The Omega He Gave Away

||4|| Three Days Until She Crawls Back

Kael woke with a start, his hand instinctively reaching for the other side of the bed.

The silk sheets were cold.

Smooth.

Empty.

He blinked against the harsh morning light streaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the Alpha's suite.

For one confusing, half-conscious second, his mind searched for a familiar scent—the soft, calming aroma of dried lavender and wild honey that had permeated his room for the last six years.

But it was gone.

In its place was the sharp, aggressive jasmine of Selene's perfume, clinging to the heavy velvet curtains and thick rugs like a suffocating shroud.

Selene herself was already up, likely conferring with her handmaidens or the pack's decorators about the upcoming coronation gala.

Kael sat up, a low growl vibrating in the back of his throat.

A dull, throbbing ache resided deep within his chest, right behind his sternum. It wasn't a physical injury, but a phantom pain—the jagged, raw edges of the Mate Bond he had severed the night before.

Mistake, his wolf whispered, a low, ominous sound in the back of his mind.

"Silence," Kael muttered, rubbing his face with his hands.

His wolf had been restless since the ceremony.

Usually, the beast was a silent, lethal passenger, subservient to Kael's Alpha will. But this morning, it was pacing the cage of his mind, its hackles raised, its amber eyes fixed on the empty space beside the bed.

It felt as if a limb had been amputated, leaving behind a terrifying, phantom itch that couldn't be scratched.

He stood and walked to the window, looking out over the sprawling, prosperous territory of the Bloodclaw Pack.

He had done what was necessary.

He had chosen power.

He had chosen Selene, whose father controlled the northern shipping lanes and commanded three thousand seasoned warriors.

With Selene as his Luna, Bloodclaw would become the dominant force in the hemisphere.

Elara was...

She was just Elara.

A mistake of his youth.

A girl who had comforted him when he was a boy, but who had no place in the world of kings and conquerors.

She was an Omega—physically weak, politically useless, and far too soft for the brutal realities of ruling.

She saved you, his wolf growled.

She healed the wounds that should have killed us.

She was the anchor.

"She was a placeholder," Kael countered, his voice cold and certain. "She was the shadow I needed while I built the light. Now the light is here."

A sharp knock at the door interrupted his internal argument.

"Enter," Kael commanded, his Alpha voice instantly snapping into place, heavy and demanding.

Commander Vance stepped inside, his expression uncharacteristically grim.

Vance was Kael's oldest friend and his most trusted advisor, a man who had survived a hundred battles. He rarely looked this unsettled.

"Alpha," Vance said, bowing his head.

"Report," Kael said, moving to his dressing table and pulling on a charcoal-gray silk shirt. "Has the North-Reach delegation finalized the trade tariffs?"

"Not yet, Alpha. Alpha Garrick is... negotiating. He knows we need his warriors for the winter border push."

Vance hesitated, his gaze shifting to the floor.

"But that isn't why I'm here."

Kael paused, one hand on his silver cufflinks.

"What is it?"

"It's Elara, Alpha."

Vance's voice dropped.

"She's gone."

Kael didn't flinch.

He didn't even turn around.

"Of course she's gone. I rejected her. I expected her to move her things to the servants' quarters last night."

"She didn't go to the servants' quarters, Alpha," Vance said. "She left the territory. Entirely. The border guards reported a single figure crossing the northern boundary line just before dawn. The scent trail was masked with Cinder-root, but the tracker dogs identified the signature."

He paused.

"It was her."

Kael froze.

The silver cufflink slipped from his fingers, clattering loudly against the polished marble floor.

"She went toward the Borderlands?" Kael asked, his voice low and dangerous. "Alone? In a dress?"

"She went back to her hut first. We found her ceremonial dress in the hearth. Burned. She took her traveling leathers, a basic medical kit, and... almost nothing else."

Vance looked up, his eyes filled with a concern he couldn't hide.

"No horse. No escort. No winter cloak. Almost no supplies."

"Kael, the blizzards are coming in. There are rogues on the other side of that line. She won't survive the night."

Kael felt a sudden, sharp spike of irritation.

It wasn't fear.

He refused to let it be fear.

It was a profound, stinging annoyance.

How dare she?

How dare she reject the mercy he had so graciously offered?

How dare she throw a tantrum and walk into the wild, making him look like a monster in front of his elders?

"She is throwing a fit," Kael said, finally turning to face Vance, his expression a mask of cold arrogance. "She is trying to make me feel guilty. She thinks that by putting herself in danger, I'll go running after her like a lovesick pup."

"Kael, she was bleeding from the severance," Vance reminded him. "The pain alone should have incapacitated her. The fact that she walked five miles to the border is... it shouldn't be possible."

"She has always been stubborn," Kael snapped. "But stubbornness won't kill a Feral."

