Aurelia's POV
Leading a patrol felt different from watching one.
There was no space to disappear into the background, no comfort in anonymity. Every step I took set the pace, every pause drew eyes. Wolves adjusted to my rhythm without meaning to, and that realization sat heavy in my chest.
Talon walked at my right, quiet and alert, his gaze constantly moving—trees, ridgelines, the faint disturbances in the air most wolves never noticed. Raffyn flanked my left, fire held low and controlled, a warning rather than a threat. Lucien followed just behind me, not looming, not hovering—present in the way a shadow becomes familiar enough to stop fearing.
The patrol moved smoothly at first.
Too smoothly.
The forest felt… wrong. Not hostile. Not silent. Just attentive, like it was waiting for something to misstep.
"Slow," Talon murmured.
I lifted my hand, and the patrol halted instantly. That, too, was new—how quickly they listened now.
I closed my eyes briefly and let my awareness stretch, not outward, but downward. Into the soil. Into the flow beneath roots and stone. The magic responded gently, cautious after the discipline Silvara had drilled into me.
"There's been movement," I said. "But not recent."
Raffyn frowned. "Tracks?"
"No," I replied. "Absence. Something was here that shouldn't have been."
Lucien's voice was low. "A watch point."
Before anyone could respond, a sharp crack split the air.
Not an explosion.
A signal.
Talon swore under his breath. "That came from behind us."
The forest erupted into motion.
Figures broke from cover—too coordinated to be scouts, too few to be an attack force. Distraction, not invasion.
"Circle up!" Raffyn barked.
Fire flared as wolves shifted into defensive positions. I stayed where I was, heart pounding but feet planted, forcing myself not to react instinctively.
That was the mistake.
The real strike didn't come from the trees.
It came from the patrol itself.
A young warrior—one I recognized, one who'd volunteered eagerly this morning—stepped too close. His scent spiked suddenly, sharp with panic and something else beneath it.
Resolve.
"Don't move," Lucien warned sharply.
Too late.
The warrior lunged—not at me, but at the ground near my feet, slamming a small obsidian shard into the soil.
The magic screamed.
The earth convulsed as a sigil ignited, jagged and violent, tearing open the space beneath us. Wolves shouted as the ground split, forcing the patrol apart.
A trap.
Raffyn roared, fire exploding outward as he tackled the traitor mid-motion. The shard shattered, but not before the sigil completed its circuit.
I staggered, pain lancing through my legs as the magic lashed back toward its source.
Me.
Lucien caught me, wings snapping open instinctively, light colliding with the dark surge before it could wrap around my spine.
Talon was already countering, water ripping up from the ground to sever the sigil's lines, freezing the magic mid-collapse.
Silence slammed down as suddenly as it had broken.
The traitor lay pinned beneath Raffyn's knee, coughing, eyes wild.
"He promised protection," the warrior gasped. "He said you'd fall either way."
I stared at him, breath shaking—not with fear, but with clarity.
"You weren't trying to kill me," I said softly. "You were trying to force me to lose control."
The warrior's eyes flicked away.
Lucien's voice was ice. "Jarek wanted to see her break."
Talon rose slowly, face grim. "And he wanted to see who would help him try."
The patrol closed in, shock and fury rippling through the ranks.
I straightened, ignoring the ache in my legs, and looked at the warrior beneath Raffyn's grip.
"You chose," I said. "So did I."
The forest seemed to lean in.
Because this—
This was the cost of being seen.
And now, there was no pretending the enemy was only outside the borders, Aurelia's hands trembled as the truth settled into her bones.
Not because she was afraid.
But because everything she had ever been told about herself was a lie.
The binding mark on her wrist—something she had been taught to see as protection—was no such thing at all. It wasn't meant to shield her power.
It was meant to bury it.
She lifted her gaze slowly, meeting the eyes of the one person who had sworn to keep her safe.
"You knew," she said quietly.
The silence was enough.
They hadn't made her an omega by fate or weakness.
They had chosen it for her.
Stripped her title.
Sealed her birthright.
And called it mercy.
Aurelia straightened, the air around her humming with something ancient and awake.
"No," she whispered, voice steady now. "I was never broken."
Her lips curved—not in kindness, but in promise.
"They just needed me to believe I was."
And this time, when the power stirred beneath her skin, she didn't fight it.
She welcomed it.