POV: Elara
I didn't sleep again that night.
This time it wasn't Kael keeping me awake. It was Garrett's face — the way he'd said your mother like it was a door he'd been standing outside for years, waiting for the right moment to knock.
I hadn't let him knock.
I'd told him I was tired, which was true. I'd told him we'd talk tomorrow, which was a delay. I'd gone upstairs, lain on my back in the dark, and stared at the ceiling while my hands sat on top of my blanket looking completely ordinary and giving nothing away.
Your mother.
My mother had died when I was two years old. I had exactly one memory of her — soft hands, a humming sound, the smell of something warm. Everything else I knew about her came from pack records that said almost nothing, and older omegas who said she had been quiet and kind and gone too soon.
Garrett had said it like he knew more than that.
I didn't sleep.
Morning came gray and cool, the kind of sky that couldn't decide between clouds and sun. I was downstairs early, as usual, starting the day's first tasks in the merciful quiet before the Wyvern woke up.
The peace lasted about an hour.
The first sign was small — a woman I recognized from the market, a regular face who always nodded hello when she passed the bar. She came in for her morning tea, same as always. But when I set her cup down, she looked at my hand instead of my face. Then she looked away. Fast.
I noticed. I didn't react.
The second sign was louder. Two men at a corner table leaned together over their cups, voices down. I caught two words clearly when I passed — witchcraft and Alpha — and when they realized I was close, they both went quiet and found their breakfasts very interesting.
By mid-morning the Wyvern had a different texture to it. The warmth that usually filled the room — the easy, familiar warmth of people who liked being there — had a cold thread running through it. A few regulars were fine, the way they always were. But there were glances. There were mouths that moved when I turned my back. There was a group of women near the window who went silent the moment I came near them and restarted the second I walked away.
I had grown up an omega in a pack full of people who thought they were better than me.
I knew exactly what being talked about felt like.
I kept my chin level and my smile steady and I did my job.
I found out the specifics from Dax, because Dax had never once in his life successfully kept information to himself.
He cornered me near the kitchen door around noon with the expression of a man who was deeply uncomfortable but felt a moral obligation to speak. "Someone is saying things," he said, without preamble.
"People generally do."
"About you. Bad things." He shifted his weight. "A woman — tall, dark hair, looks like she was born annoyed — she was talking to Mara and Calla from the candle shop this morning. Outside. Loud enough that Finn and I heard her from across the street."
I already knew exactly who he was describing.
"She told them you're using witchcraft on the Alpha," Dax continued, watching my face carefully. "That you're casting some kind of pull on him. That the weird light people saw last night was — her words — a seduction spell." He paused. "Mara repeated it to the baker. The baker told his whole queue. You know how fast that goes."
I knew exactly how fast that went.
"Thank you," I said. Even. Quiet.
"Elara." He dropped his voice. "People are scared after a breach. They want something to blame, and strange lights and alphas acting—" he searched for the word — "different, it's an easy story. You need to—"
"I need to get back to work," I said. And I did.
Garrett found me in the kitchen twenty minutes later. He didn't say anything at first — he picked up a potato and started peeling it, adding it to the pot, giving me the silence I needed to speak first.
"Lyra," I said.
"Lyra," he confirmed.
I took a breath in through my nose and let it out slowly. "She's scared. That's what this is. Threatened women make noise. I've dealt with noise before."
"This noise has teeth." Garrett kept peeling. "A witchcraft rumor in a city that just had a dungeon breach, with people already jumpy about supernatural activity — that's not just gossip. That's kindling."
"I know."
"You should be careful."
I looked at him sideways. "I'm always careful."
"You're always capable," he corrected, gently but clearly. "That's not the same thing. Capable means you can handle whatever comes. Careful means you don't let it get close enough to need handling." He set the peeled potato in the pot and finally looked at me. "Right now, you're letting it get close."
I didn't answer that because I didn't have a good answer.
He picked up another potato. "She's doing it because of the way he looks at you."
"I don't control how he looks at me."
"No. But she doesn't know that." A pause. "And I'm not sure he knows that either."
From the main room came the low sound of voices — the lunch crowd starting to fill in. Normal sounds. My sounds. Everything I'd built over four years, currently wrapped in a rumor that had been running through the city since breakfast.
I untied my apron, retied it tighter, and pushed through the kitchen door.
He was at the corner table again.
Lyra sat across from him, saying something with a small smile, her posture carefully relaxed. The picture of a woman comfortable in her place. When I came through the door her eyes found me first — a quick, sharp flick — before returning to Kael with perfect smoothness.
Kael wasn't looking at her.
He was looking at me.
His expression moved through something fast — relief, almost, at the sight of me, which he quickly pressed flat. His eyes tracked my face the way they always did, like he was reading something in it that no one else could see.
I looked away first. Walked to the bar. Picked up my cloth.
Behind me, I heard a woman at the window table whisper to her companion. I only caught one word.
Witch.
My hand tightened on the cloth.
Then, from outside — close, just beyond the Wyvern's front wall — came a sound that lifted every head in the room.
A low horn. Three sharp blasts.
The city guard's breach signal.
Not the all-clear.
The other one.
It's not over.