THE ALPHA KING’S SON SCREAMED AT EVERY TOUCH—UNTIL A POOR OMEGA MAID FOUND A SILVER NEEDLE HIDDEN IN HIS FUR, REVEALING THE HORRIFYING TRUTH BEHIND HIS “CURSE”

Chapter 2

Meera waited until the corridor went utterly silent.

Then she moved.

She was an Omega. Small. Underfed. The kind of creature the castle had learned to look through, not at. But something inside her had been burning ever since her fingers closed around that needle. An old instinct. A Packbinder bloodline older than Thorn Ridge itself — bred not for submission, as the world believed, but for standing between an Alpha line and the darkness that hunted it.

She pressed both palms against the crumbling mortar of her cell.

“For Ash,” she whispered.

She pushed.

Stone cracked. A shower of dust fell across her shoulders. Pain tore through her arms, but she kept going. She squeezed through a narrow opening into the dark storage cellar on the other side.

Free. And condemned to death if anyone saw her.