Ronan
The mess hall stinks of boiled vegetables and unearned confidence. I stand by the far wall, a pillar of shadow they all pretend not to see. It’s a useful trick.
From here, I see everything. The future of our people. A collection of pampered brats who think strength is measured in the volume of their laughter. They swing their swords like clumsy butchers and call it combat. They posture and preen, convinced their bloodlines are a substitute for skill. They are a disappointment.
My eyes land on Kade, the Alpha heir. He holds court at the center table, a king of fools. He is strong, I’ll grant him that. His form has power. But his mind is a blunt instrument. He telegraphs every move, not just in the sparring ring, but here. Now.
He circles the small omega girl. Lena. I remember her file. Orphaned. Parents were Alphas, good soldiers. Died on the northern border. Now their daughter is a pack charity case, a target for the insecure.
Kade needs this. The audience. The public humiliation of someone who cannot fight back. It’s a display not of dominance, but of profound weakness. A true Alpha solidifies his power through respect, not fear. Kade only knows how to inspire the latter.
He hooks his leg behind hers. She falls. The stew spatters. The laughter is a roar. It’s pathetic. A waste of my time. I turn and leave before anyone notices I was there at all.
Hours later, the moon hangs thin and sharp in the sky. I walk the perimeter, the silence a welcome relief. My boots make no sound on the damp earth. It is a discipline I learned long ago, one these children with their heavy, stomping feet will never master.
A sound cuts through the quiet. A soft scuff. A sharp exhale of breath. It comes from the old training grounds behind the armory. No one uses that place. It is a relic, forgotten.
My instincts take over. I move toward the sound, a ghost in the long shadows cast by the moon. I stay low, using the crumbling wall of the armory for cover. I peer through a gap in the stones.
It’s her. The omega. Lena.
She is not crying. She is not licking her wounds. She is training.
Her stance is wrong. Her balance is off. But there is a fire in her movements that catches my attention. She moves through a sequence, her hands slicing the air. It’s sloppy, but it’s determined.
She pushes herself, repeating the motions again and again. Sweat slicks her hair to her temples. Her knuckles are scraped raw from a fall I must have missed. She gets up. She starts over.
Then she shifts into a new form, and I freeze. My breath catches in my throat. I know that sequence. I have not seen it in fifteen years. Not since Elias drew it for me in the dirt of a battlefield, laughing about how it could topple a brute twice his size.
Form Seven: The Serpent’s Strike.
It’s from his journal. The personal combat manual of one of the finest tactical minds our people had ever produced. A man who fell on the northern border. Her father.
I watch her, really watch her now. I see past the omega designation. I see past the public victim. I see the daughter of a legendary warrior, trying to honor his memory in secret with nothing but his words on a page.
She is not just practicing. She is studying. Her mind is working, analyzing the angles, the leverage. It is the kind of intelligence that cannot be taught, only honed.
The girl I saw humiliated in the mess hall is a mask. A carefully constructed shield. The real Lena is out here, in the dark, forging herself into a weapon with nothing but inherited ink and impossible will.
Most of the students in this academy are loud, hollow drums. They beat and bang, signifying nothing.
But this one. This quiet, broken omega.
She is a razor blade in the dark.
A flicker of something I have not felt in a long, long time sparks in my chest. Interest.
I will watch her.
