CHAPTER 5: THE NIGHT BEFORE

Maren

My hands shook just a little. Not enough to mess up the stitch, but enough that I felt it. This was the last night here.

Mama sat across from me, her head bent low over the white fabric. It was the dress for tomorrow. The ceremony dress. She’d been working on it for three days, quiet-like, not telling me anything, but I knew. Everyone knew. Now, she was fixing the hem, her fingers quick, putting in tiny stitches that no one would even see.

“You know, Maren,” Mama said, her voice low. She didn't look up. “When you were a baby, you were the prettiest thing I ever saw.”

I just kept sewing the silver thread. Small, shiny loops, just underneath the hem. We talked like this a lot. Not really talking, but saying things that hung in the air, things too heavy to say out loud when my father, Aldric, might be listening.

“Your hands,” Mama went on, her own fingers still moving, steady. “You have your grandmother’s hands. Big, but gentle.”

My grandmother. Mama’s mother. I never met her. Aldric never talked about her, or about anything good. Mostly, he just talked about ranks and rules, about how I was supposed to do the lowest jobs in the pack, jobs even the new Omegas didn’t want. He never hit me, not once. His way was worse.

“I was always so proud of you,” she said, her voice even softer now. “Every single day. Even when I couldn’t say it out loud.” She meant because of Aldric. Because he would have hated it. He hated me. He hated that she loved me, I think.

I stopped sewing. My own hands, the ones like my grandmother’s, felt cold. I looked at the silver thread, shining.

“What if it’s real, Mama?” I asked, my voice barely there. My throat felt thick. “What if he actually means it?”

Caius. He was the one. The Alpha from Ironblood. He was the one who was supposed to take me away. But he had looked at me. He had asked me if I wanted this. No one had ever asked me what I wanted. Not ever.

Mama’s hands stilled. Her eyes, usually so busy, lifted to mine. They were wide, full of something I couldn’t name. Hope? Fear? Both, maybe.

A long, quiet pause stretched between us. The only sound was my own heart beating, fast and heavy.

Then, Mama swallowed hard. “Then you hold onto it so carefully,” she said, slow and clear, “that nothing can take it from you.”

Another pause. Her eyes watched me, holding mine. “And if someone tries to take it,” she finished, her voice a low rumble, “you fight.”

We just looked at each other then. No more words were needed. It said everything. Everything I needed to hear, everything I already knew.

Later, when the moon was high and the compound was mostly asleep, I heard the soft tap-tap at my window. Reva. That was our signal. Urgent. I went to the window, pushed it open a crack, and she slipped in, fast and quiet.

Reva was always steady. Strong. But tonight, her eyes were different. Bigger. Darker. She didn’t sit down. She just stood there, looking at me.

“I was doing a perimeter check,” she said, her voice flat. No drama, which made it worse. Much worse. “Near the east stores.”

I waited. My stomach twisted.

“I saw two of Caius’s warriors,” she continued, her gaze fixed on something past my shoulder. “They were talking to a man I didn’t know. Not from Ashveil. Not from Ironblood’s escort either.”

My breath caught. “Who was he?”

“I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head a little. “They dispersed when they saw me. Fast. Like they weren’t supposed to be there. I couldn’t hear what they were saying.”

I tried to swallow, but my mouth was dry. “What do you think it means?” I asked. My voice sounded small. Too small.

Reva didn’t answer the question I asked. She answered a different one instead. “I think you should not go tomorrow.”

The air in my small room changed. It got cold, even though it was late summer. My heart beat harder now. This was Reva. She didn’t say things lightly. She meant it.

“On the word of a conversation you didn’t hear?” I said. It sounded stupid, even to me. But I had to say it.

“On the feeling I’ve had since he arrived,” she said, her eyes finally meeting mine, full of worry. “That something is wrong in a way I can’t name yet.”

I was quiet for a long time. My thoughts raced. Reva’s warning. Mama’s words. My father’s hate. Caius’s eyes.

“If I don’t go,” I said, finally, my voice low and hard, “my father will make me go.” I pictured him. Aldric. His face, cold and hard. “And I’ll lose whatever small control I have over how I walk in.”

Reva didn’t have an answer for that. She didn’t need one. We both knew it was true. She just nodded, her eyes sad. She knew what Aldric was like. She knew what my life had been like.

I sat alone at my window, the one that faced east. The moon was gone. I was dressed already. Ready. Hours too early. But I couldn’t sleep.

My mind kept turning. Mama’s face, soft and strong, telling me to hold on, to fight. Reva’s eyes, worried, telling me not to go. Caius’s voice, asking if I wanted this. It was like he was giving me a choice, something I’d never had. Hope and dread lived in the same chest tonight. My chest.

What if Reva was right? What if it was all a trick? Just another way for my father to get rid of me, to make me someone else’s problem. He hated me from the day I was born, a girl, not a boy. A failure. He never looked at me like a person. Just evidence of how my mother had let him down. He gave me tasks beneath even the lowest Omegas, ignored me, dismissed me. He didn’t physically hurt me, but he made me feel like I didn’t belong, like I wasn’t real.

But what if Mama was right? What if Caius truly meant it? What if this was my chance? My chance to finally be seen. To finally be something more than just Maren, the Omega, the unwanted daughter. What if my life could be different? What if I could walk into that ceremony and it would be the start of something good, something I had been cautiously, carefully starting to hope for?

I have survived everything this compound has thrown at me for twenty-two years. I have survived my father’s coldness, the endless tasks, the feeling of being invisible. I have survived it all.

I can survive tomorrow, whatever it is.

I can survive anything.

The first sliver of sun, thin, crept over the distant trees. It touched the edges of my window. I stood up, feeling a strange calm settle over me. My fingers went to the hem of my dress, tracing the silver thread Mama and I had sewn in. It felt strong, like a promise.

I walked out of my room.