Page 27 of Run Little Omega

After claiming, she means. After I've been caught, held down, bitten, knotted. After my body has been used until it breaks.

"Thank you," I say, tucking the pouch into my belt.

"One more thing," Marta says as I turn to leave. "The forest is changing. The Hunt this year feels different. Even the alphas seem unsettled by it."

"Different how?" I ask.

She shakes her head. "I don't know exactly. Just... watch the trees. They're more aware than they've been in previous Hunts."

Before I can ask what she means, a commotion breaks out on the far side of the clearing. An omega has collapsed, her heat symptoms suddenly intensifying. Her back arches unnaturally as she claws at her own skin, the scent of desperate omega need filling the air like something physical. The haven erupts in controlled chaos as others rush to help, applying wet cloths to her feverish skin and administering herbs to dampen the symptoms.

It's the perfect distraction for my departure.

I slip through the barrier without looking back, the magic washing over me in that strange waterfall sensation again. Once outside, I stand perfectly still, getting my bearings. The forest seems darker beyond the haven's protection, the shadows deeper, more watchful.

My time within the haven wasn't wasted. I've gathered valuable intelligence—not just about territories and hunting patterns, but about the unusual circumstances of this particular Hunt. Cadeyrn hunting alone. The forest itself changing, becoming more aware.

And most importantly, I now have a clear vision of where I need to go.

Away from the central river. Away from the Winter Prince's territory. Away from those ice-blue eyes that seemed to see straight through my disguise.

I set off southward, toward the Spring Court territories. The claiming there is supposedly quicker, less brutal. But I have no intention of being claimed at all. My path will skirt territories, cross boundaries, use the courts' own divisions against them. Where territories meet, confusion reigns, and in confusion lies opportunity.

As I walk, the haven disappears behind me, swallowed by the forest as if it never existed. Ahead, the trees grow thicker, their silver-edged leaves whispering secrets to each other in a language I can't quite understand.

But I'm beginning to learn.

CHAPTER11

POV: Briar

The second dayof the Hunt greets me with a misty dawn and the unsettling suspicion that the forest is awake.

Not just alive—actively aware. And watching me.

My makeshift shelter—a hollow beneath twisted roots like the cupped hands of some buried giant—kept me hidden through the night, but staying any longer would be a mistake. The alphas will be sharp, awake, and ready to hunt.

I stretch my stiff limbs, wincing as my joints crack and pop and sensation floods back to my fingertips. The silver bracelet catches morning light as I stretch, and I frown at the spreading frost patterns that have spread like tiny winter vines.

"That's concerning," I mutter, running a finger over my skin, which feels soft and warm to the touch but looks like ice crystals. "And definitely not normal."

The heat that began yesterday has spread through my body overnight, a persistent warmth pooling low in my abdomen. After years of suppression with herbs and iron, my omega biology seems determined to make up for lost time. My skin feels too tight, too sensitive against the fabric of my clothes.

I force these sensations aside. Survival first. Discomfort later. The dead can't feel anything, after all.

Moving through this section of forest is more difficult than I expected—the trees grow unnaturally close together, their black trunks nearly merging in some places, crossing in others. I squeeze between two ancient blackthorns, their silver leaves shivering overhead like nervous whispers, and pause.

Something isn't right.

I look back at the path I've just taken. The passage between trees should be barely wide enough for my body, yet it seems... wider now. As if the trunks had shifted slightly apart to let me through.

"Ridiculous," I whisper, but even as the word leaves my mouth, I watch a low-hanging branch slowly bend upward, clearing my path ahead. Not swaying in the breeze—there is no breeze—but deliberately raising itself like a theater curtain.

The forest is making way for me.

I've heard stories, of course—every border village child grows up on tales of the sentient Bloodmoon Forest, how the trees remember the original Wild Hunt, how they sometimes favor certain participants. I always dismissed these as comforting lies told to omegas before they're sacrificed, like promising a lamb the butcher's knife won't hurt. Now here the evidence is right before my eyes, impossible to dismiss.

I approach the next cluster of trees cautiously. They stand so close together that passing between them should be impossible, their trunks forming what appears to be a solid wall of bark. I step forward anyway, and—slowly, almost imperceptibly—they shift apart, creating a passage just wide enough for my shoulders.

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