5: THE CARGO

Lyra's pov

I wake up to the sound of footsteps, not the usual heavy, bored tread of the guard who brings water once a day and doesn't bother checking if I'm still breathing, but multiple sets of footsteps echoing down the stone corridor with purpose and urgency that makes my heart start hammering against my ribs before I'm even fully conscious.

I scramble backward instinctively, pressing myself against the cold wall at the far corner of my cell, making myself as small as possible in the darkness that's been my only companion for, how long? Days? A week? I've lost track of time down here where there's no sunlight to mark the passage of hours, just endless black punctuated by brief moments of torchlight when the guard remembers I exist.

The footsteps stop outside my cell and I can make out shapes through the bars—six people standing in the flickering torchlight, three of them wearing the leather and metal of pack guards and three in the formal robes that mark them as Elders.

My stomach turns over when I recognize Elder Moira's silver hair catching the light, and beside her I can see Silas's golden head and another figure I think might be Vera from the healing ward.

Two of the other Elders are covering their noses with cloths, their faces twisted in disgust at the smell coming from my cell—a combination of blood, unwashed body, and the bucket in the corner that serves as my only sanitation.

I stopped noticing the smell days ago but seeing their reactions makes shame burn hot in my chest even though I know this isn't my fault, that they're the ones who put me down here in the first place.

"You are being transported to the Northern Territories as their Luna." Elder Moira's voice cuts through the darkness like a blade, and I stare at her with my mouth falling open because those words make absolutely no sense.

Luna? Me? I'm property, I'm damaged goods, I'm a voiceless warning to other Omegas about what happens when you speak up against Alphas. Why would anyone want me as their Luna?

"I'm sure you feel very honored," Moira continues, and there's something cold and satisfied in her smile that makes my skin crawl. "Not many Omegas in your position would get such an opportunity."

I shake my head because this has to be some kind of trick, some new torture they've invented to break me further.

My life is over—I've accepted that, made peace with it as much as anyone can make peace with the knowledge that they're just waiting to die in the dark. What possible use could I be to anyone now?

"I'm sure you're wondering why you, at this particular moment," Moira says, and she steps closer to the bars of my cell so I can see her face clearly in the torchlight. "It's quite simple, really. You are the perfect person to help us infiltrate the Northern Territories. Alpha Matthias is known to be a very brutal Alpha since his mate and child died in that fire three years ago, but he might let his guard down around you—a mute, damaged little Omega who can't possibly be a threat to anyone."

The words hit me like physical blows and I drag myself backward again, pressing harder against the wall as if I could somehow push through the stone and disappear.

I shake my head frantically, trying to communicate what I can't say with words—no, I won't do it, you can't make me, please just let me die here in the dark where at least I'm not hurting anyone else.

Elder Moira just looks at one of the guards and nods once.

The guard steps out of my line of sight and returns less than a minute later dragging someone between two other guards, someone who's bleeding and barely conscious and—

No.

Healer Oswin.

His face is swollen and bruised, blood dripping from a cut above his eye and from his mouth, his clothes torn and stained red in places I can't bear to look at too closely. His head lolls forward like he doesn't have the strength to hold it up, and when the guards drop him on the ground outside my cell he doesn't even try to catch himself, just crumples like a puppet with cut strings.

I throw myself at the cell door, reaching through the bars desperately trying to touch him, to check if he's breathing, to do something, but one of the guards hits my hand away with the butt of his spear hard enough that I feel bones crack and I have to pull back cradling my injured hand against my chest while silent tears stream down my face.

Oswin is the only person in the entire pack who treated me like I mattered, who believed me even when believing me meant nothing, who brought me bread in the dark and touched my head with affection that felt like the father I lost nine years ago. And now he's here, broken and bleeding, because of me.

"Now do you understand what I'm trying to tell you?" Moira's voice is still perfectly calm, conversational even, like we're discussing the weather instead of a man's life. "You have no other option here, Lyra. You are to go to the Northern Territories today and send back as much information as you can about Alpha Matthias—his weaknesses, his routines, anything we can use. And if you don't cooperate, if you try to warn him or refuse to help us, well..." She gestures casually at Oswin's crumpled form. "Dear Oswin here will pay for your disobedience. Do I make myself clear?"

