The Omega Who Knew Too Much

Curious

"You should be grateful," my father said.

I almost laughed. Grateful. Like he was handing me a gift and not signing my death sentence.

I stood in the middle of our front room with my hands clenched at my sides, nails digging into my palms, while my father, my mother, and my sister Rosella looked at me the way you look at something you're about to throw away.

"Grateful for what?" I asked. "For sending me to a man who kills the women they send him?"

"For giving you a purpose," my mother said, like she was tired of explaining herself to me. "You've never had one here."

Rosella sat curled in the big chair by the fire, twirling a piece of her perfect hair around her finger. She didn't even look up. "Honestly, Emilia, you should be thanking us. At least this way you'll be remembered for something."

"Remembered as what? A body nobody found?"

My father's jaw tightened. He hated when I talked back. He hated a lot of things about me — the fact that I never shifted into a wolf, the fact that I wasn't thin and golden like my sister, the fact that I had the nerve to keep breathing even though he made it clear, every single day, that he wished I hadn't been born.

"Watch your mouth," he said.

"Why? What are you going to do? Send me away?" I tipped my chin up. "You're already doing that."

His hand came up so fast I didn't have time to flinch. The slap cracked across my cheek and my head snapped sideways. My eyes burned but I didn't cry. I had stopped giving him that a long time ago.

"You have no wolf," he said, voice low and ugly. "You are an embarrassment to this pack, to this family, to my name. The least you can do is be useful to us once before you go."

"Useful," I repeated. "Is that what they're calling it? I thought it was called feeding me to a monster."

"The King isn't a monster," my mother snapped. "He's the only Alpha strong enough to hold this kingdom together. If sending omegas keeps the peace between him and the packs, then that's what we'll do."

"And if I don't come back?"

Nobody answered. That silence told me everything.

Rosella finally looked at me, and there was something almost like pity in her eyes — almost, but not quite, because pity would have meant she cared. "Nobody comes back, Emilia. You know that."

"Then why send me?"

"Because you're the one we can afford to lose," my father said.

The words landed harder than the slap. I stood there with my cheek stinging and my chest hollow, and I realized I had always known this — known that I was the spare, the disgrace, the one nobody would miss — but hearing it said out loud, so plainly, so easily, broke something in me that I didn't know was still whole.

"Fine," I said, and my voice came out steadier than I felt. "Send me. But I want you to remember you said that. I want you to remember it when I prove you wrong."

My father laughed — an actual laugh, short and cold. "Prove us wrong how? By dying with dignity?"

"By surviving," I said.

Rosella rolled her eyes. My mother sighed like I was being dramatic. My father just turned away, already done with me, already moving on to whatever mattered more than his daughter's life.

"Pack your things," he said over his shoulder. "You leave at sundown."

I went to the small room at the back of the house — the room they gave me after they decided I wasn't worth a real bedroom — and I sat on the edge of the thin mattress and let myself shake for exactly one minute. One minute to be scared. One minute to grieve the family I never really had.

Then I stood up, wiped my face, and started packing.

Because whatever happened at that palace, whatever waited for me in the dark — I was not going to be another name nobody remembered.

I was going to find out why nobody ever came back.

And then I was going to survive long enough to tell someone.

The van smelled like rust and fear.

There were five of us crammed onto the metal benches, all dressed in the same gray dresses, all carrying the same look on our faces — the look of people being delivered somewhere they didn't choose to go. Nobody talked. What was there to say?

I watched the trees blur past the small window, the sky sliding from orange to a deep, bruised purple. Somewhere out there my old life was getting smaller and smaller, and I felt strangely calm about it. There was nothing left in that house worth missing.

The girl across from me had been crying quietly since we left. She looked younger than me, maybe nineteen, with red-rimmed eyes and hands that wouldn't stop trembling.

"First time?" I asked, just to fill the silence.

She nodded. "My pack said it was an honor."

"Mine said it was a punishment," I said. "Funny how it's the same trip either way."

She let out a small, broken laugh, and for a second the fear in her eyes eased — just a little. "I'm Hana."

"Emilia."

"Do you think it's true?" she whispered. "What they say about the King?"

I thought about all the rumors. The King who never let an omega leave his palace. The King whose own council wouldn't say his name without lowering their voice. I didn't know what was true and what was just fear dressed up as gossip, but I knew one thing — too many stories couldn't all be wrong.

"I think something's true," I said. "I just don't think it's what everyone assumes."

She frowned at me like that was a strange thing to say, and maybe it was, but it had been sitting in my chest since the moment my father told me I was being sent away. If the King really killed every omega himself, why would the kingdom risk war by doing it so openly, so often? Kings who want to hide bodies don't usually leave a trail of missing girls a mile wide.

Something about it didn't add up. And I had nothing left to lose by finding out what.

The van slowed as the palace came into view, and every thought in my head went quiet.

It was carved straight into the side of a black mountain, towers jutting up like broken teeth against the night sky, ivy crawling over the stone like dark veins. No lights in most of the windows. No sound at all, except the wind.

"That's it?" Hana whispered, voice shaking.

"That's it," I said, even though my own heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat.

We were herded out of the van by guards in black uniforms, lined up like cattle while a man checked names off a list. When he got to me, he paused.

"Name."

"Emilia."

"Pack?"

"Red Moon. Daughter of Alpha Gregor." I hesitated, then added, "Former daughter. He made me omega."

Something flickered in the guard's eyes — surprise, maybe, or curiosity — but it was gone before I could be sure. "Move along."

Inside, the palace was colder than the night air outside, the stone walls swallowing every sound our footsteps made. A woman in a sharp black dress met us in the entry hall, her eyes scanning over us like she was inspecting livestock.

"You will speak only when spoken to," she said. "You will not look the King in the eye. You will go where you are sent, without question. Is that understood?"

Nobody answered. She didn't seem to expect us to.

"You'll be shown to your quarters. One of you may be called tonight." Her gaze moved slowly over each of us, lingering, calculating, and I felt my stomach drop when it landed on me and stayed there.

"You," she said. "Come with me."

Hana's hand shot out and grabbed my wrist, eyes wide with fear — fear for me, I realized, not for herself. I squeezed her fingers once and let go.

"I'll be fine," I told her, even though I had no idea if that was true.

The mistress led me down a long, narrow hallway lit by flickering torches, deeper into the palace than I think any of the others had gone. My heart slammed against my ribs with every step.

We turned a corner — and that's when I saw it.

A door, slightly open, in a hallway that didn't appear on any map they'd shown us. No guard. No light. Just a sliver of darkness calling to something curious and reckless inside me.

The mistress didn't notice. She kept walking, already three steps ahead, already talking about rules I wasn't listening to anymore.

I don't know what made me do it. Maybe it was the fact that I had nothing left to lose. Maybe it was the same stubborn part of me that told my father I would survive.

When she turned the next corner, out of sight for just a moment —

I slipped through the open door.