The Omega's Bite

Chapter 1

Ayesha 🐺

Skipping through the woods with a basket full of herbs balanced against my hip, I couldn't stop smiling. The forest was beautiful this time of evening. Golden light slipped through the branches above me while the wind danced softly through the leaves, carrying the earthy scent of moss and pine across the trails I had walked my entire life. Small purple flowers peeked through patches of grass, and somewhere deeper in the woods, water rushed gently over rocks.

This was my favorite part of the day: just me with the trees and the small hope sitting warm inside my chest. I glanced down proudly at the basket swinging lightly from my arm. All kinds of herbs were in there: Lavender, Wild mint, Silverleaf, and Moonroot. If I found the right buyer in the lower market tomorrow, the herbs could keep my mother and me fed for at least two months, maybe longer if the winter stayed mild.

As long as they don't find out about my status in the pack, everything will be okay. Excitement bubbled inside me at the thought. I knew Mama would be so happy. Especially when she made her peach cobbler tonight, the thought alone nearly made me walk faster.

I could already picture her standing near the stove in her faded yellow dress, quietly humming one of her old songs while flour dusted her hands. She always hummed while cooking. It didn't matter if she was sad or was being treated with cruelty; she would hum away like everything was okay. Even when my father, her mate, rejected her years ago and left her carrying me alone, she hummed through the heartbreak.

Whatever it was, she always managed to have a smile on her face and music on her lips; she would ignore the pack members whispering behind our backs and hum while hanging laundry. Through sickness, she still hummed softly under her breath while braiding my hair. Mama said silence gave pain too much room to grow, so she filled the silence instead.

I smiled to myself as I stepped over fallen branches."You better not burn the crust this time," I muttered playfully to the empty woods.

The wind brushed my curls away from my face gently, and for a little while, I let myself pretend life wasn't hard. That I wasn't an omega girl people avoided, mothers didn't pull their children away from me, or that packmales didn't look at my mother with pity and disgust mixed. For a little while, I was just a daughter bringing home herbs to her mother.

With a happy and hopeful smile.

Then the forest became quiet; my steps slowed slightly. There were no birds, no rustling, no distant humming drifting through the trees from our cabin. The big smile faded slowly because something wasn't right. Usually, I could hear Mama before I even reached the clearing. She hummed loudly while cooking, especially when she baked.

I stopped and listened harder, and there was nothing. A weird feeling curled low in my stomach. The closer I got to the cabin, the worse it became. I didn't smell peaches or cinnamon, nor any smoke from the chimney. No sweet warmth drifted through the evening air; instead, it smelled wrong and cold. My grip tightened around the basket."Mama?" I whisper.

There was no answer, the trees thinned as I reached the clearing, and I stopped dead when I saw the pack members standing outside our cabin. There's never been that many around our cabin, not since everyone labeled us as omegas. Some whispered among themselves, while others just stared. A few shook their heads before quickly looking away when they noticed me standing there.

Fear slid sharply down my spine, no, no, no, nothing can't happen to mama, not mama, I thought as the basket slipped slightly from my fingers as I took a step forward, forcing my feet to move forward as my heartbeat was painfully loud. "Mama?" I said it again, but there was still nothing. When I finally made it to the front, I saw the cabin door open, and behind the crowd, in the middle of the room, Mama was lying motionless.

NO! MAMA!" The scream ripped out of me so violently my throat burned. My knees slammed against the wooden floor near the doorway, pain shooting through them, but I barely felt it. All I could see was her

Chapter 2

Ayesha 🐺

Mama lay crumpled beside the table, her body unnaturally still, the basket of herbs overturned across the floorboards. Green leaves and dried petals were scattered everywhere, stained darker by the liquid dripping from the corner of her mouth.

"No, no, no." My voice broke apart as I crawled toward her, my shaking hands grabbed at her shoulders, trying to lift her, trying to wake her up. "Mama, look at me. Please look at me."Her skin felt cold, too cold.

My chest tightened so hard I thought my ribs would crack open from the pressure. Just this morning, she had been smiling at me, talking about peach cobbler and winter preparations, laughing because I nearly tripped over the firewood outside. Now her eyes were half-open but empty, and my pulse pounded violently in my ears."Mama?" I tried again, but there was no answer, and there will never be an answer from her, which terrified me more than tears ever could.

