Reborn of The Omega He Threw Away

Chapter Five

Nadia's POV

The room went silent for exactly one heartbeat before it exploded into motion.

Cade was on his feet instantly, shouting orders seal the borders, gather the trackers, wake his father immediately. Dorian stood in the doorway, breathing hard, his eyes flicking to me for just a fraction of a second before darting away again just as fast.

That flicker told me everything I needed to know.

Last time, the moonstone theft happened during the ceremony itself, in front of the whole pack, with evidence carefully planted to point at me over the following weeks. This time, it had happened early, quietly, and I hadn't even known it was possible until an hour ago.

Someone had moved faster than my memories could ever predict.

"Where were you an hour ago?" Cade asked me suddenly, and my whole body went cold with fear.

"In the kitchens," I said steadily. "Ask anyone there. I was working until sundown, and plenty of people saw me."

"I'm not accusing you," he said quickly, softening his tone. "I need to know where everyone was tonight. That includes you, Nadia."

Dorian's eyes narrowed at me from across the room, calculating something behind them, and I understood with sudden clarity that he had already decided exactly who to blame for this. He didn't need real proof at all. He only needed a story convincing enough for a pack already primed to distrust an omega girl who had married far above her station in life.

"I'll question the guards myself," Dorian said smoothly. "Nadia should be confined to the omega quarters until this whole matter is resolved. For her own protection, of course."

"No," Cade said flatly, cutting him off. "She's my mate. She stays with me, where I can see her."

Dorian's jaw tightened visibly, but he said nothing more, bowing stiffly before leaving the study without another word. The moment the door shut behind him, I let out a breath I didn't even realize I'd been holding this whole time.

"You're shaking again," Cade murmured, stepping closer to me.

"They're going to try to blame me," I said quietly. "I know it, Cade."

"No one is blaming you," he said, but I heard the smallest thread of uncertainty creeping into his voice, and it terrified me far more than open accusation ever could have. I had heard that exact hesitation before, once, right before the hearing that ended my life.

I stayed in Cade's study long after the tracker's news, listening to him bark orders through the door, watching lantern light bob across the courtyard below as guards fanned out into the dark. I pressed my forehead against the cold window glass and made myself breathe slowly, counting each breath the way I used to during the worst nights of my old life.

That night, guards searched the entire pack territory from end to end. By morning, whispers had already started spreading an omega girl, new to the pack, suddenly cozy with the Alpha, present in the territory the very week the sacred moonstone vanished without a trace. Nobody said my name outright, not yet. They didn't need to say it.

Talia found me in the courtyard, her face arranged into perfect, practiced concern. "This is terrible," she said, squeezing my hand gently. "People are saying awful things about you. I told them it's ridiculous, obviously, but you know how packs love to gossip about anything."

"Thank you," I said, watching her carefully. "For defending me like that."

"Of course," she said, smiling sweetly, squeezing my hand once more before letting go. "What are best friends for, Nadia?"

I wanted to scream directly into her face. Instead, I smiled back just as sweetly and silently thanked every version of myself who had learned, the hardest way possible, exactly what that particular smile was really worth underneath.

Three days later, Cade called me into his study, his face grim in a way I had never once seen before not even in my memories of the version of him who let me burn alive without a word.

"They found something," he said quietly. "In the omega quarters. In your room, Nadia."

My stomach dropped straight through the floor beneath me.

"A cloth wrapped around a small piece of stone," he continued, his voice tight. "Dorian says it matches a fragment broken off the moonstone's original setting."

"I didn't put that there," I said immediately, my voice steady even as panic clawed its way up my throat. "Cade, I swear to you, I have never once touched that stone in my life."

He studied me for a long, agonizing moment, and I saw the war happening quietly behind his eyes instinct against evidence, feeling against proof, the mate bond screaming one thing while his brother's careful frame screamed something else entirely.

"I want to believe you," he said finally, his voice barely above a whisper.

"But?" I whispered back.

"But my father is demanding a formal hearing. Tomorrow, in front of the whole pack." His jaw tightened visibly. "If the evidence stands against you, Nadia, even I might not have the power left to stop what happens next to you."

I remembered, with horrible clarity, exactly what happened next the last time around. Torches burning in the dark. A circle closing in around me. His face turning away from mine like I was already gone.

I had come back with three full years of knowledge and still walked directly into the same terrible trap, just faster this time, just crueler than before.

"There has to be proof," I said desperately. "Real proof somewhere. Someone planted that stone in my room deliberately. Someone out there is lying to your face."

"I know," Cade said quietly, and something steady in his voice made me look up sharply at him, searching his face for any sign of doubt. "Which is exactly why I already have someone watching Dorian's every move since this morning began."

Hope flickered inside me, fragile and small but undeniably real.

"And Nadia," he added, his eyes locking onto mine, completely serious. "Whoever framed you made one critical mistake. They didn't count on me actually loving you enough to look past the evidence in front of me."

Before I could respond to that, a sharp knock cut through the room, and one of Cade's trackers burst in, completely breathless.

"Alpha," he gasped out, still catching his breath. "You need to see this right now. We found where the real moonstone is hidden and you're not going to believe who led us straight to it."