Betrayed by My Fated Alphas

The first three days in the Black Iron pack house passed in a blur of stone walls and silence.

They gave me a room on the second floor. It was nicer than anything I'd ever had in Thornveil — a real bed with clean sheets, a window that looked out over a courtyard lined with training posts. There was even a small desk and a lamp that didn't flicker. But the door had a lock on the outside, and Silas checked on me every four hours like clockwork. So it was still a cage. Just one with better lighting.

I kept my head down. I answered their questions about Paulina in small, careful pieces — a name here, a date there, never enough to put Milani at risk if word got back. Weston accepted this with a tight jaw. Xavier accepted it with a smile. Neither pushed too hard. Not yet.

It was Xavier who found my sketches.

I'd hidden them inside the folded blanket at the foot of the bed — a habit from Thornveil, where Paulina would destroy anything I owned that wasn't directly useful to her. They were just loose pages torn from a notebook I'd stolen from the pack house supply closet months ago. Pencil drawings of gowns. Luna coronation dresses, mostly. Fitted bodices with structured boning, skirts that moved like water, necklines designed to frame the marking bite without hiding it. I'd been drawing them since I was sixteen. It was the one thing that was mine.

I came back from the bathroom one morning and found Xavier sitting on the edge of my bed, holding one of the pages up to the light from the window.

My stomach dropped to the floor.

"These are yours," he said. It wasn't a question.

I stood frozen in the doorway, my wet hair dripping onto my shoulders. "Put that down."

He didn't. He tilted the page, studying the pencil lines of a mermaid-cut gown with hand-stitched lace overlay. His expression wasn't mocking. That was the dangerous part. He looked genuinely interested.

"The seaming here," he said, tracing a finger along the sketch without touching the graphite. "You've drawn princess seams, but the way you've angled them — this would create a longer torso line. Most ceremonial designers don't think about that."

I blinked. No Alpha I had ever met knew what a princess seam was.

"How do you —"

"My mother commissioned gowns from a couturier in Montreal," he said, setting the page down carefully. "I used to watch the fittings when I was young. You pick things up."

He stood and walked past me toward the door, pausing just close enough that I caught his scent — something sharp and clean, like winter pine over warm stone. "You're talented, Cleo. It's a waste, hiding these in a blanket."

Then he was gone.

I told myself it meant nothing. Alphas noticed things because noticing things gave them leverage. That was all.

But two days later, a package appeared on my desk.

It was wrapped in plain brown paper, no note. I opened it with shaking hands and found three bolts of fabric. The first was a duchess satin in ivory, heavy and luminous, the kind that holds structure without interfering. The second was a French Chantilly lace so fine I could see my fingers through it, the floral pattern hand-embroidered with silk thread. The third made me sit down on the bed.

It was a silk organza in the exact shade of dusty rose that Milani loved.

I pressed the organza to my face and breathed in. It smelled like nothing — clean, untouched, perfect. My hands were trembling. Not from fear. From something worse. From wanting.

These weren't fabrics an Omega could buy. These weren't fabrics most Lunas could buy. The Chantilly alone was worth more than everything I'd earned in five years of servitude under Paulina. And Xavier had left them on my desk like they were nothing. Like dropping off a cup of coffee.

I knew I should refuse. I knew this was a transaction dressed up as a gift. But I held the organza up to the window and watched the light pass through it, turning it the color of a sunset, and I thought of Milani's face. I thought of the gown I'd been sketching for three years — the Luna coronation dress I was designing for a ceremony that would never happen, for a sister who would never wear it, drawn on stolen paper with a dull pencil because that was all I had.

Now I had duchess satin. I had Chantilly lace. I had Milani's color in silk organza, and it was perfect.

I couldn't refuse. God help me, I couldn't.

That night, I started cutting.

I didn't have proper shears — just a pair of kitchen scissors I'd asked Silas for, claiming I needed to trim a loose thread on my jacket. But my hands knew what to do. They always had. I laid the organza on the desk, smoothed it flat, and began cutting the bodice panels from the pattern I'd been carrying in my head for years. The scissors weren't sharp enough, so I had to go slow, following the grain of the fabric with small, precise snips. It took me two hours to cut four panels. My fingers ached. I didn't care.

