Omega's Revenge

CHAPTER FIVE

Chapter Five

Lyra

The room was familiar.

From the crack in the plaster above the window, running northeast like a fault line, that had been there since I was twelve to the little dolls over the mantle place.

They had changed everything they could change.

New curtains. Different furniture. Edric's mark carved into the door frame where my father's had been.

But they couldn't replace everything, every single memory that had made this place my home all those years ago.

I sat on the edge of the bed and let myself have exactly one minute of it — the weight of being back inside these walls, in a room three doors down from where my mother used to braid my hair and tell me that a woman who knew her own mind was worth ten who didn't.

One minute of that, and the fact that she was gone.

My hand moved to my neck and I flinched at the empty skin.

Guilt slamming into my gut at losing her necklace and the only keepsake I had of her when my uncle had thrown me out.

Then I stood taller, shaking off that feeling.

I didn't have time for self pity.

I had a wound to tend and a meeting tonight that would determine whether the next few months ended with me standing by the Alpha King's side or buried along with the thousands he had already killed.

I did not have time to grieve in a home that no longer belonged to me.

The door opened and a maid walked through, she dumped the bowl of water and rags on the table looking furious.

"For your wounds my lady," she gritted and I almost smiled. She obviously didn't want to be serving the lowest ranked member of the pack.

I smiled at her, my fangs glinting and she shrank into herself.

"I will leave, my lady," she whispered and I waved at her as she slipped through the door.

I walked to the table and collapsed on the chair, grabbing a piece of cloth and dipping it in the warm water.

I cleaned the cut along my ribs with water from the basin hissing at the sting — it was shallow, already closing, the advantage of wolf blood — and bound it tightly with a strip of hemp cloth from a spare dress that had been left for me.

Almost twenty hours earlier, I had been stuck in a prison cell, now I was in a well furnished room with everything at my disposal.

The irony of that was not lost on me.

I was no longer a prisoner but an Alpha's betrothed and I planned to get my revenge. Which meant tonight's meeting with Darius needed to go well.

I finished binding the wound, straightened, and looked at the crack above the window for one more second.

Then I turned away from it and fell into bed, my eyes closing as I fell asleep.

The summons came at mid-morning, and with it the clothes I was meant to wear. They looked better than anything I had worn in a long time.

I got dressed and pinned my hair back deliberately, nothing loose, nothing that could be read as effort or as carelessness — a perfect middle ground.

This was a battleground but I could walk into it looking gorgeous.

"It is time for you to join the banquet, my lady," the maid from earlier whispered to me.

I nodded, following her along the corridor and down the stairs. The moment I stepped into the great hall my breath seized within me.

I had stood in this room a hundred times as a child. For pack gatherings, for my father's councils, for the feast the night he was formally recognized as Alpha — I had sat at the long table to his left and felt, for the first and only time in my life, that I understood what it meant to belong somewhere.

It was all different now.

Edric's banners hung where my father's had and the room was filled with smiling sycophantic faces.

I scanned the people in the crowd just as they scanned me.

A few shocked faces from the ones who recognized me and blatant contempt from the ones who had already decided I would be better off gone.

A few others who understood that the political ground had shifted overnight were looking at the big picture and calculating how they could win me over discreetly.

Over by the third pillar on the left — two nobles stood a bit too close together, speaking carefully, like people who didn't want to be overheard.

The older one I didn't recognize but the younger one I did — Lord Cassian Vire, smooth-faced and equally smooth talking, carrying the ease of someone who had never once in his life been caught off guard.

I filed him away and kept moving.

Edric found me before I had crossed the room.

He looked older.

The easy smile was still there — but something around his eyes had tightened in the years since I'd last seen him.

Likely the effort of maintaining a lie long enough that it became load-bearing.

"Lyra." He said my name like a greeting and a warning at the same time.

"I didn't expect to see you looking so—"

"Well?" I said.

He smiled.

"I was going to say composed."

"I know." I held his gaze for exactly long enough. "You always did underestimate me, uncle."

