Nova
I stayed.
That was my answer.
Not because I wasn't afraid. Not because the doubts had disappeared or the voice in the back of my head had finally gone quiet. I stayed because walking out of that door would've been the easiest thing in the world, and I had spent my entire life doing hard things. One more hard thing wouldn't kill me.
Or at least, that's what I told myself.
Kain didn't push. Didn't press me for more than I was ready to give. After I told him, he just nodded, slow and careful, like he was afraid that if he moved too fast, I'd change my mind.
He left shortly after, something about meetings, about damage control — I didn't ask. He had enough on his plate without me demanding a detailed itinerary.
The room felt different after he was gone. Still too big, still too empty, but something had shifted. Like the air had been rearranged.
I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the floor for a long time.
I was staying. In the pack house. As the Alpha's mate.
As the potential Luna of a pack that had spent my entire life reminding me I didn't belong.
I let out a long, slow breath.
Great.
* * *
The first person to treat me like I was invisible was one of the omega housekeepers.
She was young — maybe a year younger than me — with dark braids and a neat uniform, and she walked past me in the hallway with her eyes fixed on the floor like I wasn't standing there. Like I was a piece of furniture she'd learned to step around.
I almost didn't react.
Almost.
But then she walked past a beta woman two doors down and smiled, dipping her head, murmuring a polite greeting.
I watched that exchange for longer than I should've.
It shouldn't have stung.
It did anyway.
I understood it, logically. I was an omega. Lower than low. And even the omegas who worked here had a status I didn't — they belonged here by function. They had a purpose within these walls. I was just a body that showed up wearing the Alpha's jacket.
I turned and walked the other way before the bitterness could root itself too deep.
I found my way to the kitchen.
It was massive — stainless steel counters, hanging copper pots, the smell of something warm and yeasty drifting from the oven. A woman with silver-streaked hair stood at the stove with her back to me, stirring something that smelled impossibly good.
She turned when she heard my footsteps, and I braced for the same blank dismissal.
Instead, she raised her brows and tilted her head.
"You must be Nova," she said. Not cold, not warm. Just even.
I blinked. "Yeah."
"I'm Lena. I run the kitchen." She turned back to the stove. "You eaten today?"
"I had something earlier."
"That's not what I asked."
I opened my mouth, then closed it. "Not really."
She jerked her chin toward the island. "Sit."
I sat.
She didn't make a fuss of it, didn't pepper me with questions or shoot me looks I had to decipher. She just slid a bowl of something thick and warm in front of me and went back to her work.
I stared at the bowl. Lentil soup, from the smell of it.
"You're not going to poison me, are you?" I asked before I could stop myself.
There was a pause.
Then Lena snorted — a short, dry sound — and kept stirring.
"If I wanted to poison someone, it wouldn't be the Alpha's mate," she said.
It wasn't exactly reassuring. But it was the most honest thing anyone in this building had said to me yet, so I picked up the spoon.
I ate.
* * *
Kain came back in the evening.
I heard him before I saw him — heavy footsteps in the corridor, a brief exchange with one of the guards, and then the door opening without a knock.
He always forgot to knock.
I was sitting cross-legged on the bed, trying to read something on my phone and mostly just staring at the ceiling, when he walked in. He looked exhausted. The kind of tired that didn't come from lack of sleep — the kind that settled in the eyes, in the set of the jaw, in the way a person carried their shoulders.
He sat in the chair across from me and rubbed a hand over his face.
"How was your day?" he asked.
I thought about the housekeeper who looked through me. The soup that was the only kindness I'd been shown. The hour I spent in my room trying not to unpack too much, literally and figuratively, in case this all collapsed.
"Fine," I said.
He looked at me.
I looked at him.
We both knew it was a lie and neither of us had the energy to address it tonight.
"The council is calling a formal assembly," he said, his voice low. "In two days. They want me to publicly reaffirm the alliance. Stand beside Andressa."
The words landed like a stone in still water.
Ripples.
"And are you going to?" I asked, keeping my voice flat.
He hesitated.
That hesitation told me everything.
"I don't have a choice right now," he said carefully. "But I'm working on it, Nova. I need you to trust me."
Trust.
What a word.
I looked at him for a long moment — at the tiredness in his face, the guilt sitting heavy in his amber eyes, the way he was watching me like he expected me to bolt.
"Okay," I said finally.
He exhaled. Relief and something more fragile underneath it.
"Okay," he repeated softly.
He didn't leave right away. He stayed in that chair until I fell asleep, and when I woke briefly in the night, he was still there, head tipped back, eyes closed.
I didn't tell him to go.
I turned over and went back to sleep.
Trust, I thought.
I was trying.