The Omega quarters were in the basement. One narrow room with a cot, a sink, and a window too small to fit through. They moved me there the morning after Desmond handed me the armband. Two Delta wolves carried my things—what was left of them—and set the boxes on the floor without meeting my eyes. The door didn't lock from the inside.
I unpacked slowly. My healer's kit. The twins' drawings. The lavender sachet I'd retrieved from Cassandra's windowsill before I left the Luna's office. I pressed it between my palms and felt the dried petals crumble slightly. My mother's scent. Faint now, but still there.
That evening, Georgina allowed me a supervised visit with Maddox and Dawson. Not in my quarters—Omegas don't host guests. In the old kitchen, the one I used to cook in before Cassandra decided it was hers too. A Delta stood by the door, watching.
The twins ran to me the second they came in. I knelt and caught them both, their small bodies colliding with mine hard enough to hurt. I didn't care. I held them and breathed them in—their scent, still mine, still pack, still the only thing in this house that hadn't been taken.
Maddox pulled back first. He looked at my neck. At the scar where the mark used to be. His face went very still.
"Mama," he whispered. "Does it hurt?"
"Not anymore," I lied.
He pressed his face against the scar. Right against it. His breath was warm on my skin. Then he froze.
"My chest feels strange," he said. His voice was small and confused. "Like something's pulling me toward you."
Dawson nodded without speaking. His hands fisted in my shirt. I could feel his wolf—not through a bond, I didn't have one anymore—but through something else. Something deeper. His wolf was straining toward me. Toward my aura. The pressure at the base of my spine pulsed once, responding.
I cupped both their faces. Looked at them until they looked back.
"Trust what your wolf knows," I said quietly. "Always. No matter what anyone else tells you."
Maddox's eyes were too serious for a child. "Even if Dad says different?"
"Especially then."
The Delta by the door cleared his throat. Time was up. I kissed their foreheads and let them go. Watched them walk out, Dawson looking back over his shoulder until the door closed.
I sat alone in the kitchen for a long time after that. The counter where I used to roll dough. The stove where I'd burned my hand teaching myself to cook the way the twins liked. All of it still here. All of it someone else's now.
I pulled out my phone. Opened the one private channel Desmond's administration had never monitored—Raya's encrypted line. She'd set it up years ago, told me it was for emergencies, and I'd never used it. Until now.
I typed four words: *I need the box.*
Winnie's reply came three minutes later. *Midnight. Your quarters.*
I deleted both messages and put the phone away.
Winnie arrived at exactly midnight. She didn't knock—just opened the door, slipped inside, and set a small wooden box on the cot beside me. Her face was carefully blank, but her eyes weren't. She looked at the Omega armband on my bicep and something tightened in her expression.
"Your mother said you'd know when," she said.
I picked up the box. It was warm. Not metaphorically—actually warm, like it had been sitting in sunlight. I'd carried this box for years. Moved it from apartment to pack house to Luna's quarters. Never been able to open it. The lock had never responded to anything I tried.
Now it hummed beneath my fingers.
"Thank you," I said.
Winnie nodded once and left without another word.
I held the box in both hands. The warmth spread up my arms, into my chest, settling over the place where my wolf used to sit strong and steady. The pressure at the base of my spine pulsed again—harder this time, insistent.
I didn't open it yet.
Instead, I knelt beside the cot and pried up the loose floorboard in the corner. The one I somehow knew was there. The one from a dream I'd had years ago—my mother's voice telling me to look, to remember, to wait. I'd dismissed it as grief playing tricks.
I wasn't dismissing it anymore.
I set the box in the hollow beneath the floorboard and replaced the board carefully. When I had a plan for what came after—when I knew exactly how to use whatever was inside—I would open it.
This was the first decision I'd made in seven years that wasn't about Desmond, or the pack, or even my sons.
It was entirely mine.
I lay down on the cot and closed my eyes. My wolf was still dim inside me, still flickering. But underneath it, that ancient pressure coiled tighter. Waiting.
Georgina delivered my Omega duties herself the next morning.
She stood in my doorway holding a clipboard, her Harrow crest pin catching the light. She didn't come in. Just read from the list in a voice that was pleasant and precise and designed to humiliate.
"Communal bathing facilities. Scrub the tiles and drains daily. Luna's table service during all meals. Laundry duty for the Luna's wardrobe." She looked up. Smiled. "I trust that's clear?"
"Perfectly," I said.
Her smile thinned. She'd wanted a reaction. I didn't give her one.
The first morning, I carried a breakfast tray to the Luna's office. Cassandra sat at my old desk, wearing my whites, touching my files. I set the tray in front of her without expression.
She inspected each item. The eggs. The toast. The tea. Her fingers hovered over the cup like she thought I might have poisoned it.
"It's fine," she said finally. Like she was granting permission.
I watched her hands. They trembled. Just slightly. The specific tremor of someone performing confidence they didn't actually feel.
I filed it away.
"Will that be all?" I asked.
"For now."
I turned to leave.
"Adelaide."
I stopped. Didn't turn around.
"You should know," Cassandra said. Her voice was light. Conversational. "Desmond's much happier now. He says he should have done this years ago."
I looked back over my shoulder. Met her eyes.
"Good," I said.
Her smile faltered. Just for a second. Just long enough for me to see the crack underneath.
I walked out and closed the door behind me.
In the basement, I scrubbed tiles until my hands ached. Laundered whites that used to be mine. Served meals at a table I used to sit at. And every night, I pressed my hand against the floorboard and felt the box hum beneath it.
Waiting.
So was I.
