The Omega Who Woke the Beast

CHAPTER 1 The Lake and the Sentence

"You could at least try to look less pathetic, Irina. It's our birthday, not a funeral."

Astrid was leaning against the kitchen doorframe in a white dress that fit her like the fabric was in love with her, platinum hair spilling over her shoulders and that smile she wore when she wanted to remind the world that the moon goddess had handcrafted her.

Irina didn't look up from the plate she was scrubbing.

"If you want me to look less pathetic, tell Maren to stop assigning me last night's dishes. I've been scrubbing since five."

"Oh, little sister. If you had a wolf, you wouldn't be scrubbing dishes. You'd be out there with everyone else, getting ready for the ceremony. But, well." She examined a fingernail. "Everyone gets what they get."

"Yeah. You got to be the blessed one. I got to be your servant. Fair distribution by the goddess."

Astrid tilted her head. That was the thing about Irina: she talked back. Any other omega would've ducked their head and mumbled "yes, miss." But her twin sister, her defective copy, always had something to say. Astrid found it entertaining. Like a dog barking behind a fence.

"Six emissaries are coming today to present courtship offers for me," she said, walking into the kitchen and stealing a grape from the fruit bowl. "Six packs want to marry into the Volkovs. Dad says I can take my time until the moon reveals my mate. In the meantime, let them line up."

"Lucky you."

"Right?" Another grape. "Are you coming down to the party?"

"I wasn't invited."

"Of course you were. Someone has to serve the wine."

Irina kept scrubbing. The water was cold and the soap was cracking her hands. Eighteen years, she thought. Today I turn eighteen and I'm scrubbing the dishes from my sister's banquet. Happy birthday, Irina.

Sick of the kitchen and the sound of the guests' laughter, she escaped to the lake — the only place where she felt at peace. She took off her gray dress and stood naked before the water, the cold air biting her skin and the full moon above, enormous, so close it seemed like you could touch it if you stretched out your hand.

At least you don't judge me, she thought, looking up at it.

She stepped into the water.

The cold stole her breath for a second, like a punch to the chest. Then came the other thing: that feeling she only found here, at this lake, at this hour, when there was no one around to tell her that her body was in the way. She swam to the center in slow strokes.

There has to be more than this, she thought. On the other side of the barrier there are cities. Lights. People who live without packs or alphas or ranks. I've seen the photos on the guards' phones when they think I'm not looking. Streets that never end. Buildings that touch the sky. And I can't even peek.

She closed her eyes. Just her heartbeat and the water and the moon. For a moment, everything was fine.

Then something changed.

It wasn't a sound. It was as if the entire forest had held its breath. The crickets went silent. The frogs stopped croaking. The wind froze between the pines as if something had cut it off at the root.

Irina opened her eyes.

At first she didn't see it. She only felt it was there: a presence that weighed on the air like a storm about to break. Something large. Something that made every hair on her body stand on end.

She turned her head toward the shore.

And stopped breathing.

An enormous beast stood between the trees. Half hidden by shadows, so still it could have been a rock if not for the eyes. Two points of bright yellow light, watching her from the darkness with an intensity that Irina felt in her stomach like a blow.

It was huge. Bigger than any wolf she'd ever seen in the pack. The size of a horse, with fur black as oil and shoulders so broad the low pine branches curved around it. It wasn't a Volkov wolf. Not from any pack she knew. It was something older. Wilder. Something that didn't follow the rules.

A lycanthrope.

Irina's heart became a drum. She could feel it in her throat, in her temples, in her fingertips. She was naked. In the middle of the lake. No wolf, no claws, absolutely nothing between her and that thing that could cross the water in three strides and tear her apart before she had time to scream.

She didn't move.

Her legs wouldn't respond. Her arms floated at her sides as if they didn't belong to her. But it wasn't paralysis. It wasn't a body frozen by fear. It was something else. Something that came from a place deeper than instinct, deeper than anything Irina had felt in eighteen years of life.

