Silent Steps and Hidden Stars

The moon still clung to the western sky, pale and stubborn against the creeping dawn. Rona sat with her back pressed against the rough bark of an oak, knees drawn tight to her chest, watching her breath fog in the October chill. The clearing before her lay empty-would remain empty for another hour at least-but she'd learned long ago that arriving early meant avoiding questions she couldn't answer.

Questions like: *Why are you here?*

She pulled her threadbare shawl tighter, though it did little against the cold that had already seeped into her bones. The fabric was thin from too many washings, frayed at the edges where her grandmother's careful stitching had finally surrendered to time. Like everything else Rona owned, it had been passed down, worn out, made to last longer than it was ever meant to.

The forest around her stirred with morning sounds-the chitter of sparrows, the rustle of some small creature in the underbrush. She focused on these, let them fill the silence that always pressed too close when she was alone. Which was often. Which was always.

She wasn't supposed to think of it as loneliness. Loneliness implied she'd once had something to lose.

The first voices reached her before the first figures emerged from the tree line. Young wolves, her age or near enough, moving with the easy confidence of people who'd never questioned their place in the world. They laughed, shoved each other, their bodies loose and unguarded in ways Rona's never was.

She made herself smaller against the tree.

They didn't see her. They never did, not unless they wanted to.

More arrived as the sun climbed higher-seasoned warriors with scars mapping their forearms, younger wolves still gangly with growth, children barely old enough to hold a fighting stance. The clearing filled with bodies and noise, the sharp bark of commands, the dull thud of fists meeting flesh, the breathless laughter of exertion.

Rona watched from the shadows like a ghost haunting the edges of the living.

She told herself she came for the training. To learn by observation what she'd never be taught directly. To study the way they moved, the way they anticipated each other's strikes, the pack mentality that made them circle and feint as one organism.

But that was a lie she'd stopped believing weeks ago.

She came to watch *him*.

Veyron stood in the center of the clearing, and even among warriors twice his age, he was the one who commanded attention. Not through volume-his voice carried quiet and level across the space-but through presence. The kind that made people straighten their spines without realizing it, that made the air itself seem to sharpen around him.

He was nineteen. Tall in the way that promised he hadn't finished growing. His dark hair fell just past his shoulders, and when he turned to demonstrate a hold, the morning light caught the planes of his face-all hard angles and focused intensity.

Rona's chest did something stupid and painful.

She'd been watching him longer than she cared to admit. Long enough to notice how his jaw tightened when one of the younger wolves made the same mistake twice. Long enough to recognize the almost-smile he gave when someone finally got it right. Long enough to memorize the way he moved through space like he owned it, because in every way that mattered, he did.

He was the Alpha's son. Future leader. Born under the right moon, to the right bloodline, with the right everything.

And she was-

"Well, well."

Rona's head snapped up.

Kara stood three feet away, arms crossed, lips curved in something that might have passed for a smile if not for the coldness in her eyes. Beta blood, high rank, the kind of she-wolf who'd never been denied anything in her life.

"Rona." Her name sounded like an accusation. "Didn't expect to find you lurking around here. Again."

Rona's fingers dug into her palms. She kept her gaze lowered, fixed on a point somewhere near Kara's feet. "I was just-"

"Just what? Hoping someone would invite you to join?" Kara's laugh was soft, almost pitying. "That's sweet. Delusional, but sweet."

The words landed with practiced precision. Kara had been doing this long enough to know exactly where to aim.

Rona said nothing. Silence was safer. Silence meant Kara would get bored faster.

"You know what I don't understand?" Kara took a step closer, her voice dropping to something almost conversational. "How you can stand it. Coming here, day after day, watching everyone else live the life you'll never have." She paused, tilted her head. "Is it inspiring? Or just pathetic?"

Rona's throat tightened. She forced herself to breathe through her nose, slow and measured, the way her grandmother had taught her when the panic came.

*Don't react. Don't give them the satisfaction.*

"Nothing to say?" Kara's smile sharpened. "Smart girl. Anyway, I'm sure you have actual work to do. Somewhere far away from here." She waved a dismissive hand. "Run along now."

She didn't wait for a response-didn't need one. She'd already turned away, already moving back toward the training ground where people like her belonged.

Rona stayed frozen against the tree, her heartbeat too loud in her ears, her face hot with shame she hadn't earned but carried anyway.

When she finally looked up, her gaze found Veyron again without meaning to.

He was correcting a young wolf's stance, his hands firm but not rough as he adjusted the boy's shoulders. The child-couldn't be more than ten-looked up at him with open adoration, and Veyron's expression softened in a way that made Rona's chest ache.

