3: THEY TOOK IT

Lyra's pov 

I wake up in darkness and for a long moment I don't remember where I am or what happened, and then I try to swallow and the pain hits me like lightning, so intense I curl in on myself and make a sound that would be a scream if I could scream but nothing comes out except a horrible rasping wheeze.

I'm in a cell, small and dark and smelling like old stone and despair. My mouth is bandaged with something that tastes bitter, some kind of healing poultice, but underneath it everything is raw and wrong and gone.

I try to speak—just a word, just a sound, anything—but my tongue won't move the way it should and the only thing that comes out is blood and a wet clicking noise that doesn't sound human.

They took it.

They actually took my tongue.

I curl up on the cold floor and try to cry, but even that makes my throat hurt so badly I have to stop, and so I just lie there in the dark with silent tears running down my face and blood still seeping through the bandages. The stone floor is freezing against my cheek, and somewhere in the distance I can hear water dripping with a steady rhythm that sounds like a countdown to something terrible.

Time becomes meaningless in the dark—it could be hours or days or just minutes stretching out into eternity. I drift in and out of consciousness, sometimes waking up confused about where I am before the pain reminds me with brutal efficiency that this is real, this happened, this is my life now.

At some point a guard appears outside the cell bars, his face shadowy in the dim torchlight that barely penetrates the darkness of wherever they've put me.

"You've been declared Omega property," he says, his voice flat and bored like he's done this a hundred times before and I'm just another nameless body passing through his watch. "The Elders will decide your fate."

I try to ask where they're taking me, what's going to happen, if anyone even knows I'm down here, but my mouth moves uselessly and the only thing that comes out is that horrible wet clicking sound and more blood that I have to spit onto the stone floor because swallowing hurts too much. The guard doesn't even wait to see if I'm trying to communicate—he just turns and walks away like I didn't even try to speak, like I'm already less than nothing in his eyes.

I'm alone again in the dark with the taste of blood and bitter herbs coating what's left of my mouth, and the knowledge that everything I was—everything I could have been—has been taken from me as punishment for telling the truth.

They didn't just take my voice.

They took my future, my hope, any chance I had of ever being anything except what they've made me: a voiceless warning to any other Omega who might think about speaking up against an Alpha.

I touch my throat where the bandages are wrapped tight, feeling the swelling and the heat of inflammation underneath, and I make a promise to myself in the silence that's all I have left.

They can take my voice, but they can't take my truth. Someday, somehow, someone will hear it.

The sound of footsteps echoes down the corridor sometime later—lighter than the guard's heavy boots, more hesitant, like whoever's coming doesn't want to be here but came anyway. I push myself up to sitting even though everything hurts, because lying on the floor feels too much like giving up and I'm not ready to give up yet even if I don't know what I'm holding on for.

The torchlight grows brighter as the footsteps get closer, and then I see a face I recognize peering through the bars of my cell with an expression that's equal parts grief and guilt.

Healer Oswin.

He's older, maybe fifty, with gray streaking through his dark hair and laugh lines around his eyes that I used to think made him look kind and approachable. Right now those lines just make him look tired and sad, and he's carrying his healer's bag in one hand and something wrapped in cloth in the other.

"Lyra." His voice is barely above a whisper, like he's afraid someone might hear him down here even though we're clearly alone. "Oh, child. What have they done to you?"

I want to laugh at the question because he knows what they did, everyone in the pack knows by now, but laughing would hurt too much so I just stare at him through the bars and wait to see why he came.

He glances over his shoulder like he's checking for guards, then he crouches down and slides something through the gap at the bottom of the cell bars—the cloth-wrapped bundle, which turns out to be a small loaf of bread, still warm like it just came from the oven.

"I'm not supposed to be here," he says quietly, watching me unwrap the bread with shaking hands. "But I couldn't just... I had to see you. Had to know you were..."

He trails off because there's no good way to finish that sentence. I'm not okay, I'm not safe, I'm not anything except a girl in a cell with no tongue and no future.

I try to bite into the bread but my mouth is too damaged and swollen, so I just tear off small pieces and let them soften against what's left of my tongue before I try to swallow them down. It hurts, everything hurts, but I'm so hungry that I keep going anyway because who knows when I'll get food again.

Oswin watches me eat with an expression that might be pity or might be something worse, and then he reaches through the bars and touches my head with a gentleness that makes my eyes burn with tears I can't afford to shed. His hand is warm and callused from years of grinding herbs and mixing medicines, and the touch is so affectionate and so heartbreaking that I have to close my eyes against the wave of grief that threatens to drown me.

"Why did you do it, Lyra?" His voice is soft but there's something underneath it that sounds like anger, though I can't tell if he's angry at me or at the situation or at himself. "Why did you accuse him? Of all the wolves in this pack, why did you go after an Alpha? Elder Moira's nephew, no less?"

I open my eyes and look at him, and I try to make him understand with just my expression what I can't say with words anymore—that I didn't have a choice, that staying silent would have meant he'd hurt someone else, that telling the truth was the only option even if the truth destroyed me.

But Oswin isn't looking at my eyes anymore. He's looking at the bandages around my mouth, at the blood seeping through them, at the evidence of what speaking up cost me.

"I believe you," he says finally, and the words are so quiet I almost miss them. "I know you're telling the truth. I've seen the way Silas looks at young Omegas when he thinks no one's watching, I've heard rumors about other girls who disappeared or suddenly left the pack, and I..." He stops, swallows hard. "I believe you. But believing you doesn't change anything, does it? You spoke up and now you're here and there's nothing I can do to fix this."

I want to tell him that it's not his job to fix this, that just believing me is more than most of the pack was willing to do, but I can't tell him anything so I just sit there with tears running down my face and bread crumbs on my lap.

"You should have stayed quiet," he whispers, and now his hand on my head feels heavier, more like a weight than a comfort. "I know it's not fair and I know it's not right, but you should have stayed quiet and kept yourself safe. What good does speaking up do if it just gets you destroyed? What did you think would happen, that they'd actually punish an Alpha for what he did to you? That anyone would choose to believe a nobody orphan over Elder Moira's golden nephew?"

Each word feels like a stone being placed on my chest, crushing the air out of my lungs, because he's right and we both know it. I should have stayed quiet. I should have swallowed the truth and kept my head down and stayed invisible like I'd been doing for nine years.

But I didn't, and now here I am.

"I have to go," Oswin says, pulling his hand back through the bars like touching me has burned him. "The guards change shifts soon and I can't be caught down here. I just... I wanted you to know that someone believes you. For whatever that's worth now."

He stands up and adjusts his healer's bag on his shoulder, and he looks at me one more time with an expression that's so full of helpless grief and useless guilt that I have to look away because I can't bear to see it.

"I'm sorry, Lyra. I'm so sorry."

Then he's gone, his footsteps echoing back down the corridor and fading into nothing, and I'm alone again in the dark with the taste of blood and bread in my mouth and the knowledge that even the people who believe me can't help me.

I finish the bread slowly, piece by piece, because wasting food feels wrong even when everything else has gone so catastrophically wrong that food barely matters. Then I curl back up on the cold stone floor with my arms wrapped around myself and I let the tears come even though they make my throat hurt worse, because what else is there to do except cry and wait and hope that whatever the Elders decide my fate will be, it at least ends this quickly.

Somewhere above me, the pack is going about their normal lives—eating dinner, laughing with friends, sleeping in warm beds with full bellies and intact tongues and futures that stretch out before them like open roads.

Down here in the dark, I'm just property waiting to be disposed of.

And the worst part is knowing that Oswin was right—speaking up changed nothing except destroying the person who was brave enough or stupid enough to try.