For the first time since they dragged me out of the woods, I felt like myself.

I worked on the gown every night after that. Xavier never mentioned the fabrics again, but more appeared — a spool of silk thread in the exact weight I needed, a packet of hand-sewing needles, a small pair of embroidery scissors that were sharp enough to cut through the Chantilly without fraying the edges. Each delivery was silent, unsigned, and precisely what I needed before I knew I needed it.

He was watching me. Studying the way I worked the way a hunter studies a trail. And I let him, because the gown was growing under my hands and it was beautiful, and I was too hungry for this one thing to count the cost.

The kitchen happened by accident.

It was past one in the morning, almost a week into my stay. I couldn't sleep. My hands were cramped from sewing, and my mind kept circling back to Milani — whether the independent fund Weston promised had actually reached the sanctuary, whether Dara Finch had confirmed the payments, whether Paulina had noticed I was gone yet. The anxiety sat in my chest like a stone.

So I went downstairs to cook.

The Black Iron pack house kitchen was enormous — industrial stainless steel, a six-burner range, a walk-in pantry stocked with things I'd never been allowed to touch in Thornveil. But I wasn't looking for anything fancy. I found rice, fresh ginger, a few scallions, and a jar of sesame oil. That was enough.

I filled a heavy pot with water, rinsed the rice three times, and set it on the stove at a low simmer. Then I peeled the ginger with the back of a spoon and sliced it thin. The rhythm of it — the quiet scrape of the spoon, the soft hiss of the burner, the steam rising from the pot — loosened something in my chest. Cooking was like sewing. It required patience, not power. You couldn't rush rice porridge. You just had to stay with it.

I was stirring the pot when I heard footsteps behind me.

I turned and found Weston standing in the kitchen doorway. He was barefoot, wearing a plain black t-shirt and gray sweatpants. His dark hair was slightly disheveled, like he'd been lying in bed without sleeping. Without his tailored clothes and his Alpha posture, he looked almost ordinary. Almost human.

I tensed immediately. "I'm sorry. I didn't think anyone would be —"

"You're fine," he said quietly.

He walked to the table and sat down. Just sat. No orders, no questions about Paulina, no Alpha tone. He rested his forearms on the wooden surface and watched me with an expression I couldn't read.

The silence stretched. I turned back to the stove because I didn't know what else to do. The porridge was thickening, so I lowered the flame and stirred in the ginger slices. The kitchen filled with a warm, clean smell.

"What is that?" Weston asked.

"Rice porridge," I said without turning around. "Congee. It's nothing special."

"It smells good."

I didn't answer. I ladled the porridge into two bowls before I realized what I was doing — I'd made two portions out of habit, the way I always cooked for Milani and me. I stared at the second bowl. Then I set it on the table in front of him.

He looked at it. Looked at me. Something shifted in his face — a crack in the stone, so brief I almost missed it.

"Thank you," he said. His voice was stripped of everything. No authority. No command. Just two words, spoken low and rough, like they cost him something.

I sat across from him with my own bowl. We ate in silence. The only sounds were the clink of spoons and the hum of the refrigerator. His Alpha aura, which normally filled every room he entered like a pressure change, was pulled so far back I could barely feel it. Sitting across from him felt like sitting across from anyone. Like he was just a man eating porridge at one in the morning because he couldn't sleep either.

It was the most dangerous thing he could have done to me.

Because I had spent my entire adult life being invisible. Being useful. Being the Omega who scrubbed and fetched and bowed and disappeared. No one had ever just sat with me. No one had ever eaten something I made and said thank you like it mattered.

When I went back upstairs, I sat on the edge of my bed in the dark and pressed my hands flat against my thighs to stop them from shaking. The organza panels for Milani's gown were pinned to the desk, catching the faint light from the courtyard.

I told myself this was strategy. I told myself they wanted something from me and this was how Alphas got it — not with force, but with the careful, patient construction of a debt you didn't realize you were accumulating until it was too late.

I told myself not to go back to the kitchen tomorrow night.

But I already knew I would.