Eden POV
The coffee pot slipped from her hands. Just barely. But she caught it before it hit the floor and that small victory made her breath easier in the dark kitchen.
No one was awake yet. The sun hadn't come up. The pack house was still sleeping and Eden Wright was exactly where she belonged. Invisible.
She moved between the counters with practiced silence, the kind of silence that comes from years of learning how to disappear. Four years of working in the Silverwood Pack kitchen had taught her everything about being forgotten. How to move without making noise. How to work without being seen. How to exist in a room full of people and be completely alone.
The eggs went into the pan. Sizzle. Butter melted fast.
Today was a council meeting. The important kind. The kind where Cole Brennan, the Alpha, locked himself in the war room with the five elders and nobody bothered him for hours. Eden had worked enough council meetings to know the routine. Cook for them. Deliver the food. Leave. Don't listen. Don't ask questions.
The last part was getting harder though.
She was slicing bread when she heard the voices.
The war room was right next to the kitchen. Just a thin wall between them. She'd never paid attention to what they talked about. Didn't care about pack politics or territorial disputes or whatever important things alphas fought about. It wasn't her world. The kitchen was her world and the kitchen was safe.
But the voices got louder and Eden heard her own name and she froze.
She shouldn't listen. She knew better. But her body didn't listen to logic. Her body went still. Her hands stopped moving. Her lungs stopped breathing properly and she became a statue standing in the darkness of the pack kitchen, listening to men discuss her like she wasn't a person.
"Her genetics are rare," a deep voice said. That was Barrett Walsh. The oldest elder. The one who made decisions about pack law. "The omega carrier gene runs strong in her bloodline. Even with her weak shift, the offspring would be viable."
Offspring. She was hearing wrong. Had to be.
"Cole understands this," another voice continued. Harsher. Colder. "The breeding timeline is essential. We've run the numbers. Her first fertile window opens next month. If she's impregnated before her twenty-fifth birthday, we can have the first strong heir by next summer."
The bread knife fell from Eden's hand and clattered against the counter.
She didn't pick it up.
Everything in the kitchen suddenly looked wrong. The yellow light from the stove. The pots hanging above her head. The floor she'd cleaned a thousand times. All of it looked like a cage and she was standing inside it.
"Will she consent," someone asked, "or should Cole simply invoke his alpha right?"
Consent. The word hung in the air like poison.
"She's an omega," Barrett laughed. Actually laughed. "She's been raised to understand hierarchy. She won't fight. She'll accept whatever her alpha decides. That's their nature. That's why they exist in the first place."
The voices continued but Eden wasn't hearing them anymore. Her ears were ringing. Her heart was doing something dangerous in her chest. Something that felt like panic mixed with betrayal mixed with a kind of anger she'd never felt before.
She'd grown up in this pack. She'd spent her whole life learning to be small and quiet and useful. She'd made peace with being omega. With being weak. With being the girl nobody remembered.
She thought that meant she was safe.
She thought invisibility meant protection.
But invisibility meant something different now. It didn't mean she was safe from notice. It meant she was safe from being human. She wasn't a person to them. She was a thing. A resource. Something they could plan around. Something they could decide about without her permission.
In the war room, Cole Brennan was agreeing to claim her.
Not because he wanted to. But because the pack told him to.
And she would have to let him.
Because that's what omegas did. That's what she'd been told her entire life. You obey. You accept. You don't question the order of things.
Eden gripped the edge of the counter and her whole body started shaking.
The coffee pot was still in her hand from earlier. She'd been holding it this whole time without realizing. Steam rose from the top. The coffee inside was hot enough to burn.
She looked at it for a long moment.
Then she set it down on the counter very carefully.
The voices in the next room were still talking. Still making plans. Still deciding that her body belonged to the pack. That her future was already written. That Cole was going to lock her in his territory and force her to give him children and there was nothing she could do about it because she was an omega and this was her purpose.
The door to the war room was maybe ten feet away.
She could hear everything from where she stood. The scrape of chairs. The shuffle of papers. Cole's voice, low and controlled, asking questions about breeding schedules. About when they'd initiate the mate bond. About how to ensure she wouldn't run.
He was already thinking about her running.
Which meant he knew she wouldn't want to be caught.
Which meant he was going to catch her anyway.
Eden's hands were shaking so badly she could barely grip the coffee pot.
She picked it up.
The handle was warm. The glass smooth. Inside, coffee swirled like it was alive. Like it was angry. Like it understood what it felt like to be trapped in something you couldn't escape from.
The voices got louder.
"...if she tries to run, we'll use the pack bond to pull her back. She can't shift fast enough to outrun a proper chase. She'll be exhausted after two hours. Capture will be simple."
Two hours.
That's how long she had before they'd catch her if she tried.
That's how long she had to disappear before the entire pack became a hunting machine and tore through the forests looking for her. Because that's what packs did. That's what alphas did. They hunted things until they caught them.
Eden's vision blurred.
She was a person. She had thoughts. She had dreams. She had a face and a heartbeat and a name that wasn't just "omega breeding tool" or "genetic resource." She had walked this earth for twenty-four years without asking to be used. Without asking to be defined by her bloodline or her reproductive system or the weakness of her wolf form.
And none of it mattered.
She was nothing to them.
She was less than nothing.
She was a glass coffee pot in someone else's hands. Something useful. Something breakable. Something that would shatter if dropped.
Eden pulled the coffee pot against her chest.
The heat burned through her thin shirt but she didn't care about the pain. Pain meant she was alive. Pain meant she could still feel something besides terror and betrayal.
The war room door was still closed.
They were still talking.
Still planning.
Still deciding her entire future without letting her have any say in it.
And that's when it hit her with the force of a physical blow. The realization that knocked the breath out of her lungs and made everything go quiet and still.
She was going to have to run.
Not because she wanted to. Not because running would save her. But because it was the only power she had left. The only choice they hadn't stolen from her yet. They could take her body. They could take her future. They could take everything she owned and everything she knew.
But they couldn't take her right now. Not in this moment. Not if she moved.
Not if she ran.
Eden walked toward the stove. Her legs moved without her permission. Her hands moved without thinking. The coffee pot swung in an arc. Just once.
It smashed against the edge of the metal sink.
The sound was enormous.
The coffee pot shattered like it had been waiting her whole life to break. Glass exploded across the counter. Coffee sprayed across her hands and her arms and the floor in a dark stain that looked like spilled blood.
Everything went silent.
Even the voices in the war room stopped.
Even the world seemed to hold its breath.
Then the war room door swung open and Barrett Walsh stepped out, his face red and angry, his eyes locking on Eden like she was prey.
"What happened out here," he demanded.
And Eden stood there with broken glass at her feet and hot coffee soaking into her clothes and the most dangerous words she'd ever thought forming on her lips.
She was going to say something. Something that would change everything.
Something that would make running from a whole pack look like a simple choice.
Something that would seal her fate.
The words were right there on her tongue and she was about to speak them when Cole Brennan's tall frame appeared in the doorway behind the elder.
His dark eyes met hers across the kitchen.
And he smiled.
Not a kind smile. A smile that said he already knew what she'd heard. A smile that said the hunt was about to begin.
A smile that said she had already lost.