Page 28 of Run Little Omega

"Thank you," I say softly, feeling somehow both foolish and reverent to be speaking to the ancient forest.

A gentle rustle of silver leaves answers me, even though the air is still. Great. Now I'm having conversations with trees. I'm either losing my mind or…something big and ancient is happening. Neither option is particularly comforting.

I keep going this way for hours, following paths that seem to form just for me, through sections of forest that should be impenetrable. Whenever I stop to rest, the leaves above rustle strangely as if the trees are having a conversation. They remind me of village gossips sharing secrets over garden fences.

At midday, I find a small stream and use it to refill my water skin. My reflection shimmers back at me—Willow's delicate features and platinum hair still startling. The glamour is holding, though maintaining it while I push my body all day feels like trying to keep a lid on a pot of boiling water. Each time I push myself too hard, I feel it flicker, like a candle flame in a draft.

The water soothes my parched throat but does nothing for the heat building inside me. If anything, the cool liquid highlights how fevered my body has become. Sounds that should be distant reach my ears with perfect clarity—the call of a bird half a mile away, the soft pad of animal feet through underbrush, the faint crackle of leaves beneath someone's careful step.

I freeze, water dripping from my chin.

That last sound was no animal.

I stand slowly, scanning the trees around me. Nothing moves. Nothing breathes. The forest has gone absolutely still, as if holding its breath. Even the stream seems to quiet its babble.

"I know you're there," I call out, keeping my voice steady despite the thundering of my pulse. "Show yourself."

No response comes, but the sense of being watched intensifies. Not from any particular direction—from everywhere at once, as if the forest itself has eyes.

After several tense minutes, I accept that whatever watches me isn't ready to reveal itself. I continue on, hyperaware of every shadow, every rustle, every shift in the air around me.

The heat makes rational thought increasingly difficult as the day progresses. My body responds to scents I shouldn't be able to detect—faint traces of alpha pheromones carried on the breeze. Each one sends an unwanted shiver of awareness through me, hunger of a different sort gnawing at my insides. I fight against the instinct to follow these scents, to seek out their sources, disgusted at how my body craves what my mind rejects.

Instead, I focus on practical matters. I create new false trails despite the growing discomfort, using the same techniques that served me yesterday—dragging branches to obscure my actual path, doubling back across my own tracks, wading through water whenever possible.

The forest continues to help me in subtle ways. When I need to hide my scent, aromatic flowers bloom suddenly along my path, their strong perfume masking my increasingly potent omega pheromones. When I need to rest, root systems shift to create natural seats or sheltered hollows. When my stomach grumbles, edible plants sprout at my feet, and fish flop onto the shore from freshwater streams, practically begging to be roasted over a campfire.

I experiment once, deliberately placing my palm against a blackthorn trunk. The bark warms beneath my touch, a gentle pulse like a heartbeat running through the wood. Silver leaves overhead shiver in the still air, and a sense of ancient awareness flows between us—like my consciousness is touching the mind of something that has watched centuries pass in slow blinks.

"What are you?" I whisper.

The tree can’t speak, of course, but knowledge seeps into me through my palm—impressions rather than words, pictures instead of sentences. The forest remembers a time before the courts divided the fae, before the Hunt became a brutal breeding program. It remembers the original purpose, the sacred balance between human and fae, the willing sacrifice and joyful reunion. Images flash through my mind of something older, purer, a ritual that strengthened both worlds rather than depleting one to feed the other.

I pull my hand away, unsettled. It feels strange to commune with something so inhuman. It's like trying to read an entire library by touching its foundation stone.

"These trees are older than the Hunt itself," I realize aloud. "They've witnessed everything. The beginning. The corruption. All of it."

As if in confirmation, a shower of silver leaves spirals down around me, catching the afternoon light like metallic rain. The forest's approval feels strangely comforting, like finding an unexpected ally in enemy territory.

The forest's behavior raises more questions than answers. Why is it helping me? What makes me different from the dozens of other omegas fleeing through these woods? I'm nothing special—just a blacksmith's apprentice who stole her friend's identity and picked up a few tricks from those who came before me.

The silver bracelet catches my attention again. The strange patterns have spread further up my wrist, delicate crystalline structures that glow with an inner light. None of the other omegas at the haven mentioned experiencing anything like this. Is it connected to the forest's response to me? Another part of the puzzle I can't see clearly yet.

My peaceful commune with the trees ends abruptly when I catch a new scent on the breeze—blood. A lot of fresh, sharply metallicfaeblood. It smells different from human blood—sharper, more electric, like licking a copper coin during a thunderstorm.

Every instinct screams to run in the opposite direction, but something in me is too curious to be cautious. That much blood can only come from a dead fae. I step carefully toward the source, staying downwind and using the trees' close trunks for cover.

A small clearing appears in front of me, and in the middle of it is the body of a fae alpha.

I approach it cautiously, on edge for any sign of danger. The alpha wears Summer Court colors, his once-golden skin already dulling as magic leaves his corpse. His throat has been torn out with inhuman savagery, the wound gruesome and bloody, flaps of skin hanging off his ruined neck. His eyes are open, wide-eyed and frozen in a shocked expression.

This isn’t some kind combat death, typical when alphas compete for the same omega. The slain in those battles are supposed to be treated with dignity, and there’s no sign the alpha fought his attacker at all. This is a slaughter meant to be seen—a warning written in flesh and blood.

I search the surrounding area, looking for tracks or a scent trail from the attacker, but find nothing. Whoever—or whatever—killed this alpha left no trace behind The forest floor is undisturbed other than my own footsteps coming in, as if the killer materialized from thin air, committed the murder, and vanished just as mysteriously.

A chill runs through me, cutting across the warmth of my heat. Is this connected to the forest's strange behavior? Are the trees protecting me by eliminating alphas who pick up my trail?

That theory doesn't feel quite right. The forest seems ancient and indifferent to the Hunt's outcome, willing to assist but not intervene so directly. This killing was personal, passionate in its violence—like the killer was full of rage when it was done.

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