Three weeks after I walked out of Ironvale, I stood in front of a pack-house I'd never seen before and told a lie I'd practiced in the mirror.
"I'm wolfless," I said. "I can cook."
The woman across the intake desk had warm brown skin and tired eyes. Her name badge read Mara Okafor, Head Healer. She looked at me for a long moment—long enough that I wondered if she could smell the wolfsbane still leaching out of my pores—then wrote something on a form and slid it toward me.
"Name?"
"Sav," I said.
She waited. When I didn't continue, she clicked her pen twice and wrote it down. Just that. Sav. No surname. No pack lineage. No history.
"Kitchen work starts at five a.m.," Mara said. "You'll bunk in the east wing, third floor. Omegas only. Don't wander."
"I won't," I said.
She handed me a key attached to a wooden tag with the number 3-E carved into it. As I turned to go, her voice stopped me.
"Sav."
I looked back.
Her gaze was steady. Clinical. "If you need medical attention, you come to me. Not the pack physician. Me."
I nodded. I didn't ask why. I already knew she'd seen something—the faint scarring around my irises, maybe, or the way my hands shook when I signed the intake form. Wolfsbane left marks if you took it long enough. I had taken it for three years.
The cot in 3-E was narrow and clean. I lay down on it fully dressed and stared at the ceiling until the sky outside went dark. My wolf was still there, pressed against the inside of my ribs like a prisoner testing the bars. She didn't speak. She hadn't spoken since the altar. But I could feel her—restless, grieving, furious in a way that had nowhere to go.
I closed my eyes and tried to remember my mother's face. The bond-shock had taken her so fast I hadn't gotten to say goodbye. Hadn't gotten to tell her I was sorry for bringing a mate like Nicholas into our lives. Hadn't gotten to ask if she'd known, somehow, that I wasn't really wolfless—just broken.
Sleep didn't come. At four-thirty I gave up and went downstairs.
The kitchen was industrial and gleaming, all stainless steel and fluorescent light. A middle-aged woman with flour on her apron looked up when I walked in.
"You the new Omega?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Good. Prep station's in the back. We've got a guest upstairs—Lycan royalty, so don't screw it up." She jerked her chin toward a cutting board already laid out with vegetables. "Start with those."
I tied an apron around my waist and got to work.
My hands knew what to do. They always had. Cooking was the one thing that still made sense—the methodical rhythm of chopping, the heat of the stove, the way ingredients became something else if you paid attention. I worked through the morning prep in silence, and when the supervisor asked if anyone could handle the guest meal, I raised my hand before I could think better of it.
"You sure?" she asked. "It's got to be perfect."
"I'm sure," I said.
She handed me the menu card. Rosemary-roasted lamb. Warm bread. A broth base I recognized from a recipe my mother used to make on cold nights, back when we still had cold nights that felt safe.
I started cooking.
The rosemary went in first. I crushed it between my palms and the scent rose up sharp and green, cutting through the grease-smell of the industrial kitchen. My wolf stirred. Not much. Just enough that I felt her shift against my bones, restless.
I kept going. Lamb in the pan, seared hard, the fat crisping at the edges. Bread dough kneaded smooth, left to rise under a damp cloth. The broth simmering low and slow, the way my mother had taught me—patience, she'd said, was the only real skill in cooking. Everything else was just following instructions.
By the time I plated it, my hands had stopped shaking.
The supervisor inspected the tray, nodded once, and handed it to a server. "Guest quarters, top floor. Don't drop it."
I watched the tray disappear through the double doors and felt something loosen in my chest. Not relief. Just the small, quiet satisfaction of having made something that wouldn't hurt anyone.
I scrubbed the pots alone after the dinner rush. The kitchen had emptied out, the other Omegas gone to their bunks or the common room. I didn't mind. Alone was easier. Alone didn't ask questions.
I was elbow-deep in soapy water when the kitchen doors slammed open.
A man stood in the doorway. Tall, broad-shouldered, with silver-grey eyes that locked onto me like a sniper finding a target. His aura hit the room half a second later—Lycan, unmistakable, so thick with authority that my knees almost buckled.
Behind him, a second man—leaner, stone-faced, with the controlled violence of a trained enforcer.
"You," the first man said. His voice was low and rough, like he'd been holding it back. "You cooked the meal."
It wasn't a question.
I set the pot down carefully. Dried my hands on my apron. "Yes."
He crossed the kitchen in four strides. Stopped two feet away. Close enough that I could see the way his jaw was locked, the way his hands were clenched at his sides like he was physically holding himself in place.
"What's your name?" he asked.
"Sav."
"Your full name."
I hesitated. His eyes narrowed.
"Just Sav," I said.
He stared at me. I stared back. I had practice at this—at making myself small, at giving nothing away. Three years with Nicholas had taught me how to disappear while standing in plain sight.
But this man didn't look away.
"You're coming with me," he said.
The enforcer stepped forward. I took a step back, my spine hitting the edge of the sink.
"I didn't do anything wrong," I said. My voice came out steady. That surprised me.
"I know," the man said. Then, quieter, almost to himself: "I know."
He turned to the enforcer. "Cole. Clear the hall. No one follows."
Cole nodded once and disappeared.
The man looked back at me. His eyes were still locked on mine, but something in them had shifted—less predator, more... something I didn't have a name for.
"I'm not going to hurt you," he said.
I didn't believe him. But I also didn't have a choice.
I untied my apron. Set it on the counter. Followed him out of the kitchen into the hallway, where every instinct I had left was screaming at me to run.