He walked back to the window, staring toward the jagged, gray mountains of the north.

"She'll realize her mistake soon enough. The Borderlands aren't a storybook. Once the hunger sets in, once the first rogue tries to take a bite out of her, she'll come crawling back."

His jaw tightened.

"She has no skills. No pack. No mate."

Kael looked toward the north.

"Give her three days."

"Three days of cold and fear, and she'll be scratching at the gates, begging Selene for that cot in the kitchen. Don't send a search party. Don't waste the resources. She chose this."

Vance opened his mouth as if to argue, but the look on Kael's face silenced him.

"As you wish, Alpha."

"Was there anything else?" Kael asked, dismissal clear in his tone.

"Actually, yes. There is a problem at the vaults."

Kael frowned.

"The vaults? The Moonstone reserves?"

"The Master of Coin is waiting in the war room. It seems... there's a discrepancy. A significant one."

Kael felt a cold prickle of unease.

He finished dressing and strode down the long, echoing hallways of the Pack House. Everywhere he went, warriors bowed, but the atmosphere was brittle.

The morning after a Luna Ceremony should have been filled with celebration.

But today, there was a strange, heavy tension in the air.

He entered the war room, where the Master of Coin, an elderly, nervous Beta named Corin, was frantically shuffling through thick ledgers.

"Alpha," Corin squeaked, bowing low. "Thank you for coming."

"What is the meaning of this, Corin?" Kael demanded, taking his seat at the head of the massive obsidian table. "Vance says there's a discrepancy."

"It's... it's the Moonstone supply, Alpha. The refined stones we use to stabilize the pack bond and power the boundary wards."

Corin's trembling finger pointed to a line on the ledger.

"Our records indicated we had enough reserves to last through the next three winters. But when the quartermasters went to the vault this morning to prepare the monthly distribution for the warriors..."

"Speak up, man," Kael growled.

"The high-grade reserves are lower than the records claim, Alpha," Corin whispered, sweating profusely. "Not gone. Not yet. But low enough to make every winter projection unreliable. And the discrepancies... they only appeared when we did the physical count this morning."

Kael slammed his fist onto the obsidian table.

The stone cracked under the force of his blow.

"Are you telling me someone stole them?" Kael roared. "Under my nose?"

"We don't know, Alpha!" Corin cried, nearly falling out of his chair. "The ledgers look perfect on the surface, but the math doesn't add up. And the northern vein—our primary source—is reporting a sudden drop in quality. The latest samples are increasingly unstable."

Kael stared at the ledger, his jaw tight.

The timing was a jagged splinter in his mind.

Elara had spent half her life in that infirmary, surrounded by the very stones that were now failing.

"Where is the new shipment?" Kael asked, his voice dangerously quiet. "The one from North-Reach? Selene's father promised a thousand stones as part of the dowry."

Vance stepped forward, his face grim.

"The caravan has been delayed, Alpha. We just got word from the scouts. The northern pass is slow-going due to the early snows. The stones won't arrive for at least another week."

A heavy, oppressive silence fell over the room.

Without Moonstones, the pack bond would eventually begin to fray.

It wasn't an immediate collapse.

But the anchor was weakening.

"The border veins," Kael said, his voice tight. "We have the secondary mines on the northern edge."

"There's a blockage in the main tunnel, Alpha," Corin said, his voice trembling. "And the yield from the northern edge has plummeted. The stone is brittle, almost inert."

Kael looked at his hands.

He could feel the ache in his chest intensifying.

It wasn't just the phantom pain of the broken bond anymore.

It was the first, faint tremor of a pack-wide instability.

He had chosen Selene for her power.

He had chosen the North-Reach alliance to secure his future.

But as he looked at the reports of unstable veins and missing counts, a cold, terrifying thought flickered in the back of his mind.

The thought was absurd.

Insulting.

Elara had been a healer, nothing more. She could not have anything to do with unstable veins or record discrepancies.

This was sabotage.

Or simply a run of bad luck.

Find her, his wolf roared, the sound so loud it made his vision swim.

Find the mate!

"No," Kael whispered, his jaw set in a hard, stubborn line. "She is an Omega. She has no power over the earth. This is a coincidence. Sabotage by our enemies. Selene will handle it. North-Reach will provide."

He stood up, his Alpha presence radiating a forced, brittle confidence.

"Double the patrols. Tell Garrick to clear the pass by any means necessary. And as for Elara..."

He looked toward the northern windows, where the first flakes of a massive blizzard were beginning to fall.

"Give her three days," he repeated, though his voice lacked its earlier conviction. "By the time the snow clears, she'll be begging to come home. And then she'll tell us exactly what she knows about the missing stones."

He turned and strode out of the room, ignoring the hollow, echoing silence that followed him.

He was the Alpha of Bloodclaw.

He had made the right choice.

He just had to wait for the world to realize it.