Reborn of The Omega He Threw Away

Chapter Two

Nadia's POV

Cade didn't move for three full seconds. Neither did I.

Around us, the pack had gone quiet, sensing something shift in the air between us. Talia's hand tightened slightly on my sleeve. I could feel her confusion, her surprise, and underneath it, already, a flicker of something colder settling into place.

"Mate," Cade said. Just that one word, low and rough, like it had been pulled out of his chest against his will.

Gasps rippled through the crowd around us. I heard someone whisper Luna, breathless and thrilled. I heard someone else whisper omega, like it was an insult, and in this pack, sadly, it always had been treated that way.

Last time, this exact moment had felt like the best day of my entire life. I remembered crying happy tears right there in the field. I remembered Cade crossing the grass to take my hand in front of everyone, declaring me his mate before the whole pack could even think to argue with him.

I remembered believing, so foolishly, that this single moment meant I was safe forever.

This time, I forced my feet to stay planted instead of running toward him like my heart was begging me to do.

Cade crossed the field anyway, closing the distance in a handful of long strides. Up close, he was even more overwhelming than I remembered broad chest, storm-gray eyes, a presence that made the air around us feel thinner somehow. He reached for my hand slowly, giving me every chance to pull away first.

I let him take it. My skin remembered his touch even though my heart was screaming at me to run.

"What's your name?" he asked quietly, only for me to hear.

"Nadia," I said. "Nadia Hart."

"Nadia." He said it like he was testing how it felt in his mouth for the first time. "You're shaking."

"It's cold," I lied smoothly.

It wasn't cold. It was fear, and grief, and three years of memories crashing violently against a boy who didn't have a single one of them yet. To him, I was a stranger who had just become the most important person in his entire world. To me, he was the man who let me burn and never once looked back.

Behind him, I saw Talia watching us with a smile stretched too tight across her face. She clapped along with the rest of the pack, but her eyes never warmed, not even for a second.

I remembered this exact expression. I had seen it a hundred times over three years and never once understood what it truly meant. Now, standing here with borrowed time in my hands, I understood everything about it.

"There will be a formal introduction ceremony tonight," Cade announced to the pack, though his eyes never left mine. "Nadia Hart is my mate. Anyone who has a problem with that can bring it to me directly, and only to me."

A few pack members exchanged uneasy looks with one another. Someone near the back muttered a word I didn't catch, and someone else hushed them quickly, glancing my way like I might have heard it anyway. I probably had. Three years of practice had taught me to hear exactly the things people hoped I would miss.

I noticed his brother Dorian standing near the back of the crowd, arms crossed, watching me with an expression I couldn't fully read yet. Last time, it had taken me two years to learn that expression was calculation, not simple curiosity.

This time, I clocked it in half a second flat.

The training session ended early because of the announcement. Cade insisted on walking me back toward the omega quarters himself, ignoring the whispers that followed us the entire way there. I let him talk about the pack, about his father the retired Alpha, about small, harmless things that meant nothing and everything at once.

I barely listened. I was too busy remembering the last time I'd walked this exact path with him, three years from now, on the night everything finally ended between us. The torches. The circle of pack members. His face turning away from mine like I was already a stranger.

"You're quiet," he said finally, stopping outside the omega dormitory door. "Most girls talk my ear off the second they find out they're my mate."

"I'm not most girls," I said simply.

Something shifted in his expression interest, maybe, or surprise. "No. I don't think you are, Nadia." He said my name like it already meant something to him, like he wanted to keep saying it just to hear how it sounded.

He hesitated at the door, like he wanted to say something else, then simply nodded and turned to walk away. I watched him go, my chest aching with a mixture of old love and new suspicion that felt like poison sitting heavy in my blood.

I had a second chance. I understood that now, standing here, alive in a body that should have been ash and nothing more.

But a second chance to do what, exactly? Save myself? Save him too, if that was even possible anymore?

That night, lying awake in the same narrow bed I remembered from three years ago, I made myself a quiet promise. I would not fall into Cade's arms the way I had before, blind and endlessly trusting. I would not treat Talia like a sister when she was already, somewhere in her heart, planning to become my replacement.

I would learn every guard's schedule. I would learn every hallway's shadows. I would watch everyone closely. I would wait patiently. I would gather every piece of proof I never had the first time around.

And when the sacred moonstone disappeared because it would, in exactly eleven months, I remembered the date like a scar burned permanently into my memory I would already know who took it, and why, and I would finally be ready for them.

A knock came at my door so soft I almost missed it. When I opened it, Talia stood there, holding two warm cups of tea and smiling her sweet, familiar smile.

"I thought you might want to talk," she said gently. "About today. About him."

My whole body went cold from the inside out.

Last time, I had let her in without a single second thought.

This time, I stared at the girl who would one day watch me burn without blinking, and I smiled back just as sweetly as she had.

"Come in," I said. "I'd love to."