Chapter 1He looked up at me the way he always did - Lucian, the Alpha's son, the future Alpha of Moonridge Pack, looking at me like I was still the little Omega he'd grown up protecting.
"Where are your glasses, Ora?"
I rubbed my eyes. Dry. Stinging. The sun over Moonridge Pack Academy was brutal.
"Lost them."
He sighed and yanked the curtain shut beside me. His scent - pine, warm stone, Alpha blood - wrapped around me before I could stop it.
"I'll walk you home tonight."
For one stupid second, I let myself believe the thing I'd overheard on pack portrait day had been my imagination after all.
After last bell, someone from his father's guard pulled him away.
Wait for me in the den classroom, he said.
So I did.
Two hours.
I wanted to call him, but my phone was dead.
Finally an instructor passed by and spotted me.
"Ora? Why aren't you back at your den yet?"
She knew my eyes were bad and offered to drive me.
I said no.
I didn't want Lucian coming back and finding me gone.
When she saw my phone was dead, she called him for me.
Twenty minutes later, Lucian filled the doorway, out of breath.
"I texted you. Told you to go on ahead."
"Didn't see it."
I held up the phone. Useless in my hand.
"It died."
He looked at me for a long moment. Something complicated moved across his face - his wolf flickering behind his eyes.
In the end, he said none of it.
"Come on."
He barely spoke the whole way.
Most of it, he spent answering messages.
There was a scent on him. Green. Faintly bitter. Crushed herbs and cold wind.
It hadn't been there earlier in the day.
Where had he been?
When we reached the front steps of my den building, someone called his name.
A few wolves stood by the entrance. I couldn't make out their faces.
But the same scent drifted off one of them.
Lucian took a few quick steps toward them. I stayed put.
"What are you all doing here?"
"The place we're going is right around the corner. We came to grab you."
The voice was low and clean. I knew it. I'd heard it over the morning pack announcements all year.
Greta Frost. The she-wolf half the pack wanted to court.
"Okay. Give me a second. I'm walking her in."
One of the males made an impatient sound.
"Seriously? You're already at her den. She needs an escort from here?"
One of Lucian's friends jumped in to explain.
"Ora can't see well after dark."
The male clicked his tongue.
"She looks fine the rest of the time. Who knows if any of it's real?
"It's Greta's birthday, and he still has to make a whole trip out of this. I think she does it on purpose. Way to kill the mood."
I stood there with my hands curled into fists and nowhere to put them.
When Lucian came back over, I kept my voice low.
"Go with them. I can get myself inside."
He hesitated.
"You sure?"
"I'm sure."
I turned and went in.
Their voices carried after me.
"Hey, Lucian. Aren't you gonna tuck your helpless little Omega mate in?"
"She's my packmate. Don't be disgusting."
My wolf froze inside me.
In all the years I'd known him, that was the first time Lucian had ever growled at anyone about it.
The courtyard paths were well lit.
Even so, the lights only gave me a general sense of which way to go.
I felt my way forward. Something was closing around my chest.
He'd never bothered correcting people before. Because it hadn't mattered to him.
Now it mattered.
Because of Greta?
My leg caught on something, and I went down hard.
My palm lit up with pain. For a second, I just sat there, lost. My wolf whined low in my chest.
He hadn't always been like this.
We used to live across the hall from each other.
He held my hand on the way to school and on the way home.
He asked the instructor to put us at the same desk.
When other pups made fun of my eyes, he got in front of me.
When had I started being a chore?
"Ora!"
Fast footsteps behind me.
Lucian hauled me up off the ground.
"This is what you meant by 'I'm sure'?"
His tone was stern - very stern.
Yet, his movements were exceptionally careful as he checked me over, searching for any injuries or broken bones.
Then, he took me by the hand and led me home - just as he used to do.
The faint flicker of hope deep within me reignited.
Lucian still cares about me.
Chapter 2
Greta's birth celebration fell on that same moon. Lucian's came two sunrises later.
