Sienna's POV
The carriage hit a pothole and my head slammed against the window.
Pain exploded behind my eyes and I bit back a sound that might have been a whimper. The guard across from me didn't even look up from his newspaper. He never looked up anymore. None of them did. I'd been traveling for three days straight and these men had stopped acknowledging my existence sometime around hour two.
Which was fine. Better actually. Meant I could sit here and spiral without anyone asking questions.
The roads north were nothing like the southern territories I'd grown up in. Everything was wider. Wilder. The trees seemed taller like they were trying to touch the sky. The air smelled different too. Sharper. More alive in a way that made my skin prickle.
My skin had been prickling a lot since I left my aunt's house.
I touched my neck where my scent mark was supposed to be. The mark that told the world I was an Omega. The mark that made me submission and obedience wrapped up in a single biological stamp on my skin.
The problem was that the mark didn't feel real anymore.
It never had. I'd just been too busy surviving to notice it before.
But for the last three days stuck in this carriage with nothing but my own thoughts, the wrongness of it had become impossible to ignore.
My fingers traced the skin where the mark should have been glowing with Omega scent. Should have been announcing to everyone around me that I was the kind of wolf that was supposed to obey stronger wolves without question. Should have made me feel small and safe in my own submission.
Instead I felt nothing.
Smooth skin. No scent. Just emptiness underneath.
Which didn't make sense. Omegas were born with their marks. You could feel them. You could smell them on yourself. Every Omega girl my aunt had invited over for tea had talked about their marks like they were part of their identity. Like knowing they were an Omega made them feel complete somehow.
I'd never felt complete. I'd felt trapped.
I pulled my hand back and wrapped my arms around myself instead.
The guards shifted position and one of them glanced at me with something close to concern. Like maybe I was about to fall apart and create paperwork for him.
"Not much longer," he said, his voice rough. "We'll reach the northern estate by nightfall tomorrow."
Tomorrow.
I would meet Alpha Kade Ravenswood tomorrow.
The man I was supposed to marry. The man my aunt had promised was getting exactly what he deserved. A compliant Omega bride who would give him heirs and never cause trouble.
That's what Evangeline had told the Council anyway.
But as the carriage rolled deeper into the wild north, something inside me was waking up. Something that didn't feel Omega at all.
That night we stopped at an inn and I was given a small room on the second floor. The guard stood outside my door which meant I could sleep but not leave. I sat on the bed and stared at my reflection in the mirror above the washbasin.
The girl looking back at me was pale. Dark hair that went down to her waist. Green eyes that looked scared of everything.
That was the girl my aunt had raised. The girl she'd told the world I was.
But when I really looked, when I stopped accepting what I was supposed to be, something else looked back at me too.
There was something underneath. Something in the set of my jaw. Something in the way I was sitting even though no one was watching. My back was straight. My shoulders were squared like I wasn't waiting for someone to hit me.
Like some part of me already knew it didn't have to.
I touched my neck again. Ran my fingers over the skin more carefully this time. And that's when I felt it.
There was something there. But it wasn't what it should have been.
It was like there were two scents layered on top of each other. One on top was weak and submissive. The kind of scent that announced Omega to the whole world.
But underneath that, if I focused hard enough, if I actually paid attention with every sense I had, there was something else.
Something older.
Something that smelled like power.
I jerked my hand back from my neck like I'd been burned.
No. That wasn't possible. I was an Omega. Evangeline had told me a thousand times. My mother had been an Omega. My whole life I'd been taught that this was what I was born to be. Submissive. Obedient. Small.
The power underneath couldn't be real. It had to be my imagination. Had to be nerves about tomorrow making me see things that weren't there.
But as I lay in that small inn bed, staring at the ceiling, I couldn't stop thinking about it.
About how the surface scent felt like a mask. Like something that had been placed on top of my real skin and just lived there so long I'd forgotten it wasn't supposed to be there.
About how when I really listened to my body, when I stopped trying to be what Evangeline wanted, there was a voice underneath that whispered something different.
It whispered that I wasn't what I thought I was.
It whispered that Alpha Kade Ravenswood had no idea what he was getting.
It whispered that when he finally marked me, when his fangs finally touched my skin and made the bond real, everything was going to change.
The next morning we were back on the road.
The carriage climbed higher into mountains that looked like they'd been there since the beginning of the world. The air got colder and sharper. My pulse started racing as we got closer.
Around midday I started seeing wolves in the distance. Pack wolves. Ravenswood wolves based on the marks I could see even from the carriage. They watched us pass with eyes that saw everything.
By late afternoon the forests opened up and I could see the estate.
It was huge. Not beautiful exactly. More like dangerous wrapped up in stone and sharp corners. The kind of place that had been built by someone who didn't care about being welcoming. Who cared about being strong.
The carriage pulled through the gates and my heart started pounding so hard I thought it might break through my ribs.
This was it. This was the moment my life changed.
I smoothed down my dress even though it didn't matter. I pushed my hair back even though my hands were shaking. I tried to make myself look grateful and compliant and like exactly what my aunt had promised.
But my neck was prickling again.
And the power underneath my skin was humming.
And as the carriage came to a stop and I heard voices outside, heard footsteps on the stone, I realized something that should have terrified me.
I wasn't scared.
The scared girl should have been scared. The Omega who'd spent her whole life running and hiding should have been terrified.
But something else inside me was just waiting.
Waiting for Alpha Kade Ravenswood to get close enough to scent what I really was.
Waiting for him to figure out that his bride wasn't what anyone promised.
Waiting for the moment when the mask my aunt had built would finally shatter.
And as the carriage door opened and I caught my first glimpse of black hair and dangerous eyes, I knew with absolute certainty that when that moment came, nothing in this world would ever be the same again.