THEY REJECTED THE WRONG OMEGA

My wrist was dying, and I could feel every inch of it go.The mark didn't burn the way it had in the first minutes. That fire I could have fought. This was slower. A cold, crawling numbness that started at the black lines and worked its way up my forearm, like something was being unstitched under the skin, one careful thread at a time.I pressed my palm over it. Pressed hard. As if I could hold it in place.*Please. Not this too.*The rain had no mercy in it. It hammered the mud and my back and the ruined dress, and I stayed on my knees outside the Silverstone gates because standing up would mean I had somewhere to go. Behind the wall, a roar of laughter went up, muffled by stone. Music, maybe. They'd started the feast without me. Of course they had.I wanted to be sick. I wanted to scream until the gates cracked. I did neither. I just breathed through my teeth and counted, the way I used to when the kitchen girls shoved me against the pantry door. *One. Two. Three.* If I could get to

"I'm the reason you're still breathing."The thing in the smoke said it like it was reading me the time, and it took me a full second to realize my hand had gone to my wrist.I snatched it back. Too late. Kael's eyes had already dropped to the movement, and I watched him file it away.Nobody moved. The smoke hung around the three of us in slow, careful coils, as if even the burning field didn't want to get any closer. Behind me, four hundred wolves stood so still I could hear the creak of leather when someone swallowed."What are you?" I asked. My voice held. Everything underneath it didn't.It didn't answer. It tilted its head, slow, studying. Not Kael. Me. The way you look at something you've paid for."You weren't supposed to survive Silverstone."Hard, single beat of my heart. I felt it in my throat.Silverstone. The gates. The mud. A cold wrist and a quiet that had been so big it swallowed me. I'd spent three years convincing myself I survived because I was stubborn. Because I wa