He would be a good Alpha. Everyone knew it. Fair, strong, the kind of leader people followed because they wanted to, not because they had to.

A burst of laughter drew her attention. A group of young she-wolves had gathered near the weapons rack, their eyes tracking Veyron's movements with poorly disguised interest. One of them-blonde, beautiful, the Delta's daughter-said something that made the others giggle, their gazes flicking between each other and him like they were sharing a delicious secret.

Rona looked away.

She had no right to the jealousy that flared hot and bitter in her stomach. No claim to the fantasies she'd spun in the small hours of sleepless nights, where he looked at her the way he looked at worthy things. Where he saw her at all.

"Pathetic," she whispered to herself, borrowing Kara's word because it fit.

She should leave. Should go back to her grandmother's cabin and start the day's chores-hauling water, splitting kindling, the endless small tasks that filled the hours between waking and sleeping. Should stop torturing herself with proximity to a life she'd never touch.

But she didn't move.

Across the clearing, another voice rose-Darek, one of the younger Betas, his tone carrying that particular edge of amusement that made Rona's skin prickle.

"Hey, look who decided to grace us with her presence." He'd spotted her. Of course he had. She'd been too distracted, let herself get careless.

Several heads turned. Not many-she wasn't worth a crowd's attention-but enough.

Darek sauntered closer, his smile wide and empty. "Lost, Rona? The Omega dens are back that way." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

A girl beside him-young, eager to impress-added, "Maybe she thinks she can train with us. How cute."

The laughter that followed was casual, reflexive. Not cruel enough to draw reprimand, but sharp enough to cut.

Rona's face burned. She pushed herself upright, her legs stiff from sitting too long in the cold, and forced her spine straight even as everything in her wanted to curl inward.

"I was just leaving," she managed, her voice barely carrying.

"Good idea," Darek said, already losing interest, already turning back to more important things.

She walked-not ran, because running would be admitting something-back toward the tree line. Her vision blurred at the edges, but she blinked it clear. Tears were another luxury she couldn't afford.

At the forest's edge, she allowed herself one last glance.

Veyron stood surrounded by his students, the young wolves clustering around him like planets orbiting a sun. His head was tipped back slightly, laughing at something one of them said, and the sound carried across the clearing-rich and unguarded and so completely beyond her reach it might as well have existed in another world.

Which, she supposed, it did.

She turned away and disappeared into the trees, letting the shadows swallow her whole.

By the time she reached her grandmother's grave, her breathing had steadied. The small plot lay tucked in the pack's burial grounds, far enough from the prominent headstones that it was easy to miss if you weren't looking for it. Wildflowers grew in patches around the simple marker-flowers Rona had planted and tended, because no one else would.

She knelt in the damp grass, her skirt soaking through immediately, and pressed her palm against the cool stone.

"Morning, Grandmother," she whispered.

The forest answered with wind and birdsong. It was enough. It had to be.

"I went to the training grounds again." The words came easier here, where no one was listening. "I know, I know. You'd tell me I'm wasting my time." She traced the worn letters of her grandmother's name with one finger. "But I can't seem to help it."

A branch snapped somewhere behind her, and Rona's shoulders tensed-but it was just a deer, picking its way through the underbrush. It paused when it saw her, ears swiveling forward, then decided she wasn't worth worrying about and moved on.

Even the deer could tell she wasn't a threat.

"They're right about me, aren't they?" The question slipped out before she could stop it. "Kara, Darek, all of them. I don't belong there. I don't belong anywhere."

The stone offered no comfort, no wisdom. Just smooth, cold silence.

Rona closed her eyes and let herself imagine-just for a moment-what it would have been like to grow up different. To have a father who was pack, not human. To have a mother who didn't look at her with constant regret. To walk through the pack grounds with her head up, to train alongside the others, to hear her name spoken without disdain.

To have Veyron look at her and see someone worth knowing.

But when she opened her eyes, she was still kneeling in the damp grass, still alone, still exactly who she'd always been.

A half-breed. An Omega. A mistake that breathed.

She pushed herself to her feet, brushing dirt from her skirt in a futile attempt at dignity.

The day's work waited. The pack wouldn't feed itself, wouldn't maintain the lodges and grounds through goodwill alone. And Rona's labor-unwanted as she was-at least had use.

It was more than she could say for the rest of her.

She took one last look at the training grounds in the distance, at the figures moving through their drills, at the life happening without her, and turned toward home.

The sun had finally burned away the morning mist, but Rona barely felt its warmth. Some cold went deeper than weather could touch.

She'd learned to live with it.

She had no other choice.