Page 7 of Run Little Omega

I don’t think it’s my imagination—the book responds to my touch, warming further as though greeting an old friend.

It’s fucking unnerving. More than any protective curse would be. As though the grimoire has been waiting for me.

I push the thought aside. Magical objects often react to people; it means nothing. With careful hands, I open the ancient cover, wincing at the slight creak of its binding, high-pitched like a dead woman’s cry.

Pages unfurl, filled with spidery script and diagrams that seem to shift when I stare at them directly. Some sections seem to be written in blood, others in… substances I'd rather not identify.

The language changes frequently—Old Tongue giving way to border dialect, then back to something more ancient I can’t read.

I flip through carefully, searching for anything related to glamours or disguises. The irony doesn't escape me as my fingers trace illustrations of transformation spells. For eleven years I've maintained my own form of disguise, hiding my omega nature. Iron dust in my soap to mask my scent. Bitter shadowroot tea to suppress my heats. Deliberatly eating and exercising for muscle mass to mask the softer curves of omega biology.

The memory surfaces: I was twelve, crouched in Fergus's storage cellar with the sacks of coal and iron ingots, my body burning with a fever I didn't understand. The strange slickness between my thighs. The overwhelming smells suddenly assaulting my heightened senses. The terrifying new awareness of my own body as something foreign and uncontrollable.

Fergus found me there, curled into myself and whimpering. I still remember the shift in his expression—surprise giving way to understanding, then to a calculated resolve that would shape both our lives.

"Your mother never registered you," he said, kneeling beside me with a damp cloth for my forehead. "No one knows."

Even through the haze of my first heat, I understood the significance. My mother, bedridden with the wasting sickness that would claim her life weeks later, had done what small kindness she could—she had kept my omega status a secret from the village record-keepers. In borderland communities, all omegas must be registered at presentation for potential selection. My mother's omission was both a gift and a crime.

That night, Fergus made me my first cup of shadowroot tea, the bitter taste making me gag even as the herbs began cooling the fire in my blood. He explained our options in the straightforward manner I'd come to rely on: we could report my status as law required, ensuring my name would enter future selection drawings, or we could continue what my mother started. Keep my nature hidden. Let me live as a common human beta, existing in the safety of ambiguity.

There was never really a choice. I drank the tea. I learned to mask my scent. I threw myself into forge work. For eleven years, I've lived quietly, invisibly—even Willow doesn’t know the truth. I wouldn’t know how to tell her.

Now, I’m looking for a different way to hide. My fingers continue their search through ancient pages until—there. A detailed illustration of one person's features melting into another's, accompanied by text in a dialect I can mostly read. A glamour spell that requires blood and hair from the person whose appearance is to be borrowed.

Simple ingredients for complex magic. Blood carries identity. Hair contains history. Combined with the right incantation, they can reshape perception itself—a convincing illusion. Exactly what I need.

I study the spell carefully, committing each step to memory before gently tearing the page from the book. The grimoire seems to shudder as I separate the sheet, a tremor running through its binding. Guilt stabs me as I slip the page inside my shirt, against my skin. In its place, I leave one of Fergus's iron tokens—payment of sorts, though hardly equivalent.

The cottage suddenly feels colder, as though responding to my theft. Outside, a night bird calls three times in quick succession. The blessing ritual must be ending. I need to leave.

As I turn to go, something catches my eye—a small mirror hung on the far wall, its surface rippling like disturbed water. I approach cautiously, drawn by an instinct I can't name. The reflection that greets me isn't entirely my own.

My features waver, copper hair briefly appearing silver-white in places, amber eyes shifting to contain specks of blue. For a heartbeat, I see Willow's face superimposed over mine, her expression serene but knowing. Then the image settles, showing only my own face, pale with tension beneath my hood.

A warning? A promise? Or simply my imagination, fueled by guilt and fear? There's no time to figure it out. I hurry to the window, slipping back into the night.

The festival continues its drunken revelry, music and laughter spilling between the narrow houses. I skirt the celebration, keeping to the shadows as I make my way toward the village's western edge. The stolen page burns against my skin, promising salvation or destruction. What I’m planning goes beyond mere rule-breaking; it strikes at the foundation of the Hunt itself. If I’m discovered, the punishment would extend beyond me to Fergus, to anyone who helped or failed to report me.

But I’m going to do it anyway, for Willow. To give her a chance to die in peace instead of pain, to… give her one last hopeless chance at life.

I hurry past the last row of cottages, down the sloping path toward the stream where laundry gets done on clear days. Here, away from prying eyes, I allow myself a moment to examine my prize by moonlight.

The glamour spell is more complex than it initially appeared. Beyond the basic components of blood and hair, it requires specific timing—the casting must align with the waxing moon, when illusions strengthen naturally. Three nights from now. The spell's duration is limited too: twenty-one days precisely, matching an omega's heat cycle.

The exact length of the Hunt.

This coincidence feels too neat to be chance, as though the spell was designed specifically for my purpose. Perhaps I'm not the first to attempt this deception. Perhaps, in the long history of the Wild Hunt, other omegas have sought to take the place of those too weak to survive.

I wonder what happened to them. The grimoire doesn't say.

Folding the page carefully, I tuck it deeper into my clothes before continuing toward Fergus's forge. The familiar scent of coal and iron greets me as I approach—honest smells that have defined my life since Mother died. The workshop is dark and quiet. Fergus is likely at the festival, more out of social obligation rather than desire.

Inside, I light a single candle, its flame casting giant shadows against the stone walls. I slip the stolen page beneath my sleeping pallet while I gather what I'll need: a small copper bowl, clean for ritual purposes; my sharpest blade, steel folded seven times in the eastern tradition; a bag of preserving herbs, useful for keeping blood from congealing during spellwork.

If Fergus finds out what I’m up to, he'll try to stop me—out of love, out of fear, out of his own bitter experience. I'll need to be fast, quiet, unobtrusive.

I arrange my tools on the workbench, then blow out the candle before settling onto my pallet. I’m not sure I’ll sleep at all tonight, even though I need to.

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