I made to move past him before he could find the shape of a response when Sera glided over to us. She had crossed the room faster than I expected.

She had her mother's coloring — fair, soft-featured, the kind of face that made people assume gentleness and was not entirely wrong to do so.

She had always been gentle. It was her most useful quality.

A necklace sat at the base of her throat.

Three strands of fine silver chain with a grey moonstone pendant, the color of river water in winter.

My heart stopped.

My mother's necklace.

She had worn it every day of her life that I could remember. She had told me once that my grandmother had worn it before her, and her mother before that. It had been in our bloodline longer than the Valen name itself.

"Hello cousin," Sera whispered, touching it, her fingertips moving over the pendant.

Rage tore through me — hot, ragged, mingled with grief so tightly I couldn't separate them, rising through my chest and into my throat before I had formed a single thought about stopping it.

Sera smiled softly and I knew that she knew exactly what she was doing.

I had taken a step toward her before I caught myself.

"Ahh yes, it's been a while since you two girls met," my uncle muttered like this was some sort of happy reunion.

"Why is she wearing my necklace?" I hissed and my uncle frowned, looked at Sera and then back at me.

"I'm not sure what you mean, dear girl," he mumbled and I scoffed.

"Either you are dumb or very blind but that is my mother's necklace hanging on your daughter's neck and I want to know why," I hissed.

He squinted as if he was seeing it for the first time and it was a struggle to resist the urge to slap him across the face.

"Give me back my necklace," I hissed and Sera sighed.

"Cousin, don't you think you're being too harsh now?" she whispered and I blinked.

"I didn't do anything to you, I just asked for my mother's necklace," I gritted and she nodded, pouting.

"Yes but, it's been mine for a while and I have grown attached."

I felt it happening — the smallest fracture in my composure, very dangerous.

I looked away from Sera and across the room to the figure that had been watching me since the moment I stepped into the room.

Darius.

He stood near the dais with two of his advisors, giving every appearance of listening to whatever was being said to him.

But his eyes were on me. Had been on me, I understood, for at least the last few seconds.

He had seen it.

From his expression, he had seen everything. He was not pleased.

His expression didn't change. He simply held my gaze for one moment, then returned his attention to his advisors as if nothing had passed between us.

I let out a breath and turned back to Sera.

"I want it back," I said quietly. "Today."

Sera opened her mouth.

A hand closed around my arm.

I knew who it was before I turned. That grip — firm, presumptuous, the grip of a man who had never once considered himself wrong.

Aldric.

He had positioned himself just behind my right shoulder, close enough that the contact looked incidental to anyone watching.

His mate Sera didn't find it amusing.

"Aldric, she's bullying me," she hissed, grabbing his arm.

"A word," he said.

"Let go of my arm."

"Lyra." The way he said it, patiently, slightly pained, like he was managing an unreasonable child.

"Let's speak privately. You don't have to make things hard for Sera, especially given the circumstances."

"The circumstances," I repeated.

"Your — arrangement." He glanced toward the dais. "Surely you have no need for the necklace."

I looked down at his hand on my arm. Then up at his face.

"It's my mother's keepsake. Why should I leave it to an outsider?"

"Sera is your cousin—"

"I said," I said softly, "let go of my arm."

He didn't.

His grip tightened instead — not enough to hurt, just him asserting his authority. My wolf came to the surface in a single, clean surge. I twisted my arm, breaking his grip with a sharp pull.

Aldric stumbled forward a half step.

The people nearest us went still.

"Don't," I said. My voice didn't rise. It didn't need to. "Touch me again."

Something moved across his face — not quite shame, not anger either.

"Lyra—"

Darius called, his voice low, and the Alpha call made it echo through the hall.

The room went quiet.

Darius hadn't moved. He stood at the dais, his amber eyes moving from me to Aldric, who shrank into himself.

Aldric, who had called me undesirable. Who had dissolved our engagement like a minor inconvenience.

A huff of laughter escaped my lips.