I nod so hard my neck hurts, still crying silently because what else can I do? They've found the one thing in this world I still care about and they're using it to control me like I'm a dog on a leash.

"Good." Moira turns to the guards with satisfaction written across her face. "Take her to the Omega section and have her cleaned and changed. We can't have Alpha Matthias asking questions about whether she was maltreated here."

She looks back at me and her smile is sharp as broken glass. "And Lyra, make sure you don't tell the Alpha what really happened to you. Not about the trial, not about the silencing, not about any of this. As far as he knows, you lost your voice in the rogue attack that killed your parents when you were twelve. If you say otherwise—or try to write otherwise—Oswin pays the price. Understood?"

I nod again, watching helplessly as they drag Oswin away and his blood leaves a trail on the stone floor.

Two guards unlock my cell and haul me to my feet—I've been sitting for so long my legs don't want to work properly and I stumble between them as they drag me through corridors I don't recognize toward the back of the pack house where the Omega quarters are located.

They hand me over to two young maids with instructions to clean me up and a dress that one of them holds like it might contaminate her.

The maids take me to the bathhouse and strip off what's left of the bloodstained clothes I've been wearing for days, their hands rough and their voices loud with complaints.

"Why is it always us that have to deal with the worthless ones?"

"I know, right? Like we don't have enough to do without cleaning up orphan filth that can't even talk."

"At least she can't complain about how we scrub her."

They push me into a tub of water that's almost too hot and scrub my skin with brushes that feel like they're taking off layers along with the dirt and blood and smell.

I don't make a sound even when it hurts because what's the point? They wash my hair three times before they're satisfied, then haul me out and dry me off with the same rough efficiency they might use on a piece of furniture.

The dress they put me in is the finest thing I've ever worn in my life—a simple blue dress that hugs my waist and flows down to my ankles, the color bringing out my eyes and complementing my dark auburn hair that they've blown dry and left in waves down my back.

When they turn me to face the mirror I barely recognize the girl staring back at me—she looks almost pretty, almost like someone worth something, and the disconnect between that reflection and the broken, voiceless creature I know I am makes me want to laugh or cry or both.

They lead me outside where two guards are waiting beside a black car that looks expensive and official. There's another car behind it filled with more guards, and I realize with sick understanding that I'm cargo being transported, a weapon being delivered to its target, and the Alpha waiting at the other end has no idea what's really coming for him.

One of the guards opens the back door and pushes me inside, and as we pull away from the only home I've ever known—even if that home tried to destroy me—the other guard turns around in the front seat and starts talking like I'm not even really there.

"You know where you're going, girl? The Northern Territories. Alpha Matthias Volkov's domain." He grins and it's not friendly. "That's the Alpha who's so brutal even the Elders are scared of him. So don't think you're going to some better life up there, because you're not. There's rumors he killed his first mate himself, that's how ruthless he is. Burned her and their kid alive in that fire three years ago and everyone's just too afraid to say it out loud."

My stomach turns over and I press myself against the car door, watching the landscape pass by outside the window while the guard keeps talking.

"So you better watch yourself up there, orphan. He might just kill you the first night too, and then where will you be? At least here you knew what to expect."

I close my eyes and try to steady my breathing, try to remind myself that I survived Silas and the trial and the silencing and a week in a cell waiting to die. I survived all of that, so surely I can survive one brutal Alpha who doesn't want me any more than I want to be there.

But underneath that thought is another one, quieter and more insistent: Oswin's broken body on the stone floor, Elder Moira's cold smile, the knowledge that I'm not just a prisoner being transported to a new prison.

I'm a spy being sent to infiltrate an Alpha's territory, and if I fail or if he discovers what I am, the man who showed me the only kindness I've known in weeks will pay the price.

The car drives on through the afternoon, carrying me toward the Northern Territories and the monster waiting there, and all I can do is watch the landscape change outside my window and pray that somehow, impossibly, I'll find a way to survive this too.