After My Alpha Marked the Omega, I Walked Away

Seven years.

That was how long I had waited for the bare spot on my neck to stop being bare.

I stood at the altar in a white ceremonial gown, the moon high and full above the Shadowridge clearing, and for the first time in a long time I let myself believe it. The candles around the stone circle burned steady. Every allied pack within two states had sent ranked wolves to witness this. The Crescent Pack. The Ironbark. The Northpine elders in their dark coats, watching from the front row with that quiet, evaluating gaze old wolves get at ceremonies like this.

My father stood off to the side, hands folded. My mother had her fingers pressed to her mouth.

Across the altar, Zane looked at me the way he used to look at me before Cassandra arrived. His dark hair was combed back. His Alpha tones were dressed in formal black. For a moment, I let the doubt I had been carrying for months go quiet.

My wolf, Sela, paced once inside my chest and settled.

He is here, she said. He is finally here.

The officiant began the words. My pulse moved into my throat. Zane reached for my hand and his palm was warm. I felt the bond hum between us, thin but present, the way it had hummed for seven years. I tilted my head to bare the side of my neck. The skin there had never been touched by another wolf. It had been waiting.

Then Zane's head snapped to the left.

It was small. A flinch. Anyone who did not know him would have missed it. But I had spent seven years learning his face, and I knew what it looked like when something came through the mind-link.

His nostrils flared. His eyes went unfocused.

"Zane," I said.

He did not look at me.

He let go of my hand.

He turned, he stepped down off the altar, and he ran. Not walked. Ran. Across the moonlit grass, past the Northpine elders, past my father, past every ranked wolf who had flown across the country for this night, in the direction of the Omega quarters at the edge of the territory.

The officiant's mouth was still open on a word he had not finished.

The candles kept burning.

I stood there in my white dress with my neck still tilted, and I listened to the murmurs begin in the back rows like a wind moving through dry leaves.

Someone whispered, "What was that?"

Someone else whispered, "The Omega girl. The new one."

My mother made a sound I will never forget.

I did not move. Sela had gone very still inside me. We both knew. We had both known for months, I think, and we had both kept choosing to wait.

I lowered my chin. I straightened my spine. I stepped down off the altar without help, gathered the skirt of my gown, and walked back across the clearing the way Zane had