I find the stream and step into the cold water with a gasp. It takes several minutes and a few shuddering breaths before I manage to submerge myself up to my chest. The current runs red around me as I scrub dried blood from my skin and hair. It takes a while—the blood is everywhere. In the shells of my ears, the creases of my belly button, beneath my nails and flaking from my skin.
I scrub harder, trying to wash away the scent that clings to me even without the blood—smoke and cedar and something wild that makes other omegas nervous when they get too close. Not the soft, calming scent they're supposed to have. The kind that soothes alphas, makes them gentle.
Mine does the opposite.
Another way I'm different, wrong, not meant for this world. While all the other, soft omegas get sent off to powerful alphas for arranged marriages, I stay here in the village, feared and loathed. If it weren't for the fact that my feral heats scare off bandits and mercenaries alike, I'd probably be exiled to the dragon lands by now.
This is my life. Wake up in blood. Clean it off. Pretend to be normal until the next heat comes.
I'm wringing water from my hair when I hear footsteps approaching: twigs bending and breaking, leaves crunching beneath heavy footfalls, and the sound of a person's huffingbreaths of exertion. They're not trying to be quiet—whoever it is wants me to know they're coming.
Yaern.
She picks her way through the ferns carrying a bundle wrapped in oilcloth. When she sees me sitting in the stream, naked and shivering and obviously fine, her shoulders drop with visible relief.
"Found you," she says, like this isn't the fourth time this year she's had to track me down after a heat.
"How'd you know where to look?"
"Followed the trail of blood. It was very dramatic." She settles onto a flat rock near the bank and starts unwrapping her bundle. Clean clothes. Bread. A waterskin. "You made it farther than last time before you blacked out."
"There's a wolf back there," I say, jerking my head in the direction I came from. "Or what's left of one."
"I saw." Her voice is carefully neutral. "Pretty thoroughly dead, I'd say."
"Yeah."
I climb out of the stream and accept the clothes she's holding out—a simple brown dress, the kind village omegas are supposed to wear. I hate it on sight, but it's better than my tattered shirt and the bloodstained pants I peel off and set aside to dry.
"Did I—" I stop. Start again, forcing the words past the tightness in my throat. "Was there anyone else nearby? Did anyone see me?"
"No." Yaern breaks a chunk off the loaf of bread and offers it to me. "You made it deep enough into the forest before you lost it. This time."
This time.
The unspoken worry hangs between us: what about next time?
"Four heats in less than a year," she says quietly. "That's not normal, Kess."
"Nothing about me is normal." I take the bread and eat it in three savage bites. I'm always starving after a heat—my body burns through everything trying to fuel whatever the fuck I turn into.
"You okay?" she asks.
"Define okay."
"Not dead. Not dying. Not actively bleeding."
"Then yes. I'm okay." I pull on the dress and it immediately feels wrong—too soft, too constricting. "Same as always."
"Same as always is still pretty fucked up, Kess."
"Yeah, well." I yank on the boots she brought me. "It's the life we've got."
She's quiet for a moment, watching me with those too-knowing eyes. When she speaks again, her voice is careful in a way that makes my stomach drop.
"The elders are gathering everyone in the square this morning."
Fuck.