A certainty.

Absurd, irrational, impossible to explain.

It's not going to hurt you.

The beast emerged from the trees. Each step was slow, deliberate, with a weight that sank the leaves and snapped the dry branches beneath its paws. It walked down to the lake's edge. Its front paws touched the water. It stopped.

It didn't enter.

It stayed there, at the edge, head lowered and yellow eyes fixed on her. Moonlight fell over it, drawing shadows across its fur that shifted with each breath.

Irina floated in the center of the lake, naked, vulnerable, staring at a creature that could kill her with one swipe. And the creature stared back at her. Without growling. Without baring its teeth. Without anything that resembled a threat.

It looked at her as if it were recognizing her.

She didn't know how much time passed. It could have been seconds or minutes or an entire hour compressed into a moment that had no name.

What are you? she thought.

And why do I feel like I know you?

"Irina!" Maren's voice shattered the silence like glass against the floor. "Irina, damn it, they need you in the kitchen!"

The beast turned its head toward the voices. Torches moving between the trees. Someone was coming.

It looked at Irina one last time. A long second, dense, charged with something she had no words to name. Then it turned and vanished between the pines without making a single sound. A creature the size of a horse moving like smoke. As if it had never been there.

But it had.

Irina swam to the shore with her heart racing and her hands shaking. She dressed in a stumble, clothes sticking to her wet skin. She stood staring at the exact spot between the trees where the beast had disappeared.

"What the hell was that?" she whispered.

The forest didn't answer. But something inside her chest, something new and small that had just woken up, beat once. Hard. As if answering for it.

The party was in full swing when she walked into the hall carrying a tray of wine.

Two hundred wolves celebrating. Astrid in the center, radiant, with her six suitors lining up. Music, howls, food. And Irina serving glasses with her hair still wet and the image of yellow eyes that wouldn't leave her head.

Viktor stood. The hall went silent.

"Tonight we celebrate Astrid. Eighteen years. Blessed by the moon goddess. Pride of this pack."

Applause. Howls.

"But I also bring an announcement. There is a blood debt between our house and the Blackmoor line. Three generations. King Theron Blackmoor has demanded a female of Volkov blood as compensation."

The silence thickened. King Blackmoor. The black castle. The Alpha no one spoke of without lowering their voice.

Viktor looked at her.

"Irina Volkov will depart at dawn tomorrow as an offering from the Volkov line to King Blackmoor."

A plate slipped from her tray and shattered against the floor.

"No!" She said it out loud. The hall turned toward her. "I'm not going."

"You're not being asked," Viktor said.

"I don't care. I'm not a package you can ship off to pay your debts."

Murmurs rippled through the tables. The omega was talking back to the Alpha.

"Irina—" Astrid cut in from her table. "Don't make a scene. It's an honor to represent the family."

"An honor? Sending me to a king they say is cursed?"

"The moon goddess will provide," Borya said with his knife-edge smile. "It's more than someone of your rank can expect."

"Would any of you go?" Irina looked around the hall. "Would any of you accept being packaged up and shipped to a castle that no one knows what goes on inside?"

Silence.

"That's what I thought."

"Enough." Viktor's Alpha voice pressed against her chest like an invisible hand. "You leave at dawn. There's no discussion."

Irina clenched her teeth. Her knees trembled under the weight of the Alpha command. Every omega in the hall ducked their head by instinct.

She didn't.

"If you force me to go," she said, her voice steadier than she expected, "I'll find a way out. You don't know me, Father."

Viktor looked at her. And for the first time in eighteen years, something crossed his eyes that wasn't indifference.

"Get her out."

Two guards took her by the arms. Irina didn't struggle. She walked out with her back straight, looking ahead.

The last thing she saw was Astrid raising her glass with a smile.

In her room, with the door closed, she sat on the bed. Everything was shaking. But not from fear.

From rage.