hysterical thought bubbled up through her grief. She had planned for this, in a way. She always knew he might find his fated mate. But her foolish, naive plan had been built on a fantasy—that the years they'd shared, the respect he'd shown her, meant something. She had hoped, prayed, that he had enough feeling for her to pull her aside, to let her keep her secret, to allow her the dignity of packing her bags and simply... leaving.

The absurdity of that hope, now laid bare, sent a wave of pure panic crashing through her. Leave? He hadn't just exposed her; he had sentenced her. Her hands began to tremble as she thought of her coming heat, unprotected and unsuppressed for the first time in her adult life. The leering eyes of the pack males. Kael's booming pronouncement that she was "fair game." It wasn't just humiliation. It was a death sentence.

But as the icy panic threatened to swallow her whole, something else sparked in the darkness of her despair. A hot, violent inferno that burned away the tears and solidified the terror into something hard and sharp.

Rage.

He hadn't wanted to just let her leave. He had wanted to destroy her. He had wanted to see her break.

The rage finally found its voice in a raw, ragged scream that tore from her throat, echoing uselessly off the damp cellar walls. Then, she began to pace. Back and forth, a caged animal in the small, dark space, her mind a whirlwind of betrayal and fury.

Hours passed. The rage eventually burned itself out, leaving behind only the cold, aching exhaustion of grief. She was slumped against a sack of potatoes, shivering, when a sound jolted her back to reality—the scraping of the heavy bar on the outside of the door.

The door creaked open just enough for a small figure to slip inside before pulling it quietly shut. It was Lily, the seven-year-old daughter of one of the pack's weavers, her face pale in the gloom, her eyes wide with a mixture of fear and determination.

"Luna Kara, you need to leave," the little girl whispered urgently, shoving a small, unicorn-themed backpack into Kara's hands. Inside, Kara could feel the lumpy shapes of a water bottle, a wrapped sandwich, and a small, hard toy. A child's survival kit.

"Everyone is celebrating Alpha Kael finding his mate," Lily rushed on, her voice trembling slightly. "But Mum and I don't agree with him treating you like this. Mum said the door would be unlocked for ten minutes. You need to leave. Now."

For a moment, Kara was paralyzed. She looked at the brave little girl, then at the sliver of dark night visible through the open doorway. Her heart hammered against her ribs. Where would she go? What would she do? To be a lone, unbonded Omega in the wild, with her heat approaching... it was just another kind of death sentence. The fear threatened to swallow her whole.

As if sensing her paralysis, a new face appeared in the doorway. It was Lily's mother, Elspeth, her expression frantic with urgency.

"Hurry," she mouthed, her voice a desperate whisper that barely carried into the cellar. "You have to go. And listen to me, Kara—" she leaned in closer, her eyes full of a fierce, secret hope. "Not all packs treat Omegas this way. There are others out there. Go north. Just go."

Those words—not all packs treat Omegas this way—were a lifeline thrown into her sea of despair. A possibility she hadn't dared to dream of. It was enough.

With a surge of adrenaline that pushed back the fear, Kara pulled the little girl into a tight, fierce hug, whispering a "thank you" that felt wholly inadequate for the gift of her life. She clutched the small, lumpy backpack, took one last look at her prison, and then slipped through the doorway.

She took her first shaky step out of the cellar, out of her past, and into the terrifying, hopeful freedom of the night.