The Executioner Omega

Chapter Five — The One Who Stayed

The headache didn't fade until well past midnight, and by then Iris had been moved again — not back to the storage room, but to a small chamber in the pack house's residential wing, the door left unlocked for the first time since the ceremony. She wasn't sure if that was Rowan's doing or simply an oversight born of chaos. Either way, she was too exhausted to question it.

She was curled on the narrow bed, knees drawn to her chest, staring at nothing, when the door creaked open without a knock.

"I brought food," Lyra said, easing inside with a wooden tray balanced against her hip, kicking the door shut behind her with practiced ease. "You didn't eat yesterday. Or the day before, from what I heard, which — honestly, Iris, even fugitives need to eat."

Iris hadn't seen Lyra since before the ceremony. Her oldest friend looked older somehow, or maybe just more tired, dark circles shadowing eyes that had once found something to laugh about in nearly everything.

"You shouldn't be here," Iris said, though the words came out weak, unconvincing even to her own ears. "People will say you're involved. That you're protecting a—"

"A murderer? A monster? I've heard the words, Iris, half the pack's been shouting them in the corridors for four days." Lyra set the tray down on the small table and dropped onto the edge of the bed like she'd done a hundred times before, in a hundred different rooms, ever since they were children hiding from crueler wolves together. "And I don't believe a single one of them."

"You should. I don't even believe myself some days." Iris pulled her knees tighter to her chest. "I read someone's whole life today, Lyra. Just by looking at him. I saw things he'd spent years hiding, and it came out of me like poison, like I didn't even choose to say it."

"Did what you said turn out to be true?"

Iris hesitated. "Yes."

"Then it sounds less like poison and more like justice that finally found somewhere to land." Lyra reached over and pried one of Iris's hands away from her knee, holding it between both of hers the way she used to when they were young and Iris's hands wouldn't stop shaking after a bad day. "I'm not saying it isn't terrifying. I'm saying terrifying and wrong aren't the same thing."

Iris's throat tightened. "How are you not afraid of me?"

"Because I've known you since we were six years old, and you cried for a week after accidentally stepping on a beetle." Lyra's mouth curved, gentle and a little sad. "Whatever ancient, terrifying thing is waking up inside you, Iris — it's waking up inside someone who has spent her whole life trying not to hurt anyone. I don't think that changes just because you suddenly have the power to."

"Darius doesn't seem to think it'll stay that way." Iris's voice dropped, the memory of his parting words still lodged uncomfortably behind her ribs. "He said I'll never be able to look at a crowd again without seeing everything rotten hiding in it. That it'll change me."

"Then let it change you into someone who protects people from the things you see instead of someone who gets crushed under the weight of seeing them." Lyra squeezed her hand. "You get to choose what this becomes, Iris. Nobody else gets to write that story for you. Not Darius. Not the pack. Not even the moon."

Iris laughed, wet and unexpected, the sound cracking something loose in her chest that had been wound too tight for days. "When did you get so wise?"

"I've always been wise. You've just been too busy being tragic to notice." Lyra bumped their shoulders together, and for a moment, just a moment, it felt like the ceremony had never happened — like Iris was still just an ordinary Omega girl sharing a room with her best friend, nothing ancient or dangerous sleeping beneath her skin.

The moment didn't last. It never seemed to, lately.

"There's something else," Lyra said carefully, releasing Iris's hand to reach into the pocket of her dress. "I probably shouldn't have taken this. But I heard the guards talking, and I thought you should see it before anyone decides you shouldn't."

She held out a folded scrap of parchment, worn soft at the edges as though it had been carried a long way.

Iris unfolded it with trembling fingers. It was a page torn from somewhere — old ink, faded but legible, sketched with the same silver-threaded symbol that had marked Varek's body, surrounded by handwriting she didn't recognize but somehow, impossibly, understood.

To the one who forgets herself: when the seventh seal breaks, so does the promise. Choose carefully who stands beside you when it does. Not every wolf who claims your bloodline shares your blood.

"Where did this come from?" Iris's voice had gone very quiet.

"The guards found it on the Beta you exposed today. Sewn into the lining of his coat." Lyra's expression had turned serious, the earlier warmth giving way to something more urgent. "Iris, if Darius's spy was carrying a page from whatever book that symbol came from — that means Darius already has the rest of it. He's not guessing about what you are. He's been planning for this a very long time."

Iris stared at the parchment, at the phrase that wouldn't stop echoing in her skull. Not every wolf who claims your bloodline shares your blood.

Rowan's family had guarded the Ledger for generations, never able to read past the first page.

What if the reason they'd never been able to read it wasn't an accident at all?

A knock sounded at the door — sharp, urgent, nothing like Lyra's earlier ease. Kael's voice came muffled through the wood, tight with the particular strain of a man delivering news he didn't want to say aloud.

"Iris. You need to come now." A pause, heavy enough that both girls exchanged a glance. "Alpha Rowan's fallen ill. Whatever's happening to him — the healers say it started the moment he touched that book."