So it wasn't just the crushed-herb scent clinging to their clothes. Their whole lives sat side by side on the pack calendar.
The next morning I crossed the den yard to Lucian's.
Luna Cecilia opened the door before I could knock.
"Ora! Get your tail in here."
Lucian yelled something from his room but didn't come out.
"I swear I don't understand your pack academy," Luna Cecilia said, pulling fruit from the cold storage. "The Moon Trials are barely three weeks out and they're handing out rest days like candy. How is any wolf supposed to stay sharp?"
She jerked her chin toward his door.
"That one's been glued to the scrying screen since breakfast."
Then she shoved a bowl of berries into my hands.
"Go sit with him. Tell me what you want for supper and I'll cook it."
Luna Cecilia left for the market. I stood outside Lucian's door and knocked.
He had his headset on, mid-hunt in some pack-war simulation.
He caught me in the corner of his eye and flicked his fingers - come in.
I settled behind him and watched.
I didn't understand the game.
Didn't understand half the growls and commands he was throwing at the wolves on the other end either.
When the round finally ended, he spun around.
"Sun's brutal out there. What are you doing here?"
I held out the box I'd brought.
"Happy birth moon, Lucian."
"Thanks."
He took it and set it down beside him. Didn't open it. Didn't even look at it.
His phone buzzed right then.
He glanced at the screen and picked up.
"Lucian, get back in.
"Greta says she'll carry us. We got wrecked all morning. This is our shot."
He said okay and pulled the headset back on.
Then - like he'd just remembered I was still breathing in the room - he glanced over his shoulder.
"I got some new scrolls. On the shelf. Take whatever."
He turned back to the screen and didn't look at me again.
I sat there a while. Watched him laugh with wolves whose world I couldn't claw my way into.
That was the first time it really sank in.
He and I didn't live in the same one anymore.
"I'm heading out."
I thought he hadn't heard.
But I got as far as the door and he called after me.
"You're still going to Silverbrook, right?"
Silverbrook had always been his school. The one we'd promised each other years ago, back when we were just two pups sharing a den hallway.
I nodded.
"What about you?"
"Okay. Got it."
I wanted to ask what THAT meant.
He was already back in the game.
My eyes drifted to the gift he'd shoved onto the shelf because it was in his way.
It was the out-of-print spirit-song disc he'd been talking about for months.
I'd combed through every secondhand stall in the eastern market district. A dozen of them, one at a time. Took me two full weeks to turn up a copy, and then I had to practically beg the old he-wolf who owned it to part with it.
Now it sat in the corner where Lucian had dropped it.
Nobody was going to touch it.
That was about how I felt too.
I was pulling my boots on by the door when I heard his voice from the bedroom.
Some wolf in the game must have asked him something.
"Silverbrook? I don't wanna go. I hate that territory, it's way too dry.
"I'll figure it out when the acceptance scrolls come."
My hand went unsteady on the door latch.
Then WHY had he asked whether I was still going?
So he'd know what to avoid?
The door opened from the other side.
Luna Cecilia came in with the groceries.
"Ora, you're leaving already? Stay and eat."
I made myself smile.
"No, thank you. I want to get some studying in."
She didn't push. She turned and aimed her voice at Lucian's door instead.
"Lucian! Still on that game? You could at least see Ora out!"
I came out of the stairwell into the sun.
It was warm all the way through.
Inside, I was hollow. My wolf curled up small and silent behind my ribs.
So much for Silverbrook together.
He'd stopped caring about that a long time ago. Which meant I didn't have to keep my end of it either.
The night before the Moon Trials, I got a text from him.
"I'll pick you up in the morning."
I stared at it for a long time. Then typed back.
"No need. My family's taking me."
The next morning, I walked through the academy gates alone.
For the first time, at something that actually MATTERED, Lucian wasn't next to me.
I found my name on the seating chart and turned to go.
Some wolf slammed into my back.
Hard.
Chapter 3
Quills, chalk, and a measuring cord scattered across the stone floor.
