The Rejected Heir Of Greywake

POV: Mera

The rope snapped, and Toren went straight over the ravine edge.

I didn't think. My body moved before my head caught up, boots skidding on wet rock, hand shooting out and catching a fistful of his jacket a half-second before gravity finished the job. The weight of him nearly took me down with him. I locked my knees, dug in, screamed through my teeth as the strain hit my shoulder.

"Pull," I said. "Pull yourself up, I can't hold you and climb."

"I'm trying…" His voice cracked. Below us, the water was doing that low, hungry roar it does before it swallows something whole.

I got a boot against the rock and shoved, and between the two of us, he came up over the edge, gasping, mud streaked down one side of his face. For a second, neither of us said anything. My arms were shaking. His weren't much better. Somewhere below, a chunk of rock broke loose and went down into the water without a splash we could hear, just gone, and I made myself not think about how close that had been to him.

Then he stood, wiped his mouth, and looked at me like I'd done something wrong.

"You grabbed my jacket. It's ruined."

I stared at him.

"You almost died," I said.

"I had it handled."

I didn't argue. Arguing costs something, and I've never had much to spend. I just picked my rope back up, coiled it, and checked the fray where it had snapped. Cut clean through, not frayed. Someone's blade, not bad luck. I filed that away and said nothing, because saying something never once made a difference for someone like me.

Six of us had come out for the ravine drill, the kind Guardian trainees run twice a season, crossing on lines strung pack to pack, no room for a wrong step. I'm the only Omega who trains with them. I'm also, most days, the only one who finishes the course without a rescue.

Toren's friends jogged over, more interested in his jacket than the rope. Nobody looked at me.

That's fine. I've gotten good at being the thing in the corner of the room nobody bothers to name.

I felt him before I saw him. That's the only way I can put it. A change in the air, like the temperature dropped two degrees, and I turned and there was Vane, standing at the treeline above the ravine, arms crossed, watching.

He hadn't come down. He hadn't called out when the rope went. He'd just stood there, the whole time, close enough to see everything and do nothing.

I told myself that was fine too. He's the alpha-heir. He doesn't run rescues for trainees who can handle themselves. That's what the drills are for, to see who handles themselves and who doesn't.

Except my wolf didn't agree. Something in my chest pulled toward him, low and stupid and unwanted, the second his eyes found mine across that gap. I felt it in my teeth. In the roots of my hair. Like some old rusted-out part of me had just been struck and was ringing, and wouldn't stop.

I looked away first. I always look away first. It's a rule I made for myself a long time ago, back when looking too long at the wrong person got you noticed for the wrong reasons, and I've never found a good reason to break it.

"Guardian training doesn't stop for wet boots," Vane said.

When I climbed the last stretch up to level ground. Not to me. To the group. His voice carries without him raising it, which I've noticed is a particular kind of skill, the kind you learn when yelling was never allowed in your house.

"No, sir," Toren said, already straightening his shoulders like Vane's attention was a gift.

Vane's gaze moved over the group and landed on me for exactly one second longer than it needed to. Then it moved on, like he'd caught himself doing something he shouldn't.

I've watched him for three years. I know the shape of his stillness, how he holds his jaw tight when he's deciding whether a feeling is safe to let out, how his hands go loose at his sides right before he says something he's rehearsed. He is careful in a way that looks like coldness if you don't know what you're looking at. I know what I'm looking at. I've had nothing else to do but watch people like him and learn the difference between what they show and what they mean.

It doesn't matter what I know. He's never once spoken to me directly. Not one word, not in three years.

Draeus arrived as we were coiling the last of the lines, flanked by two of his personal guard, boots loud on the wet stone. He's a big man, gone silver at the temples, with a long pale scar along his forearm he likes to bring up at the worst moments, always the same story about the border war, always ending the same way: duty first, feeling second. He's the kind of alpha who claps shoulders and remembers names and makes you feel, for one warm second, as he sees you. Then his eyes move on, and you understand you were never the point.

"Report," he said.

"Line failure on the west crossing," Vane said. "Trainee Toren went over. Trainee Mera caught him."

Draeus nodded slowly, taking that in, and I actually let myself hope, for half a breath, that he'd say something to me. Good work. Steady hands. Anything.

"Discipline," he said instead, to the group, not to me. "That's what saves lives out here. Not feeling. Discipline. A Guardian who panics is a Guardian who gets someone killed."

Toren nodded along like he'd learned something.

I said nothing, because I'd already learned the actual lesson a long time ago: what I do only matters if it's useful, never if it's mine. Being helpful is safe. Being seen wanting something is not. I've built my whole life on that difference.

Vane was still watching me when Draeus turned to leave. I caught it out of the corner of my eye, the same second his father's back turned that flicker, gone as fast as it came, replaced by nothing at all.

I told myself it was nothing. I've told myself that before.

We were halfway back to the training yard, mud past my ankles, when one of the pack runners caught up with us, out of breath, message already half-shouted before he reached the group.

"Alpha Draeus wants all Omegas at the Great Hall by sundown," he said. "Mating ceremony's been called. Tonight."

The words landed somewhere under my ribs and stayed there.

Tonight.

I told myself it meant nothing. My wolf, for the first time in three years, didn't listen to me at all.

POV: Mera

"Hold still or I'm gonna stab you," Iyla said, pins between her teeth, working the laces up my back like she was closing a wound.

"You've been threatening to stab me since I was twelve."

"And I still haven't. Consider yourself lucky." She yanked the last lace tight, and I s*ck*d in a breath. Her hands stopped. "That hurt?"

"No."

"Mera."

"It's fine." I pulled my sleeve down over the bruise on my forearm before she could get a good look at it, but she'd already seen. She always sees. Iyla's the kind of person who notices the thing you're hiding before you've finished hiding it, and then decides, every single time, whether it's worth making you talk about it.

This time she let it go. She just pressed her thumb, light, right over the sleeve where the bruise was, like she was marking the spot to come back to later.

"Who," she said. Not a question really. More like she was star