“I noticed it the first time. In the forest, when she was treating me. I thought it might be the blood loss distorting things. But it’s been consistent. Every time I’m near her, there’s a thread underneath the surface. Something dormant. Something that’s getting stronger.”
“And at the bonfire?”
“Other pack members reacted to it. Tom. Arthur. Rebecca.” I pause, choosing my words carefully. “Her senses were heightened. She was picking up conversations from across the field. She read the pack hierarchy through body language in under an hour. And when she stood in the middle of the group, she didn’t feel like an outsider. She felt like someone who’d been missing and had come back.”
Maggie is quiet for a long moment. She looks at me over the rim of her teacup with those sharp grey eyes that see more than they should, and I can feel her weighing how much to say.
“You’re asking me if she’s one of yours,” she says.
“I’m asking if she’s an Omega.”
The word changes the air in the room. Maggie sets down her cup carefully, which tells me I’ve landed on something she’s been thinking about too.
“You’ve been paying attention,” she says. “Good.”
“The scent. The way the pack reacted to her. The way she read the hierarchy without being taught. It fits.”
“It does fit.” Maggie folds her hands around her cup. “I smelled it on her the day she got out of the car. Faint, buried deep, but there. I’ve lived long enough to know what Omega smells like, even dormant.”
“And what would you do with the answer?”
The question stops me. Not because I haven’t thought about it, but because the answer puts me in direct conflict with the pack.
If she’s carrying latent wolf heritage, pack protocol is clear. My father should be told. The Beta should be told. Phoebe should be brought in formally, and the pack should manage her transition under the Alpha’s authority. It’s how it’s always been done. It’s how my father would insist it be done. And it would turn Phoebe into a project before she’d had a chance to be a person.
“I’m not going to hand her over to the pack like she’s a problem to be managed,” I say. “That’s not what this is.”
Something shifts in Maggie’s expression. Interest, maybe. Or recognition.
“I don’t know what I’ll do,” I say. “But I know what I won’t do. I won’t let my father treat her the way he treats everything else: as pack business to be handled through the proper channels. She’s a person. She has a right to understand what’s happening to her before anyone else gets a say in it.”
“That’s a choice that will cost you.”
“I know.”
“Your father will see it as a challenge to his authority.”
“It’s not a challenge. It’s a line.” I set down my cup harder than I intend. “He can lead the pack however he wants. I’ve never tried to take that from him. But this, Phoebe, what’s happening between us, that’s mine. Not the pack’s. Not his. And if he can’t tell the difference between protecting someone and undermining his authority, then that’s his problem, not mine.”
Maggie studies me for a long moment. Then she nods, as if I’ve confirmed something she already suspected.
“I’ve been in this village a long time, Roan. Long enough to know that some things arrive when they’re meant to, and not a moment before. I put herbs in thatwelcome basket. Lavender for calm. Rosemary for clarity. Hawthorn for protection. The kind of bundle you’d give someone who might need grounding in the weeks ahead.”
“That’s not an answer to what she is.”
“It’s not meant to be.” She refills my cup without asking. “I don’t have certainties about how far it will go. But that girl is carrying an Omega heritage that’s been sleeping for a long time, possibly her whole life. I don’t know where it came from. But I know it’s stirring, and I know this village has a way of waking things up.”
“The mate bond. If I’m activating it by being near her...”
“Then walking away won’t stop it. Not now. Mistwood has her, same as it has all of us.” She fixes me with a look that cuts through every layer of deflection I’ve built. “The question isn’t what she is, Roan. The question is what you’re going to do about it. And that’s not a question for me. That’s a question for you.”
She says it gently, but it lands. Because she’s right. I’ve been treating this like an intelligence problem, and it’s not. It’s a choice.
“There’s one more thing,” I say, because I might as well put all of it on the table. “I haven’t told Rebecca. I haven’t told my father. If I tell them, it becomes pack business. My father will want to manage it. Rebeccawill want to plan for it. And Phoebe will go from being a person to being a piece on a board.”
“And you think keeping it from them is protecting her.”
“I think it’s giving her time. Time to adjust, time to understand, before anyone else decides what her life should look like.”