My Moon Trials token skidded a few feet away.
"Oh. Sorry. Didn't see you."
A male I didn't recognize. Couldn't place his scent anywhere in the pack hierarchy.
I didn't waste breath on him. Went straight for the token.
My fingers had almost closed around it when a boot came down on top of the paper.
He bent close to my face. His breath reeked of cheap meat and cheaper arrogance.
"Are you ACTUALLY blind, or do you just play it up? Your eyes really do look off."
"None of your business."
I tugged at the token. It didn't budge.
"Real or fake, you're still a charity case. So quit clinging to Lucian.
"Don't be so selfish. Yeah?"
I looked up at him. The face was vaguely familiar.
"Move your boot. Whatever's between me and Lucian has NOTHING to do with you."
"Wow, you really - "
He twisted his heel. The thin paper tore clean through.
Before he could finish, somebody shoved him hard enough to send him stumbling sideways.
Lucian stood there with his face gone cold as frost on a kill.
"What is WRONG with you?"
That stopped the male for a second.
"What's wrong with ME?
"It wasn't on purpose. I already apologized."
Lucian scooped up the torn token and the scattered quills and pushed them into my hands.
"I'm walking you to your trial chamber."
I kept my head down and followed, holding the case against my chest.
As we passed him, the male muttered it under his breath.
"Blind Omega's such a drama queen."
I knew that voice.
He'd been outside my den building that night. With Greta.
Lucian walked me all the way to my trial chamber before he went to find his own.
For a few minutes, it felt like it used to.
But the coldness hadn't been in my head. Neither had the impatience.
I really didn't understand him anymore.
The Moon Trials were finally over.
The whole academy felt lighter.
That evening I finished sorting my notes and picked up my phone.
Greta had posted a photo of the disc.
The caption read: "A surprise with perfect timing. Still hearing it. Thank you for the gift."
It was the EXACT disc I'd given Lucian. Right down to the birth-moon message I'd carved into the sleeve myself.
His present. From me. And he'd handed it to Greta.
The hurt came up so fast my eyes burned with it. My wolf clawed at my ribs, desperate to howl.
I called him.
"You gave Greta the birth-moon present I got you?"
He made a small, careless sound. "Yeah.
"Greta and I were talking, and it turns out she likes it too. So I brought it over for her to hear."
My grip closed hard around the phone. My voice came out scraped raw.
"It took me TWO WEEKS to find that.
"You handed my gift to somebody else and didn't even tell me. You don't think that's too far?"
Lucian sounded irritated.
"It's a disc. You seriously called me to put me on trial over a disc?"
"It's not about the disc."
My voice shook.
"You threw away what I MEANT by it."
"You gave it to me. So it's mine. What I do with it is up to me.
"You don't get a say."
I opened my mouth. Nothing came.
"This is exhausting."
He hung up.
I sat there holding the phone with my chest aching. My wolf went quiet and small, like she'd taken a blow to the ribs.
The exact word he'd used on portrait day.
After that, we stopped talking altogether.
Until our pack cohort organized a gathering that spring.
I didn't want to go.
But it was the first thing anyone had put together all year.
My parents pushed me to.
Luna Cecilia even told Lucian to keep an eye on me.
It was the first time Lucian and I had seen each other since the fight.
He was in a mood the whole way there.
I tried a few times. He gave me "mm" and "sure" and nothing else.
So I stopped. We rode the rest of it in silence, like two strangers who happened to know everything about each other.
The den hall was loud. Everybody talked over everybody.
I drank my berry fizz and listened.
My eyes don't let me stare at a screen for long.
I stay out of harsh sun when I can.
After dark, I'm most of the way to blind.
Hunting games, scrying screens, border runs. There wasn't ONE conversation at that table I could get into.
We'd barely sat down and I already wanted to shift and run home.
Then somebody suggested truth or challenge.
The bottle went around a few wolves and landed on Lucian.
He picked truth.
Somebody grinned.
"Lucian, you're really really good to Ora. Do you... LIKE her?"