"What happened?" My voice cracked. "Why!!"

A woman reached toward me like she wanted to comfort me, but I jerked away before she could touch me. I didn't want comfort; I wanted my mother. Out of nowhere, a heat hit me, and a massive fire exploded in the center of the clearing, sending me back away from my mother's body. Flames climbed hungrily into the darkening sky, sparks twisting upward like dying stars fast and big.

I was shaking my head, violently refusing to believe what I was witnessing; my mother's body was being burned before my eyes, and there was nothing I could do about it. And then something snapped inside my knees, and I nearly gave out. "No." Everything inside me went cold. No, no, no." I stumbled forward, but rough hands caught my arms before I reached the flames.

"Let me go!" I screamed, fighting wildly. "LET ME GO!"

"It's already done," someone muttered.

Done? What's DONE?!

"She passed peacefully," another woman whispered.

Peacefully? There was nothing peaceful about this, not a damn thing. And that's why something feels wrong about the whole event. I finally stopped struggling, not because I accepted it, but because something strange hit my nose; it was faint, almost hidden beneath the smoke. I took a deep breath, and there it was again, a sharp bitterness just underneath the scent of the burning fire; it was sweet and then rotten underneath.

The smell was unnatural, making my stomach twist violently cause I knew that smell, I knew what it meant, even when the word echoed through my head, instantly, something was wrong, very wrong. My eyes lifted slowly toward the flames, the strange scent disappeared briefly beneath the smoke before returning in small waves whenever the wind shifted.

My wolf stirred restlessly beneath my skin, alert and uneasy. I swallowed hard."What happened to her?"

There was a brief silence before I heard footsteps approaching behind me. Alpha Darius Vale stepped beside the fire, his hands calmly clasped behind his back.

"She passed in her sleep," he said smoothly.

My eyes narrowed slightly."She was fine this morning."

The Alpha's expression didn't change."She has been sick for years."

That's true, but still something clawed sharply at my instincts. The scent hit me again with that strange bitterness. Ignoring him, I inhaled softly this time, trying to place it. Then it hit: herbs, burned flowers, and metal. That realization made my stomach turn even harder. My mother had made it her mission to teach me about plants my entire life, from healing herbs to sleeping herbs to dangerous herbs.

And something in that smoke reminded me of warnings she once whispered while crushing roots at the kitchen table."Some poisons smell sweet before they kill." My pulse stuttered. "No, impossible." I refused to believe it, and I stared harder into the flames.

Questions start flying in my head. Why burn her body so fast? Why not wait for me? Why not prepare her properly? Nothing about this felt right. My wolf paced violently now, not in grief, and I didn't try to calm her down because I was too worked up.

I barely realized I was trembling until Alpha Darius spoke again."You should rest."

My gaze snapped toward him immediately. Rest? My mother was burning in front of me, and he wanted me to calm down. Instead of calm, something cold settled in my chest before I locked eyes with Alpha Darius. What I saw wasn't grief or sympathy, but relief. It was gone just as fast as it came, but I saw it. My heartbeat slowed. I needed to calm down because something had happened here, and I needed to find out what had really happened.

I slowly looked back toward the fire one more time, the bitter scent touched my nose one last time, and deep inside me, I could swear something ancient whispered: "Remember that smell."

Chapter 3

Ayesha 🐺

Hours after everyone left and I was left with my mother's ashes, I sat in the cabin. It smelled like smoke even after the fire ended; it clung to everything: the curtains, the walls, even my skin. No matter how many windows I opened, the scent remained buried deep inside the wood like grief itself refused to leave. I sat curled up on the floor beside my mother's chair, knees pulled tightly against my chest, feeling empty; that was the only way to describe it.

Everything around me was empty: the cabin, my heart, my future, it was all gone. I look

The old yellow blanket she used during winter still hung over the back of the chair, and every few seconds, my eyes drifted toward it because some foolish part of me kept expecting her to walk back through the door. Humming under her breath with a soft smile on her lips, she would ask why I brought dirt into the house again, but the only thing I got was the silence stretched longer.

The fire had taken everything too quickly; it was too clean. My fingers tightened around the edge of my sleeve as that strange, bitter scent from earlier lingered in the back of my mind, no matter how hard I tried to ignore it. It was sweet with a rotten, unnatural scent underneath. I closed my eyes tightly to force myself to stop thinking, not tonight, everything was hurting.

