CHAPTER 4

“Look at her. The Omega who believes she's a queen."

The whisper, sharp as a dagger, cut through the gentle hum of the Lunaris Academy hallways. It was merely the first of many. Every face I passed had some mix of pity, disgust, or morbid curiosity etched on it. My public refusal of the bond in the Council Hall had been the pack's gossip for two days. I was no longer the isolated Omega; I was the Omega who had tried to defy the future Alpha leaders.

I kept my eyes to the ground, my book bag gripped hard. I was on my way to Healer Mira's for my mandatory check-up. The bond was a constant, low-level buzz in my soul, a confusing mix of four various and opposing emotions. It was a curse I couldn't rid myself of.

Then, four shadows loomed over me.

I stopped dead in my tracks, my head rising slowly. There they stood, lining the hallway. Ash, Zane, Kai, and Blaze. The pack's top Alphas, and my bullies, now bound to me.

Ash’s eyes, a simmering mix of cold steel and golden sparks, were fixed on me. The possessiveness I’d felt through the bond was a palpable presence in the air, a thick, suffocating thing. His mouth was a tight line, but his wolf was snarling.

"You've got a lot of nerve, Mooncrest," Blaze snarled, his voice a low, furious mutter. He moved a step closer, his body rigid with an anger that was only just kept in control. "Humiliating us in front of the entire pack. What was the idea? To make us look weak?"

"The idea," I retorted, my voice trembling but my head held high, "was to not be ordered about. By you, or by anyone else."

Zane let out a short, hollow laugh that held none of his usual humor. "Not controlled? Rhea, what you did was a public declaration of war. You made fools of us. Do you have any idea what that does to an Alpha's reputation? To our honor?" He shook his head, dragging a hand through his hair. "This is a mess. A complete disaster. And for what? So you could feel powerful for five minutes?"

I wasn't trying to be powerful," I snapped, long-standing wounds of his teasing simmering again. "I was trying to live. Your Elder, Theon, was giving you permission to make me your personal possession.".

Kai, who had been quiet up until this point, spoke up. His voice was even, almost academic, and that served to make it all the more appalling. "Let us not be dramatic. The Elder's recommendation was in the pack's best interest. This… bonding… is an aberration. A disease. It is not destiny. It is a curse from which we must be released. Your emotional outburst only muddled the situation."

"Emotional outburst?" I stared at him in disbelief. His detached analysis was exactly what I'd always hated about him. He treated everything like a problem to be solved on a chalkboard, never a matter of heart or injury. "You were ready to humiliate me, to strip my name and my rights from me, and you call my response an emotional outburst?"

Ash finally moved, stepping closer. He didn't touch me, but his proximity—a smell of pine and rain—filled my senses, and the bond flared with a searing intensity. "Let's cut to the chase, Omega. You have a choice. You can repudiate the bond privately, and the Council will do everything in their power to break it, or… you can continue this uprising, and face the consequences."

"And what are the consequences, Ash?" I insisted, meeting his furious gaze. "More public humiliation? You trying to bully me into submission?"

He leaned in, voice a menacing whisper meant for my ears alone. "Humiliation is the least of it. If you will not end this bond, then we must learn to live with it. And a lunar bond means… possession. Ownership. You made your choice, Rhea.". You've bound yourself to us. Now you're ours. All four of us." The possessiveness in his tone was a brand, a deep-seated threat that sent a shudder through me. "And if you continue to defy us, you'll find that a bonded Omega has no say in her fate. The next time your heat comes back, you'll be ours. And we won't be as gentle as Theon was."

It was a cold, calculated threat. A memory I had spent so long trying to bury surfaced—a flashback to Ash and his friends cornering me in the academy cafeteria, spilling my food onto the ground, laughing as I desperately scrambled to pick it up. He was doing it again. Laying claim to what was mine and making it his.

"I am no one's property," I said, the words a raw whisper.

Blaze, his patience finally snapping, let out a frustrated growl. “Shut up! She won’t listen! She thinks she’s special!” He lunged, his hand slamming into my chest. The force of the blow was unexpected, sending me crashing backward into the cold metal of a row of lockers. The impact knocked the wind out of me. My book bag fell to the floor, its contents scattering.

The other three Alphas recoiled, their faces registering shock. They had not expected Blaze to resort to violence so quickly, not here, not in the middle of a school hallway. But for me, it was an old pain, a physical echo of every cruel word and every humiliating prank they had ever perpetrated. I saw the anger in Blaze's eyes, the fire of his rejection, and felt a second, more intense shock of pain along the bond.

My eyes blurred with tears of hurt and humiliation. This was it. This was the reality of the bond. It was not a fairy tale. It was a prison, and my wardens were the same ones who had imprisoned me long before the lunar spirit ever had. I looked at the three of them, frozen where they stood, and then at Blaze, his chest heaving with anger.

"I hate this bond!" he snarled. "I hate what you have done to us! I hate you!"

I pushed myself off the lockers, my back aching and my head throbbing. My trembling hands searched for my bag's scattered items. My history book. A tattered notebook. A photo of my mother, Lira, and her fierce, untamed smile. A tiny vial of soothing oil from Healer Mira. It was all a bitter reminder of my life before them, one of quiet survival that was no more.

I would not cry. I would not let them have the pleasure of victory. My voice, as weak as it was, had a new determination to it. "You can push me into a locker. You can threaten me. You can even hate me. But you cannot break what I did not create. The bond is there. It is part of me now. It is part of you. And you are just going to have to live with it."

"Don't push us, Rhea," Ash warned, his voice low and menacing. "We're not the same boys you knew. We're Alphas. And you're playing a game you can't possibly win."

I met his gaze, and for the first time, I felt the slightest sense of power, a tiny seed of control that had been planted within me. "Neither are you," I breathed. "And you're going to discover that."