Page 2 of Run Little Omega

“No,” she agrees calmly, “I’m an omega who’s already dying. It’s simple math and you know it.”

But there’s nothing simple about offering your daughter up to the Wild Hunt, no matter how practical the reasoning. I know what’s waiting for her in the Bloodmoon Forest, what awaits any omega unlucky enough to be chosen. The brutal claiming, the violent deaths. The rare, tortured survivors whose minds never fully return from Faerie.

I part my lips to argue with her only for the village bell to toll before I can. Its somber sound cuts through the morning air, and Willow’s face tightens imperceptibly.

“It’s time,” she whispers.

I untie my apron abruptly, tossing it onto my workbench. Fergus emerges from the storeroom, his weathered face somber.

“I’ll finish Widow Harlow’s order,” he says, his eyes soft with understanding. “Take as much time as you need.”

He’s lost someone to the Hunt before—his daughter, years ago, before I came to love with him. The pain still lingers in the careful way he avoids the village square, even outside of selection years.

But I can’t avoid it. Not now, not when Willow needs me. I don’t know what I’ll do for her, but I do know that I can’t look away.

I walk beside her through Thornwick’s narrow streets, keeping my steps small to match her slow pace. The village has transformed overnight, crimson ribbons hanging from every tree branch and doorpost—symbols of sacrifice, of the bleeding moon to come.

Women whisper behind their hands as we pass. Men lower their eyes. Everyone knows that Willow is the obvious choice this year: a dying omega. Her sacrifice will benefit the entire community, and the truth is, they think of it as necessary.

I’ve never hated anything more than the willingness they have to sacrifice others for their own gain.

The town square fills up quickly, families clustered together with worried looks on their faces. I spot Maeve at the edges, the hedge witch’s wild hair adorned with feathers and bones. Her eyes find mine across the crowd, the amber of them piercing through me. She holds my gaze a beat too long, something calculating and cunning in her expression. I look away first.

Headman Lloyd strides onto the central dais and turns to us to speak, his voice booming across the hush of the crowd. “Once every seven years, when the crimson moon rises, we uphold our sacred covenant with the fae courts…”

I turn out his practiced speech about honor and duty and protection. I heard it seven years ago and I didn’t like it then. Instead I focus on the faces around me—the relieved mothers clutching daughters too young to present; the tight-lipped fathers calculating odds; the young women who, unlike me, aren’t able to conceal their omega nature, because the registry found them during their first heat.

My gaze shifts to the carved wooden box on the dais. Inside it rest the slivers of moonstone used for hte drawing, one for every eligible omega in Thornwick. A fair selection, they claim, equal for all.

But I know better than that. I’ve watched this ceremony unfold two times now, and the most recent I remember well. There are ways to weigh the odds so that the daughters of influential families stay safe and snug in their homes even as screams and snarls echo from the Bloodmoon Forest as alphas make their brutal claim.

“…and so we’re gathered here to select this year’s honored tribute,” Headman Lloyd concludes. “Who will come forward to represent Thornwick at the Gathering Circle?”

The crowd stirs restlessly. This is the moment for volunteers, rare but not unheard of. Some families with multiple omega daughters choose to control the inevitable. Some others, facing terminal illnesses or desperate circumstances, offer themselves to secure compensation for those they’ll leave behind. Rarer still are the ones who volunteer with pride, believing they’ll survive not just repeated knotting but fae pregnancy and childbirth. We have none of those in our modest village, but in other borderland towns they come willingly. It’s said they’re far more likely than others to return once the Wild Hunt is over, their fae babes left behind in Faerie but their bodies and minds still somehow intact.

The silence stretches like heated metal, thinning and tensing until an edge forms, and I almost think that?—

“We offer our daughter.”

Thaddeus Ambrose’s voice cuts through the hush, determined and clear. The apothecary steps forward, his shoulders squared and his chin up, though he should wither in shame at what he’s said. Beside him, Willow stands still and silent in a simple white dress, her hair loose around her shoulders—the traditional presentation for an omega tribute.

Murmurs ripple through the crowd. Approving. Grateful. The relief is palpable as families realize the drawing won’t happen this year. Their daughers are safe for another seven years, maybe even long enough to outgrow fae desirability, saved by Willow’s “generosity.”

I dig my nails into my palms until the pain shoots up my arms.

“Thornwick accepts your noble sacrifice with gratitude,” Headman Lloyd says, raising his hands in acceptance. “Come forward, child.”

Willow ascends the dais with her father’s assistance, each step delicate and careful. Up there, surrounded by the crowd, her illness is starkly visible. The sunlight illuminates the blue veins visible beneath her translucent skin and hollows at the base of her throat where her clavicles jut out harshly.

I should be up there. Not her, not sweet Willow. The thought burns through me with fierce clarity. If anyone has the strength to survive the Hunt, even temporarily, it’s me. Certainly not Willow, who can barely walk across the square without growing winded.

But I’ve spent my life making sure no one knows what I am. An omega masquerading as a beta, protected by Fergus’s reputation and a careful regimen of suppressant herbs. Stepping forward now would expose my deception and implicate my mentor, who has knowingly harbored me against village law requiring all omegas be registered for potential selection. Fergus would be executed, and I would be stripped naked, flogged, and sent to the Bloodmoon Forest for the fae to do with as they wish.

Headman Lloyd drapes the ceremonial white cloak around Willow’s shoulders—the Shroud, as it’s often called, because omegas return to their villages wrapped in them, the white fabric stained with blood—if they return at all. She stands tall despite her frailty, her eyes finding mine in the crowd.

Her lips move silently. Two words: it’s okay.

It’s the furthest fucking thing from okay that it could be.

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