The floorboards creaked suddenly outside the cabin, and my head lifted instantly. There were heavy male footsteps; they were moving fast and not trying to hide. A second later, the cabin door slammed open so hard it struck the wall. I jumped to my feet instinctively, just as Beta Ronan Hayes stormed inside with three patrol guards behind him.

His face looked furious, furious wasn't the word, but triumphant. My stomach dropped instantly because having him here with the patrol guards is never a good thing, especially after I lost my mother.

"What happened now?" I asked quietly.

Ronan looked around the cabin once before his gaze landed on me."There she is."

The way he said it made my wolf rise uneasily beneath my skin."What's going on? Why are you looking for me?"

He stepped forward aggressively and started accusing me ."You killed him."

My brows pulled together in confusion. "Killed who?"

"The Alpha heir." He says.

The room tilted for a second. I genuinely thought I misheard him. "What? W-what are you talking about?"

Ronan's lip curled."Don't play stupid."

I stared at him in complete disbelief."The heir is dead?"

"He was found in the lower hunting grounds less than an hour ago," he said, explaining the reason he was in my cabin looking for me. Ice spread slowly through my chest.

No, no, no, this isn't happening. "I didn't kill anyone." I quickly said when the realization dawned on me as to why he was here.

"You expect us to believe that?" one patrol wolf spat.

Of course not. After years of being labeled the omega, of course, I don't expect them to take my words at face value, but I do expect them to conduct a proper investigation.

Ronan reached into his coat and threw something onto the table beside me.

I caught it before it fell on the floor, and it was my scarf, the dark green one I lost two days ago gathering herbs near the river. My pulse stuttered violently. It was too easy.

"They found this beside the body," Ronan says with a smile on his face.

I stared at it for a second, then at him, then back at the scarf. Someone must have placed it there; everything looked too clean. Something cold settled deep in my stomach."You're framing me."

Ronan barked out a harsh laugh."You should've run before we found the evidence."

Evidence, I looked at him carefully now, and I saw nothing but satisfaction hiding behind his anger. Everything clicked too fast, my mother died, and they burned the body immediately. Hours later, the heir conveniently turns up dead beside my missing scarf.

There was no investigation, no questioning, just straight-up blame, a blame that was already prepared. "You already decided I'm guilty," I realized quietly.

Ronan stepped closer."You're an unstable omega whose mother just died."His eyes darkened cruelly."Seems reasonable to me."

My wolf snarled beneath my skin, " Danger, threat, kill now!"

I shoved it down violently, not here, not now. "I didn't kill him," I repeated carefully, but even as I said it, something bothered me.

The heir, I barely knew him personally, but he was never cruel to me. Unlike most males in the pack, he never joined the whispers or insults. Once, years ago, he even carried water buckets for my mother when she was too sick to stand properly.

It was the quiet, small kindnesses that made his death feel wrong before I could say another word, Ronan grabbed my arm suddenly."You'll answer to the council."

His grip tightened painfully; my wolf surged instantly, and the lights in the cabin flickered. One of the patrol wolves stepped back nervously.

Ronan noticed, his eyes narrowed slightly."What was that?"

I forced my breathing steady."Let go of me."

"Or what?" he asked mockingly.

Wrong thing to say because my control slipped for half a second, green flashed briefly across my vision. The room shook violently. I could hear Ronan's heartbeat, the patrol guards breathing fast, and more footsteps approaching the cabin. A scent of fear hit the air suddenly, it wasn't mine but theirs

Ronan jerked backward slightly when he saw it. It wasn't much, but it was enough to startle him. My wolf clawed harder beneath my skin. Run, my wolf urged me, and my instinct hit so violently that my body reacted before I could think. This was never about justice, but a clean-up, my mother staring with my mother leaving me alone, and then boom, the Heir someone was making sure they were removing problems, and somehow I was next.

Ronan reached for me again, but I moved first, and the chair beside me crashed into him hard enough to send him stumbling backward into the table. The patrol guards shouted instantly before they could do anything. I bolted straight through the back door and into the dark forest beyond the cabin.

"Ayesha!" Ronan roared behind me.

Branches tore against my skin as I ran deeper into the woods, faster my lungs burned, my pulse thundered, and behind me, wolves howled into the night, and the hunt had started.