They slammed the cell door, and the bolt slid home with a sound that felt like a final punctuation. In the dim light, my breaths came shallow and fast, each one a small theft from the pain. My body still thrummed with the aftershock of the lashes.

I lay on the cold stone and listened. Footsteps in the corridor. A low murmur from the guards. The muffled cadence of life continuing outside , laughter, the clank of tankards, the world carrying on as if they hadn’t stripped me raw and hung me out like a lesson.

I would rather be a rogue, alone and hunted, than be caged and used as someone’s punishing instrument. I would rather taste cold wind on my face, hunger and fear in my veins, than the slow death of having my body assigned a purpose it had not chosen.

So I began to plan in the only hours anyone ever gave me: the long, useless smallness after midnight when the pack slept and the lanterns guttered low. I studied the patrols , how the same two guards passed at the same cadence, the way the older guard always paused to spit at the corner stone, how the key ring jangled at the hip of the captain when he went for his rounds. I listened for when the training grounds quieted, for the one hour before dawn when the oldest watch nodded off.

I picked at the mortar between the stones with a fingernail until my fingers bled. I used the shard of broken pottery I’d hidden behind my pallet to saw at the cuff links of the chain that attached my ankle to the wall. I swallowed my hunger until it burned like acid and learned to breathe around it. Each small victory , an extra scrap of rope, a loosened cuff, a tooth broken free from its tether  grew the plan from a wish into a shape I could hold.

The punishment left my back raw and my body trembling but I forced myself up, fingers wet with fresh wounds, and slipped my hand into the mortar gap I’d widened. Dust powdered my palm. The cuff gave with a sick, sharp twang, and for a heartbeat I thought my chest would burst with the violence of hope. I slipped from my shackles and crouched, listening to the world around me. Wind sighed through the arrow slits. Somewhere, a wolf barked an idle challenge. The pack was happy.

I padded along the corridor, keeping to darker corners, pressing myself into the cold stone as I passed each slumbering guard. I could have been anything. A hand nearly caught me when a drunk sentry rolled off his stool, but I gripped his wrist, held my breath, and eased past him while his snore swallowed my name.

The outer gate loomed, a slit of black against the starlight. The lock was a simple thing in so many ways; brutality had always favored simplicity. I crouched beneath the low eaves where ivy choked the stones and listened as the world on the other side of the wall went on. Freedom was out there.

I climbed.

My hands scraped and bled on the rough stones. My muscles trembled. There were moments, halfway up, when every instinct screamed to stop, to be sensible, to survive in other, less costly ways. But I tightened my fingers, pushed, and hauled myself over.

The ground beyond the wall was softer with moss. For two steps I thought I would fall from exhaustion. For two steps I laughed low and frantic because the wind hit my face and there was no one to divide the air with me. I ran.

I didn’t know where I was going, only that I had to put distance between me and the Crescent pack. The trees swallowed me. Branches tore the fabric of my tunic; brambles stole a handful of my hair. My feet were raw, and my lungs burned with a fire that felt like life being fed back into me. I ran until my legs folded and I could go no further.

When I finally stumbled into a clearing, the world split open in a way that made me dizzy: no roofs, no stone walls, only stars like watchful eyes. I dropped to my knees and pressed my palms to the earth. The thought of being a rogue alone, hunted, but free sparked warmth through my bones. I spat on the ground and swore I would never be made into something I was not.

Just as I was in my thoughts, out of the blue, the sound of a horse’s hooves cut through the night. They were near. Before I could rise, before I could hide in the dark again, lantern light swung into the clearing and a figure dismounted.

He was taller than any man I’d seen. His shoulders were broad, and the cloak he wore was trimmed with pelts that spoke of many winter hunts. His face was angular, jaw hard as flint, eyes like chips of dark ice that measured me in a single, cold look. There was a cruelty in him. This was an Alpha King, the sort of ruler whose name closed markets and opened borders. He moved with the surety of someone who had broken men and made them useful.

For a terrible moment I hoped, absurdly, that he would be kind.

The Alpha King’s gaze passed over me and then, slow as a closing trap, he stepped forward. The black wolf at his heels gave a low, appraising growl.

I had neither strength nor will left to run. My knees buckled, and salt-hot tears cut tracks down my dirt-smeared face. I collapsed at his feet like a thing unmade, drenched in blood and shame, the last shreds of my dignity scattered like leaves around me.

He looked down, and the cold in his eyes did not soften. He did not offer a hand. He did not speak. He simply regarded me , the broken, defiant scrap of an omega who had run her last from the only place she’d ever called home.

My wolf did not rise to answer beside me; she was a hollow behind my ribs, a silence that felt like an accusation. I curled into myself and waited for whatever would come: mercy, death, or the straight, honest cruelty of a new master. Anything, at that moment, seemed preferable to the slow, civilized dying the pack had in store.

The Alpha King lifted a brow, as if amused by my audacity to fall at his feet, and then, with a voice that was both ruler and predator, he said one word that cut the night:

“Why?”

And then, his lips curved with something unreadable, he added:

“I can’t believe the Moon Goddess decided to choose you to be my mate.” The disgust on his face was enough to show me that I was rejected.

.....by my own mate this time.