Rise Of The Rejected Omega

The smell of blood never changed. A smell that stuck to the walls of the healer den regardless of the number of herbs she burnt to cover it.

Serenya was used to it by now. She was exposed to blood daily, warriors brought in after fights on the border, Omegas punished because of disobedience, pups that were hurt in training. Her hands were too much painted red, so she could hardly see.

And yet the silence was something she could not get accustomed to: the silence of the people who acted like she did not exist.

“Be cautious, his arm,” said Serenya, clipping the wounds as she smoothed the bandage of the young warrior lying on her table. And his packmates hung around not wanting to see her.

They were whispering together, they whispered, when she was not the person who sews his skin back together, when she is not the one who is keeping him alive.

“She carries herself like she believes she is among us,” one of them moaned.

“Doesn’t count the number of bones she sets. She will remain forever a rejected Omega,” another murmured, not with hushed voice but enough to conceal the horror in his voice.

Serenya didn’t flinch. She didn’t stop moving. She stitched it up, knotted it and cut the thread, and then she raised her head.

“Either open your mouths now or carry him back bleeding. Your choice.” Her voice was almost monotonous.

The warriors did not say a word, their smirks seemed to unsteady, yet not to disappear. It didn’t matter. They would never respect her. They came simply because she possessed a skill no other has in the Moonveil Pack.

Serenya had learnt to co-exist with it. Survival was the goal.

She withdrew, rubbing her hands with a piece of cloth already stained with crimson, and gave a lean against the table. She was twenty-two, and she felt twice that sometimes. A rejected mate, an Omega, an unwanted healer, she had been branded by the pack with all the names that had no sense in the end, since with the shattering of their bones, when their wolves were dying, they still crawled upon her.

She wasn’t needed for love or for friendship. She was needed for work and for her ability.

The wounded warrior groaned to his eyes, caught a glimpse of her face, and he at once looked beyond her, to his friends. “Is it done?”

"He is alright,” Serenya answered, before the others had time to speak. “He’ll need rest. One week no fighting, or I will open him again.”

They didn’t thank her, they didn’t even nod, they just took him out of the cot, and out of the den with grumbling at the odour of herbs. The room fell empty and quiet again. Always quiet.

Serenya ran her fingers over the dried plants, root, and powders in the shelves. She was short of supplies. In the morning she would have to go to the forest. A place she loved and no one cared out there who she was.

She stood still, and shut her eyes, allowing the thought to dwell for a few hours at least.

But then the voices re-emerged and it was not in the room that they spoke, but in her memory.

“I reject you.”

She drew in a sharp breath. “No. Not now, not again.” But it was ever there in her head. As soon as her first mate spat the bond off, leaving her wolf in twisted struggle, tearing at her inside and out. That pain never really left, but loved inside her like a scar.

That is why she despised the mate bond. Why she never dared herself to contemplate fate. She’d learned better.

The curtain of the entrance to the den moved. Lyanna stepped in, light upon her feet, and her gold hair tossed over one shoulder. She smiled with that sort of smile that melted people. But Serenya knew better.

“You again have been working all the day.” Lyanna was standing and leaning against the door frame with her arms folded. “You will burn out yourself with this.”

Serenya raised a brow. “The pack must be kept alive by someone. Unless you have just discovered a way of sewing flesh?”

Lyanna laughed, soft and airy. “Not my skill. I’d faint at the sight of blood. But you…” She moved near and her eyes became soft. “You make it look easy.”

Tone of admiration, perhaps of sincerity. Nevertheless, the chest of Serenya tightened. Even with Lyanna, there was that distance, she had known her since he and she were pups. Lyanna was admired. Serenya was tolerated.

“I heard the Alpha King passes,” said Lyanna after a hesitation, which made her eyes shine. “Tomorrow, actually. The entire pack is setting a banquet. Can you believe it?”

Serenya shuddered and her stomach sunk. The Alpha King. Darius. The name was weighty in itself, the type of man who could make a room quiet with a glare. He was the head of all Alphas, the head whom wolves took as example and obeyed.

“Why would he come here?” Serenya asked quietly.

