Emma POV
The pot crashed against the floor.
The sound split through the kitchen and everything stopped. Derek kept walking like nothing happened. His shoulder had caught the pot deliberately, and Emma knew because she watched his jaw tighten right before he did it. Like he was holding back laughter.
She knelt down to pick up the pieces.
Hot potato slipped through her fingers. She grabbed for it and burned her palm. The pain was sharp but she didn't flinch. Making sounds meant getting noticed, and getting noticed meant things got worse.
Someone stepped over her leg. Then another person. Then another. Their boots came inches from her hands as she scrambled to gather broken metal. None of them stopped. None of them looked down.
Emma was just something in the way.
She'd learned that lesson young. Stay small, stay quiet, stay so invisible that people forgot you were there. Twenty-two years of practice had made her good at it.
The dinner rush continued around her like she was furniture. The kitchen got louder. Hotter. The other cooks moved past her without asking if she needed help or if she was okay. Two pounds of potatoes went into the trash. She had maybe three left. The math was automatic in her head now. Less meat. Stretch the gravy. Cut the bread smaller.
Nobody had taught her to do this. She'd just learned it over time. Years of watching how the pack ran. Years of noticing patterns nobody else bothered to see.
Emma worked through sunset.
Her hands moved even though her mind was somewhere else. Something was shifting inside her body. Not sadness. Something physical. Heat rising under her skin like fever. She ignored it. Heat meant her cycle was coming. Heat meant she'd have to go into isolation in the deep chambers soon, which meant a few days of being even more invisible than usual.
She'd done it before. She'd do it again.
The kitchen emptied as the sun dropped lower. Emma cleaned every surface, every pan, every pot. She wiped down the stone counters until they gleamed. Then she carried Derek's plate into the dining hall.
He was sitting with his friends. Males who had rank and authority and everything that mattered in the pack.
Emma set his meal down in front of him. Perfect portions. Exact temperature.
Derek looked right through her. Literally looked at the space where she was standing and didn't seem to see anything there. His friend laughed and said something about her being his girlfriend.
Derek didn't respond. He picked up his fork and started eating like Emma had already left.
She turned around and walked back to the kitchen.
By night, she was in her basement room. The space was small. A window near the ceiling. A bed. A shelf with three things that belonged to her. That was the whole life. The entire thing.
She lay down and let herself cry.
Not loud. Not messy. Just tears running down her face while she stared at nothing. The kind that didn't matter because there was nobody around to hear it. Nobody around to care.
Ryan would care if he knew. Her childhood friend who'd dragged her out of the forest when she was sixteen. But Ryan was busy now. He was beta. Important. Emma was a basement dweller who cooked meals nobody acknowledged.
The heat got worse around nine.
At first, she thought it was just the stale air in her room. She got up and opened the window wider, but the cold night didn't help. The heat kept building. Spreading from her chest down through her whole body.
Her heat cycle was starting early.
Emma should have gone up and reported it to the pack. Protocol was clear. Omega in heat meant isolation in the designated chambers deep underground. Nobody in. Nobody out.
She didn't move.
The heat wasn't like her normal cycles. This was intense. This was pulling at something deep inside her, something primal that didn't have a name. Every instinct was screaming at her to move. To find someone.
To find one specific someone.
Emma sat up fast and the room tilted. She gripped the bed to steady herself. The pulling sensation got stronger. It was like a rope inside her chest, and something on the other end was dragging her forward.
Toward the upper levels.
Toward Jake Stone.
No.
Emma pushed that away. That didn't make sense. Alphas didn't bond with girls like her. She was basement dweller. Invisible. The kind of omega that didn't matter in the pack hierarchy.
But the pull didn't care about logic.
Her legs carried her up the stairs before her mind caught up. Up the first corridor. Up the second flight. Her skin was burning now. Every cell screaming at her to move faster.
She ran.
The upper levels of the compound were quiet. Most people were asleep. Emma moved like she'd done this a hundred times, following something she didn't understand. Following a pull that felt older than she was.
Jake's private quarters were on the top level. Restricted. Nobody went there without permission.
Emma climbed the final stairs and stood in front of his door.
Her hand was shaking when she raised it to knock. The heat inside her was unbearable. The pulling sensation was so intense it felt like being torn in half.
Her fist connected with the door.
The knock was soft. Almost apologetic.
But she knew he heard it.
The seconds that followed felt like standing at the edge of a cliff. Everything about her life, everything about being invisible and safe, hung in that silence.
Then the door opened.
Jake Stone filled the entire space. Dark pants. Open black shirt. His chest was broad and his eyes were sharp and dangerous. For three years, Emma had made herself invisible around him. She'd learned that being noticed by an alpha meant being something he could destroy.
But right now, looking at her standing in his hallway burning with heat she didn't understand, something shifted in his face.
His eyes started to change.
The normal color that alphas had began to shift. To glow. Silver light bloomed in his pupils like someone had lit a fire inside his skull. His hands gripped the door frame and she heard the wood actually crack under the pressure.
When he looked at her again, his eyes were pure silver.
"Emma," he said.
Just her name. But the way he said it made something inside her break open.