Chapter 7: Restless II

"Are you even listening to me?"

Eleora's irritated voice interrupted Damien's thoughts. He looked up at her from his plate, he'd been tossing the food around without actually eating for the past ten minutes.

"Sorry. What were you saying?"

"I was saying," Eleora said with exaggerated patience, "that we need to finalize the announcement. My father wants it done right after the Ceremony. He's already planned the party, three hundred guests, full catering, the works."

"Right. The announcement."

"Can't you at the very least pretend to be excited about this?" Eleora placed her down fork with a sharp clink. "We've been planning this engagement since we were kids, Damien. It's the logical next step. Both families united, strengthening both bloodlines and securing their positions. It's a perfect union."

Perfect.

The word brought a bitter taste to his mouth.

"I am excited, El" he lied. "Just distracted with pack business and the ceremony."

"You're always distracted with pack business lately, Damien" Eleora inched forward, her voice dropping. "Is this about that omega?"

His head snapped up. "What?"

"The omega. The one who's going to be partaking in this year's ceremony." Eleora said examining her nails, "I heard you spoke to her in the hallway today. You were seen by several people."

Of course they did. Nothing ever happened in this pack without everyone knowing about it.

"I barely said two words to her."

"Why even say anything to her in the first place?" Eleora's blue eyes turned sharp, assessing. "She's nothing. Less than nothing. A filthy defective omega who's going to end up humiliating herself in three days."

Damien's wolf snarled at the casual dismissal and the cruel description. He forced it down.

"I was just... wishing her luck. It's basic courtesy."

"Courtesy?" Eleora laughed, coldly. "Since when do we need to show courtesy to omegas? They're barely even wolves, Damien. They exist to serve us, nothing more."

"She's still a part of this pack."

"Is she?" Eleora tilted her head, studying him intently with an unreadable expression. "The Alpha is considering exile. Or even worse. I heard him discuss it with my father this afternoon. And they both agreed that if she fails publicly, if she makes the pack look weak, she'll have to go. One way or another."

Something hot and furious rose in Damien's chest. "They're discussing killing her?"

"They're discussing options." Eleora picked up her fork again, completely unbothered. "Which is the responsible thing to do. Resources are finite. Why waste them on a wolf who can't even shift?"

"Because she's a living, breathing person."

Eleora's eyes widened slightly, and Damien realized with a start that he'd raised his voice again, just as he'd been doing these past few days. The attention of several other wolves in the dining room were drawn to them now.

"You seem quite invested in the pathetic omega's welfare," Eleora said slowly, dangerously. "Why is that?"

I don't know, Damien thought. I don't know why I care when I shouldn't care at all. She's nothing to me.

But his wolf howled again, insistent and desperate, forcing those brown eyes with gold flecks on him over and over like a mantra.

"I'm not interested in her life," he lied. "I just think the execution of a pack member seems too excessive for failing to shift."

"Then you're weak." Eleora stood, smoothing out her dress. "And I expected better from the future Alpha. But if you want to coddle defective pack members and act like they have a chance in this pack, then that's your choice. Just don't expect me to applaud it."

She walked away without looking back, leaving him alone with his food still untouched and his increasingly agitated wolf.

Around him, the other pack members who overheard their conversation were whispering now. Looking at him with expressions ranging from confusion to disappointment.

Great. Now the whole pack would know he'd defended the omega and his father was likely going to hear about this within an hour.

Why are you doing this? he demanded of his wolf. Why can't you just let this go?

His wolf's response was immediate. An image of those gold-flecked warm brown eyes looking up at him. And a single word that echoed through his mind like a bell.

Mine

-----------------------------------------

Damien didn't sleep. Couldn't sleep.

He'd been trying to for hours, staring at the ceiling, willing his mind to quiet down and his stubborn wolf to settle.

Neither of those happened.

Around midnight, he finally gave up and moved to his window, pulling the curtain back to gaze at the moon. It was almost full now, just some days away from being complete. It's pull was stronger than usual, making his skin itch and his wolf pace even more frantically than he had been doing.

What's wrong with you? Damien asked again, extremely frustrated. Why won't you tell me what you want?

His wolf projected the same image it had been showing him for weeks: running through the forest at night, moonlight filtering through trees, searching desperately for something....

And then, new one followed: a flash of white fabric. Dark hair streaming behind someone running. A scent that made his wolf howl with need, one couldn't quite place.