“Diplomatic visit. Or so they say.” Lyanna pulled a strand of hair with her finger. Others are whispering he is hunting his Luna. Wouldn’t that be something? To be chosen by him?”

Serenya turned her nose up, and went on to her herbs. “It would not be me, and what difference does it make?”

Lyanna tilted her head. “You don’t know that.”

“I do.” The voice of Serenya was crisp, She had not set out to play with fantasies. Not after what happened to her. It was a relationship of chains. Lyanna looked a little more, then smiled a sly little smile. “Maybe. But sometimes destiny surprises us, Serenya.”

She left behind her words a long time.

Serenya sat that night alone in her den, and stared upon the moonlight. The Alpha King who is to come made her anxious. She didn’t want to care or experience the shift of her wolf inside her, pacing inside her in a manner she had not experienced in years.

The following day the pack gathered in the square. Serenya remained in the fringe, hidden beneath her hood, and looking on as the black carriages came. Guards flanked and each was having deadly potential, but it was the last to step out of the carriage who caused all to fall silent.

Alpha King Darius.

He was taller than she had expected, with broad shoulders hung in black, his eyes had a tendency to burn even air itself. The power emanated off him in motion, and wolves cowered.

His gaze swept over the crowd. Commanding. Piercing. One beat of the heart and his eyes on her.

Her chest constricted. The air seemed to vanish. His head turned then to Lyanna, His body stiffened and his wolf howling in his eyes.

The bond.

Serenya’s heart fell.

“No,” she whispered.

But it was already done. The Alpha King stood up and his voice boomed like the voice of destiny itself.

This one, he said, taking up the hand of Lyanna. “She is mine.”

The pack burst into shouts. The eyes of Lyanna looked in amazement and a smile broke out on her face. She looked at Serenya in a flash of victory,

The stomach of Serenya grew stone-like. With a sickening step backwards, she drew each breath with difficulty. The Alpha King had chosen her best friend.

But there was something wrong with Serenya beneath the noise and celebration. His wolf pulled at her and the bond flickered as though it had touched her, and then twisted away.

Her wolf snarled, feeling angry and confused.

Serenya grabbed her cloak tighter, and turned her back before anybody realised the complications on her face.

She thrust her way through the crowd, needing air and space She leaned on the table in the healer den shaking. “It does not matter,” it screamed in her mind. “You don’t care about the bond. You don’t.”

But somewhere inside a voice said back, in a cold manner “So why does it seem like you have been robbed?”

Her hands curled into fists. Her friend had been claimed by the Alpha King.

Serenya felt another inhuman mockery of fate taking its toll of her, in some way that Lyanna had stolen what belonged to her. Though this time it was something much more terrible than denial.

She may be the undesired medicine woman and the rejected Omega but she was not weak and she vows never to be silent.

The night grew thick and the pack still rejoicing outside. Serenya was in her den, with the firelight playing upon her face, her heart racing at its own anger and at its own disorientation.

She was not yet aware of the fact that her silence was not going to help her this time.

She did not know that before the next sunrise she would be spoken of contemptuously, her faithfulness called into doubt, her flesh carried up in silver chains. All because she dared to feel the reality of a bond that no one thought to be hers.

Lyanna had been decided upon by the Alpha King, but the wolf of Serenya was telling her something else and fate had just begun to play its sadistic game.

The celebrations went on until the moon cast its silver glow over Moonveil.

Serenya sat in her den long after the time when the last torchlight outside quenched. The noise of celebrations from her pack was disturbing within her like knives on her chest.

The Alpha King had opted to choose her best friend. Her wolf paced inside her like it sought to tear through her flanks.

She held her hands to the wooden table on which dried herbs were strewn like evidence of a broken ritual.

“It is not yours,” she repeated to herself in a whisper, but words mattered little. The pack was active by dawn. She’d heard their voices long before she ventured out into the cold morning.

“The Alpha King’s Luna!” they shouted in triumph, intoxicated on pride that their pack would be tied to the throne. “Moonveil shall be remembered!”

There was not a word of her name, no word of the healer who stitched their bodies together. Se