LYRA

Gone.

He was gone.

I stared at the empty room where he'd been just hours before, at the cold space where his warmth should have been, and felt something inside me crack open. The scent of him still clung to the sheets, but it was fading fast, disappearing like smoke in the wind.

Last night he'd kissed me under the stars.

Last night he'd touched me like I was precious instead of broken. His hands had been gentle when he pulled me close, when he whispered my name against my skin like a prayer. We'd mated under the open sky with the moon as our only witness, and for those few hours I'd felt alive, wanted. I'd felt like maybe the world could be kind.

He'd traced the curve of my spine and told me I was beautiful. He'd kissed away the tears I didn't know I was crying and promised me that this night was ours. That nothing could take it away.

"You deserve more than this," he'd whispered into my hair. "More than hiding, more than fear."

"I have you," I'd said. "That's enough."

He'd gone quiet then, holding me tighter like he was trying to memorize the shape of me. Like he already knew what morning would bring.

But I hadn't known.

I'd fallen asleep in his arms feeling safer than I'd ever felt in my life. I'd dreamed of impossible things. Of running away together, of a place where omegas weren't property and love wasn't forbidden. Of a future that didn't involve servitude and endless winter.

Now I stood alone in the empty room with dawn breaking through the window, and all those dreams turned to ash in my mouth.

My eyes found the table where a single piece of paper sat, folded once. My hands shook as I picked it up and read the words that would haunt me for the rest of my life.

“Forget last night. I was never here. You were never mine.”

The paper crumpled in my fist. Then I tore it. Once, twice, again and again until the pieces scattered across the floor like snow. Like the promises he'd made, like everything I'd been stupid enough to believe.

He'd left me.

After everything. After the stories about freedom and breaking cages, after calling me Little Wolf and looking at me like I was the only thing he cared about in this world, after... after touching me with hands that made me believe I was worth something.

He'd left me like I was nothing.

I sank to the floor and pressed my hands over my mouth to keep the scream inside. Omegas didn't get to scream, didn't get to feel rage. We didn't get to break down when our hearts shattered because hearts weren't something we were supposed to have in the first place.

So I swallowed it. All the pain and betrayal and stupid, foolish hope. I swallowed it down until it settled like stones in my stomach, heavy and cold and permanent.

Then I stood up, smoothed my dress, and walked back to the servants' quarters like nothing had happened.

Because nothing had happened. Not really.

I was just another omega used by someone who knew better. Just another girl learning the same lesson every omega learns eventually.

We don't get to keep the things we love.

It was normal, and I had been too foolish to have expected anything different.

My mother noticed something was wrong but she didn't ask. She just handed me a basket of laundry and told me to focus on my work. So I did. I scrubbed and hung and folded until my hands were raw and my mind went numb.

Days passed. Then a week. The noble guests left, and the estate grew quieter. Soon it would just be us again, the omegas left behind to clean up the mess.

I tried not to think about him, not to remember the way he'd smiled at me in the moonlight or the sound of his voice when he called me Little Wolf.

And especially not to wonder where he was or if he ever thought about me at all.

But my body wouldn't let me forget.

Of course, like always, the moon goddess hated me and made sure to rub it in my face. Curse her.

It started small. A wave of nausea that hit me while I was carrying water. Then a strange sensitivity to smells that made the laundry unbearable. The exhaustion that sleep couldn't fix.

I ignored it for as long as I could, told myself it was just stress or maybe the cold, my body finally giving up after years of abuse.

But then I missed my bleeding.

I stood in the supply room with my hand pressed against my stomach and felt the world tilt sideways.

No. It couldn't be. We'd only been together once.

Just one night.

"No, no, no," I whispered, shaking my head, tears already forming in my eyes.

But wolves were different. Our bodies knew when new life took root, and mine was screaming it now, loud and insistent and terrifying.

I was pregnant with his child.

The child of a man who'd left me with nothing but a note telling me to forget he existed.

I should have been horrified, should have been terrified of what would happen when people found out. Omegas who got pregnant outside of sanctioned bonds were punished, sometimes killed.

The worst part was that I didn't even know his name, didn't know his pack or his rank or anything that might protect me.

But instead of fear, I felt something else flicker to life in my chest.

Hope.

Dangerous, stupid, reckless hope that shouldn't have been there, but it was.

“Maybe I could keep this” I thought.

Maybe I could protect this tiny piece of him growing inside me. Maybe the Moon had taken him away but given me this instead. A part of him that couldn't leave. A part of him that would be mine forever.

I pressed both hands against my stomach and made a silent promise.

I would survive this. I would protect this child and give them the life I never had.

And maybe, just maybe, loving them would fill the hole he'd left behind.

I didn't know then that hope was the cruelest thing of all. I didn't know that in a few short days, while fetching supplies from the upper storage tower, I would be shoved down those stone stairs by a cruel beta who thought it was funny to watch an omega fall. That I would wake up to blood and pain and my mother's screams.

I didn't know that the Moon would take this from me too.

All I knew in that moment, standing in the supply room with my hands cradling a life that wouldn't last, was that I had something to fight for again.

Something to live for.

And for the first time since he left, I felt like maybe I could breathe.