Her, Ryker insisted. Find her, protect her, claim her.

Claim her? Damien reeled back with shock from his own wolf. She's an omega for God's sake. The pack's only one at that. She's nothing to us.

MINE, his wolf snarled ferociously and the force of it actually made Damien stagger back.

This was insane. He'd never felt Ryker this out of control, this desperate. Even during his first shift at the mere age of sixteen, Ryker had been powerful but more controlled than he was now. They'd worked beautifully together, two sides of the same coin.

But right now Ryker felt like one separate entity entirely, with desires that made absolutely no sense and a fixation on a girl Damien barely knew.

The ceremony, Damien thought. Once its over, once she... once whatever happens to her happens, all this will stop. It has to stop..then my wolf will be back to normal.

But even as he thought about it, he couldn't shake the growing sense of dread he felt.

His wolf knew something that he didn't. Something very important.

And Damien had a horrible feeling that whatever happened at that ceremony, would change everything.

It was four in the morning and Damien was still unable to sleep, he Instead found himself pulling on clothes and leaving his room. He decided to go for a walk just to clear his head. Maybe a run in his wolf form would do the trick. Anything to burn off this restless energy.

He ended up right outside the pack house, walking the perimeter, letting the pre-dawn air brush and cool his skin.

And somehow, he had convinced himself that it was coincidence, that he hadn't planned this, he ended up standing just beneath one of the basement windows.

It was hers.

The lights were off. She was probably fast asleep. He should leave. This was borderline stalkerish behavior, completely inappropriate for the future Alpha.

But his wolf held him in place. Just standing there, breathing in the faint traces of her scent that kept drifing through the partially opened window.

Vanilla, jasmine and something floral and sweet with an underlying note of... sadness? Strange. Could scents even carry emotion? He'd never thought so before, but hers surely did.

She smelled strangely like hope struggling to survive in a world of darkness.

Leave, he firmly told himself. Leave before she wakes up and sees you standing here like a perverted creep.

But then his ears caught it. A sound from inside the room.

Crying.

Quiet and muffled, like she was desperately trying to hold it in. But unmistakable.

She was crying.

His wolf's response was immediate, overwhelming. A howl of rage and grief and a desperate need to make it stop, to comfort and protect and...

Her light suddenly flicked on.

Damien moved back into the shadows with speed, pressing his back against the side of the building where she wouldn't be able to see him if she looked out the window.

He heard her movement from inside. Footsteps. Then her window opened a bit wider, the sound of her voice, thick with tears.

"Please," she whispered into the night, to the moon. "Please let me have a wolf. Let me be enough. Just this once, let me be enough. I don't want to die. I don't want to be alone anymore."

Damien's felt a crushing weight settle on his chest.

She was terrified. Begging the moon goddess for a wolf she didn't think she had. Crying alone in the dark because she knew...she knew, that in three days, her life might come to an abrupt end.

And he'd stood in his father's study that morning listening to them discuss killing her like it was an everyday business decision.

Don't give her false hope, his father had said

But what was hope if not the belief that someone, somewhere, gave a damn if you lived or died?

Damien stoodas still as he could in the shadows, listening to her quiet crying, feeling Ryker thrashing and howling inside him with a desperation that matched her own.

Three days.

Three days until she stood in that circle.

Three days until she either shifted... or faced whatever the alpha had decided was "appropriate."

And Damien could not understand why this felt like the most important things that had ever happened to him.

Why every single instinct he had was screaming at him, urging him to march up to her window, to tell her she wasn't alone, to promise he wouldn't let anyone lay a hand on her.

Why his wolf was showing him images of her over and over, those eyes flecked with gold, that dark luscious hair, that scent of vanilla and jasmine and desperate hope.

Mine, his wolf insisted again. MINE.

But that was impossible. She couldn't be. She was an omega and he was an Alpha's heir. She was nothing and he was everything.

They lived in two completely different worlds.

So why did his standing here, listening to her quiet sobs, feel like he was standing at the edge of a cliff?

Why did he know, know with absolute certainty, that three days from now, when the moon was full, he was going to jump off that cliff and fall?

The crying stopped. He heard her move around again, then the light clicked off.

He stayed in the shadows for another minute, then forced himself to walk away. Back to the pack house. Back to his room and back to his life as the future Alpha who definitely, absolutely, was not developing an inexplicable obsession with the pack's omega.

But he didn't sleep that night

And his wolf never stopped howling.