Aisla's POV
I used to think silence was safety.
That if I kept my head down, stayed quiet, and made myself small enough, the world would pass me by without noticing. The only way to survive as an Omega was to be invisible and forgettable.
But silence had not saved me.
It was Elder Mora who had.
That night in Alpha Thorne's chamber, when his fury weighed on me like chains, she had pulled me away with a voice steady as stone. From that moment on, she had not let me go.
"You belong to the Moon," she had said. "Not to him."
And so my nights no longer belonged to fear. They belonged to Mora. To training. To the Moon.
It always started with fire.
On the first night, Mora sat me before a bowl of flame, chanting words in a tongue older than the pack itself. Her voice was low and rough, but it thrummed in my bones. She made me repeat the words until my throat went raw, until the sparks of the fire twisted in tune with my breath.
