I don't remember the moment I collapsed, only the sound of the storm swallowing me whole.
Branches whipped my face. My heartbeat drowned out the thunder. Every breath tore through my ribs.I should have turned back. I should have begged.But I was done begging.
The forest was endless, dark, alive. Wolves howled somewhere behind me : not in warning, in hunger.My fingers clutched the small pendant at my throat, the one Damian had given me the night he'd marked me.The metal burned now, as if it too wanted to be rid of me.
When dawn came, I was half dead, curled beneath a fallen tree.That's when I felt it : a faint flutter in my belly.A heartbeat that wasn't mine.
My tears came hot and silent.I pressed both hands against the small curve of life inside me.
"You," I whispered, voice shaking. "You're all I have left."
Days blurred.Weeks passed.I found shelter in the ruins beyond the border, a forgotten village swallowed by mist.I hunted. I healed. I hid.
And I planned.
Every night, I replayed his words : you are no longer my mate.They became the rhythm of my training, the pulse of my rage.If the world wanted me gone, I would return as something it could never ignore.
Five years later.
The woman in the mirror is not the same.Her eyes are colder. Her scars have stories.The wolves that once hunted her now kneel when she passes.
"Alpha Hale," one of them murmurs as I step into the council hall.
Alpha.
The title tastes strange, powerful, right.No one remembers the omega who was cast out.No one knows I once loved the man who destroyed me.
But the past has a way of finding its way home.
A messenger bursts through the doors, breathless."Alpha! The Silver Moon Pack is under siege. Their Alpha requests a parley"
My pen stops mid-stroke.I look up slowly.
"What's his name?"
The messenger swallows. "Damian Blackthorn."
The room freezes. My wolves exchange glances, waiting for my command.
I smile : a slow, dangerous curve of lips that tastes like revenge.
"Tell him" I say, rising from my seat, "the Alpha he rejected will see him now."
The hall falls silent as my footsteps echo down the marble floor.Outside, thunder rolls again, just like the night I fell.
Only this time, I'm the storm.