Reborn of The Omega He Threw Away

Chapter Four

Nadia's POV

I didn't sleep at all that night. I sat by my window for hours, replaying Dorian's words over and over in my mind. Once he marks her, the bond makes her untouchable.

That meant one thing clearly enough: the claiming the mark that would bind me to Cade forever was my only real protection in this whole pack. Last time, Cade had marked me almost immediately, within the very first month we were together. This time, for some reason I didn't yet understand, he was holding back completely.

I needed to understand why, and I needed to understand it fast.

The next morning, I found him alone by the training field, sharpening a blade with slow, careful strokes. He looked up when I approached, surprise flickering openly across his face I had never once sought him out first before this moment.

"Nadia." He set the blade down carefully. "Everything okay?"

"Why haven't you marked me yet?" I asked bluntly, cutting straight to it.

His eyebrows rose in surprise. For a second I thought I'd overstepped badly, but then something like relief crossed his features instead, like he'd been quietly waiting for someone to finally ask him that question.

"My father," he said slowly. "He wants me to wait a while longer. Says a rushed claiming looks weak to the other packs like I grabbed the first mate I found instead of building something real and lasting."

Rage flickered through me, quiet and carefully controlled. Of course. The old Alpha, cautious and endlessly political, unknowingly leaving me exposed for months while people plotted behind a storage shed just out of sight.

"And what do you want?" I asked him directly.

Cade studied me for a long, quiet moment. "I want you safe," he said finally. "I don't fully understand why, but every instinct in me says you're in danger somehow. I thought it was just new-mate paranoia at first. Maybe it isn't paranoia at all."

My breath caught in my throat. He felt it too some small flicker of the truth, even without a single one of my memories to guide him.

"Then trust that instinct," I said carefully. "Mark me. Soon, Cade."

Something shifted in his expression, warm and startled all at once, like I'd surprised him yet again. "Most girls would run from that kind of request, not straight toward it."

"I'm not most girls," I reminded him quietly, holding his gaze steady even though my pulse was racing underneath my calm voice.

He almost smiled at that a real one, small and completely unguarded, and for one heartbeat I forgot how to breathe properly. It hit far too close to the man I used to love before the fire ever took him from me.

That night, Talia visited my room again, sweeter than ever before, asking careful little questions about Cade, about the ceremony schedule, about whether I trusted his father's advisors around the pack. I answered vaguely and watched every small flicker of her face like a hawk circling its prey.

She was building something. I just didn't know the exact shape of it yet, not fully. I only knew, from painful experience, that whatever it was would eventually be aimed straight at my throat.

Three days later, I got my very first real clue.

I was helping in the pack kitchens an omega duty I'd hated the first time around, but now valued deeply for the gossip it let me quietly overhear when I caught two older pack members whispering nearby about the sacred moonstone.

"They're moving it early this year," one muttered under her breath. "Something about a border dispute with the Thornfield pack. The Alpha wants extra protection placed on it."

Moved early. That was different from what I remembered. Last time, the moonstone theft happened almost a full year from now, during the annual ceremony itself. If it was being moved early this time, my entire timeline of what I remembered might already be shifting under my feet.

My stomach dropped hard. If the theft happened sooner than I expected, I might not have enough time left to build real proof before I was framed for it all over again.

I found Cade that evening in his study, poring over pack ledgers by flickering candlelight. He looked up when I entered, surprised again by my presence I was becoming someone who sought him out now, not someone who simply waited quietly to be found.

"The moonstone," I said carefully. "I heard it's being moved soon."

His eyes narrowed slightly. "Pack business travels fast through the kitchens, apparently. Yes. My father wants it in the vault by next month instead of waiting for the ceremony. Why do you ask?"

I hesitated, weighing exactly how much truth I could safely risk telling him. "I have a strange feeling about it. Like something bad is going to happen around it soon."

He set down his quill slowly, watching me with the same searching look from before. "You keep saying things like that. Feelings. Instincts. Is there something you're not telling me, Nadia?"

My pulse spiked hard. This was the moment. I could tell him everything the fire, the rebirth, Talia and Dorian's whispered plan behind the shed and maybe he would believe me completely, or maybe he would think I was losing my mind, and either way I would have shown my whole hand three years too early for it to matter.

"I just notice things," I said instead, keeping my voice steady. "People. The way they act around each other. Something feels wrong around the moonstone, and I don't think it's nothing at all."

Cade was quiet for a long moment, studying my face like he was trying to read something written beneath my skin.

"I believe you," he said finally, quietly.

Relief crashed through me so hard my knees nearly buckled underneath me.

"I'm going to double the guard on it," he continued, "and I'm going to ask my father to move the claiming ceremony forward instead. If you're right that something's coming, I'd rather you be protected before it happens to you."

For the first time since I woke up in that forest, I let myself believe just a little, just barely that this life might end differently than the last one had.

Then his study door burst open without warning, and Dorian stormed in, his face pale and furious all at once.

"The moonstone's guard just found the vault door open," he said. "It's already gone."