Lyanna's POV
I almost didn't leave the house.
I stood at the door for a full minute that morning, hand on the bolt, telling myself I was being paranoid. That the warning note had rattled me more than it should have. That going outside and moving normally through the pack territory was the smartest thing I could do — because hiding would only confirm to whoever was watching that their message had worked.
I slid the bolt back and stepped outside.
The morning air was cool and clean after the rain, the kind of freshness that usually made me feel awake and clear-headed. I pulled my coat tighter and started down the familiar path toward the market quarter, keeping my pace steady and my chin level.
I noticed the first pair of eyes before I had walked two minutes from my door.
A young wolf — male, maybe nineteen, someone I recognized vaguely from pack gatherings — was leaning against a fence post on the opposite side of the path. He wasn't doing anything suspicious. Just standing. But the moment I appeared, his gaze snapped to me with an alertness that didn't match the casual posture of his body. He watched me pass without blinking.
I kept walking.
The second set of eyes came at the corner where the path curved toward the market. Two older omegas, women I had known my entire life, standing close together in quiet conversation. The moment they saw me, the conversation stopped. Not gradually — immediately, like a candle being snuffed. One of them said something low and quick to the other without moving her lips much.
The other one looked at me.
Not with the familiar warmth of pack members who had watched me grow up. Not even with the cold indifference of someone who had heard about the ceremony and drawn their own conclusions.
She looked at me like I was dangerous.
Like I was something unpredictable that needed to be watched carefully until it moved on.
I kept my expression neutral and walked past them without stopping. But my pulse had quickened and my wolf was alert now, ears metaphorically pricked, reading the air around me with sudden sharp attention.
Something is wrong.
The market quarter was busier than the path had been — wolves moving between stalls, conducting the ordinary business of the morning, voices and movement filling the open space with the usual noise of pack life. I told myself the density of people would make it harder to feel watched. That I would blend into the crowd and the strange alertness of the morning would dissolve into ordinary background noise.
I was wrong.
It was worse in the market.
Because here there were more eyes, and none of them were subtle. A group of young warriors near the grain stall fell silent as I approached and stayed silent until I had passed, then erupted immediately into low urgent whispers the moment my back was to them. A merchant who had sold me herbs for years suddenly found something urgently requiring his attention on the completely wrong side of his stall when I approached. A woman I had considered a friend — we had eaten meals together, celebrated festivals together, exchanged small kindnesses for years — looked up from her shopping, saw my face, and deliberately turned in the opposite direction.
I stopped walking.
I stood in the middle of the market quarter and made myself breathe steadily while the pack moved around me with the careful, practiced awareness of people pretending not to look at something they were absolutely looking at.
What are they saying about me?
Because this wasn't the whispered sympathy of a pack watching a rejected omega grieve. I knew what that looked like — I had braced for it, the pitying glances, the uncomfortable smiles, the people who didn't know what to say so said nothing. That would have been painful but recognizable.
This was something different.
The woman who had looked at me like I was dangerous — that expression didn't come from pity. It came from fear. And fear of an omega made no sense unless someone had given the pack a reason to be afraid of her.
Unless the story that was spreading through Silvercrest wasn't simply the Alpha rejected her.
I moved to the edge of the market and stopped near a low stone wall, positioning myself where I could observe without being directly in the flow of foot traffic. I kept my face relaxed and my eyes moving casually, the way Kaelor had once described reading a room — never stare at what you want to see. Look at everything else.
It took less than five minutes.
A cluster of three omegas near the water well, young women around my own age. They didn't know I could see them from this angle. The one with red hair leaned close to the others and said something with an expression of urgent, horrified excitement — the face people make when they are sharing a story that is terrible and thrilling in equal measure. The second one pressed a hand over her mouth. The third one glanced around the market instinctively, the way you look around when you're discussing something you shouldn't.
Her gaze swept in my direction.
She saw me.
Her face changed instantly — the animated expression of gossip collapsing into something stiff and uncomfortable. She grabbed the red-haired girl's arm and said something sharp. All three of them turned away from me with the synchronized speed of people who had just been caught.
I had seen enough.
I left the market and took the longer route home, moving through the quieter back paths where I was less likely to be observed. My mind was working quickly now, sorting through what I had seen and building the shape of it.
The watching eyes. The sudden silences. The woman who turned away. The fear in faces that had never had reason to fear me before. The gossip spreading through the market with that particular electric energy that only attached itself to stories that were scandalous or dangerous.
Someone was telling a story about me.
Not just the Alpha rejected her and she was late to the ceremony. Something bigger. Something that had shifted how the pack looked at me from rejected omega — pitiable but harmless — to something that made women grip each other's arms and look around before they spoke.
The warning note from last night surfaced in my mind.
Stop searching for what they don't want found.
Last night, I had read it as a threat directed at me alone. A private warning from someone who knew I was asking questions. But what if it was connected to this? What if the rumor spreading through the pack this morning wasn't accidental? What if someone was deliberately reshaping the story — getting ahead of any questions I might ask, poisoning the well before I could drink from it?
If the pack believed something bad enough about me, no one would listen to me.
No one would believe me.
I reached my door and let myself in quickly, sliding the bolt behind me. I leaned against the wood in the dim interior and stared at the warning note still sitting on the writing table where I had left it.
"Stop searching for what they don't want found."
My jaw tightened.
Whoever had written this had made a significant miscalculation. They had assumed the warning would frighten me into stillness. That a rejected, humiliated omega with no allies and no authority would read those words and quietly fold herself away.
They didn't know me.
I crossed to the writing table and picked up the note. Read it one more time. Then I set it back down and reached for a fresh sheet of parchment.
If someone was spreading rumors about me through Silvercrest, then I needed to know exactly what those rumors were saying. And the only way to find out was to find someone still willing to talk to me.
I began writing a name at the top of the page.
But before the ink had dried, something made me stop.
A sound.
Faint. Outside the window. The soft, deliberate sound of footsteps — not passing by, not the random traffic of the path outside.
Stopping.
Directly outside my door.