Chapter 5
I found it by accident.
I wasn't snooping. I was simply returning a ledger to the administrative wing when I passed the open door of Arian's private vault—and stopped.
Victoria was inside.
She didn't see me. Her back was turned, her manicured hands rifling through documents with the focused urgency of someone who didn't trust the ground beneath her feet. Financial records, property deeds, transfer statements—she fanned through them with practiced efficiency, searching for something to anchor herself to.
Then she went still.
I watched her pull out a frame. Even from the doorway, I recognized it. The clean lines of the sketch, the careful notation of measurements along the margin, the tiny initials pressed into the bottom corner—AE—in handwriting I had memorized at sixteen.
He'd kept it. Framed it.
Something moved across Victoria's face. I couldn't name it exactly—it was too fast, too layered. But I saw her hands tighten on the frame, and I saw the moment her expression hardened into something that scared me more than rage would have.
Calculation.
I stepped back before she could turn around. Walked away quietly, the way I'd learned to walk through this pack. Like I was already invisible.
But my wolf was very, very awake.
---
She came to me two days later.
The pack square was busy at midday—Omegas running errands, warriors rotating shifts, a cluster of pups chasing each other around the stone fountain. Public enough to be a performance. Private enough that no one would look too closely.
Victoria crossed the square in a cream-colored wrap dress, her smile already arranged, her diamond pendant catching the sun like a weapon.
"Sofia." She said my name the way you'd say a word in a language you found beneath you. "I've been looking for you."
I set down the bundle of folded linens I was carrying. "Luna Victoria."
"Please." She waved a dismissive hand. "We're past formality, aren't we? After everything." She tilted her head, all gentle concern. "I want to apologize for how things started between us. I think we got off on the wrong foot."
Around us, a few pack members had slowed their pace. Watching.
"I may have been… hasty," she continued, her voice pitched just loud enough to carry, "in assuming the worst about you. You're clearly just a lost omega who needed a safe place. And whatever misunderstanding brought you here—" she gestured vaguely, dismissively, "—it's forgiven."
I said nothing.
She smiled wider. "Which is why I'd like to invite you to the Annual Gala. This Saturday. As my personal guest." A soft laugh, directed at the gathering audience. "Even omegas deserve a beautiful evening, don't they?"
The silence stretched.
Every rational instinct I had mapped the trap in under three seconds. The public setting. The manufactured generosity. The audience she'd carefully ensured would witness her magnanimity—and, later, whatever came next.
She wanted me where she could control the exit.
I looked at her. Directly. Long enough to watch the smallest flicker of unease cross her composed face.
"Thank you," I said quietly. "I'll be there."
Her smile returned, brilliant and sharp. "Wonderful."
She walked away without looking back. Her heels clicked against the stone in perfect, measured rhythm.
I picked up my linens and went back to work.
---
That evening, I spread the gown across my narrow bed.
The tear was long and deliberate—Victoria's doing, on the gravel outside the territory border, the first day I arrived. The silk had frayed at the edges where it had been wrenched apart, and the hem bore a ghost of a stain that would never fully lift.
I threaded my needle with silver thread.
I didn't try to hide the damage. That wasn't the point. I sewed the torn edges back together with small, careful stitches—not to erase the scar, but to acknowledge it. To say: *this happened, and I am still here.*
Stitch by stitch, in the silence of the Omega quarters, I repaired what had been broken.
My wolf watched from somewhere deep and still inside my chest. Not grieving anymore. Not hopeful either.
Just waiting.
I had come to this pack looking for an answer. I had found one—just not the answer I'd once prayed for. The boy who had pressed this design into being with trembling, devoted hands at seventeen had become a man who called me a spy and left bruises on my throat.
The gala would be the last time I wore this dress.
I wanted him to see it. To see the stitched scar running along the seam and know what it meant. To understand—even for one moment before the end—exactly what he had torn.
And somewhere across the pack grounds, I knew, Victoria was acquiring something far more lethal than thread.
Let her.
I had made my call to Langston. Protocol Seven was already in motion, quiet as a tide pulling back from shore—invisibly, irrevocably, taking everything beneath it.
Saturday was not her stage.
It was mine.
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