Chapter 2: The Girl Who Ran
966 Words
Aria didn't stop running until the trees swallowed the torchlight of the castle behind her.
Branches tore at her dress, roots caught at her bare feet — she'd lost her shoes somewhere between the Great Hall and the edge of the training grounds, hadn't even noticed — but she didn't slow down. If she slowed down, she would feel it. The place in her chest where the bond had been, raw and hollowed out, like something had reached inside her and torn a piece away.
Not fit to stand beside the throne.
She pressed a hand to her sternum as though she could hold herself together by force, and kept moving until her legs gave out beneath her at the edge of a small clearing, moonlight spilling down through a gap in the canopy.
She let herself cry there. Just for a moment. Just until she remembered that no one was coming to find her — that no one ever really had.
"You're going to catch your death out here."
Aria startled, scrambling backward before she recognized the voice. Wren Ashby dropped down from a low branch with the easy grace of someone born a Beta, though nothing about her carried the arrogance most Betas wore like a second skin. Wren had been the only person in the pack who'd ever treated Aria like a person instead of furniture — sneaking her food during lean winters, covering for her when the older Omegas worked her too hard.
"Wren." Aria's voice cracked. "How did you—"
"I followed you." Wren crouched in front of her, dark eyes soft with a fury she was visibly trying to keep leashed. "Everyone in that hall is a coward, you know that? A coward and a fool, and I include the King in that, crown or no crown."
"Don't." Aria shook her head. "You'll get in trouble."
"I don't care." Wren sat beside her in the damp grass, shoulder pressed to Aria's like an anchor. "What he did back there — that wasn't about some old prophecy, Aria. I saw his face. He felt the bond same as you. I don't know why he threw it away, but it wasn't nothing."
Aria wanted to believe that. She hated herself a little for wanting to.
"It doesn't matter why," she said instead. "He rejected me in front of the entire kingdom. That's the only part anyone will remember."
Wren didn't argue, because they both knew it was true. A public rejection wasn't just heartbreak — it was a verdict. By morning, every pack from the Blackthorn territory to the Sacred Moon Temple would know Aria Nightshade had been found unworthy by her own fated mate. Doors that were already barely open to an Omega would close completely. She would be lucky to keep her position scrubbing floors in the kitchens.
A twig snapped somewhere behind them.
Both girls went still. Wren's hand shot out, gripping Aria's wrist, pulling her down into the shadow of a fallen log. Aria held her breath, straining to listen — and heard low voices, careful and deliberate, coming from the tree line just beyond the clearing.
"—can't risk her digging into it. Not now, not with the Council already asking questions about the eastern border collapse."
"She's an Omega. What exactly do you think she's going to dig into?" A second voice, female, edged with impatience. Aria's blood went cold. She knew that voice. She'd just heard it in the Great Hall, dressed in violet silk and honeyed cruelty.
Lyra.
"The bloodline doesn't care about rank," the first voice said — male, older, a voice Aria didn't recognize. "If the old records are ever found intact, if anyone ever traces her mother's line back far enough—"
"They won't," Lyra snapped. "The scrolls are ash. The witnesses are dead. All that's left is a frightened girl nobody will believe, especially now that Kael's rejected her in front of the entire kingdom." A soft, satisfied laugh drifted through the dark. "Really, he did us a favor. No one listens to a rejected Omega. She could scream the truth from the palace gates and it would just sound like heartbreak."
Aria's fingers dug into the dirt. The truth about what? Her mother had died when Aria was six — a fever, she'd always been told, nothing more. What bloodline? What records?
"And the King?" the male voice asked. "If he ever learns you forged—"
"He won't," Lyra said, sharp enough to end the conversation. "Because you're going to make sure of it. Now go — the ceremony's not officially closed, and I need to be seen mourning appropriately for my dear cousin's humiliation."
Footsteps retreated in opposite directions. Aria didn't move for a long time afterward, her heart hammering so loud she was certain it would give them away.
"Aria." Wren's whisper was barely audible. "What in the Goddess's name was that?"
Aria stared at the spot where Lyra had stood, the pieces refusing to fit together and yet somehow already changing everything. Forged. Bloodline. Records. Her mother. The prophecy that had just cost her everything.
"I don't know," she whispered back. "But I think someone just told the truth by accident — and I think we weren't supposed to hear it."
Somewhere in the dark beyond the clearing, a wolf howled — long and mournful, answered a moment later by another, and then another, until the whole forest seemed to be grieving something none of them yet understood.
Aria rose to her feet, unsteady but no longer only afraid. Beneath the grief, something new was taking root — small, and sharp, and cold.
She was going to find out what Lyra Ashmoon didn't want her to know. Even if it killed her.
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