Chapter 2 Where No One Is Found
lyanna
The chains bit into my wrists long before the night turned cold.
We had been bound together—omega women, elder omega men, half-grown children—linked wrist-to-wrist with thick iron shackles meant for livestock. The Drakovian soldiers called it “organising the herd,” laughing as they forced us into a line that stretched across the ruined village and into the wild beyond.
Autumn in the north bit like winter. The wind cut through my thin dress, carrying smoke and ash, the ghosts of our burned homes still drifting behind us. Boots crunched over frost-stiff grass as our captors barked orders in harsh Drakovian accents, shoving us forward into the freezing dark.
I kept my eyes blank, unfocused. Mute. Deaf. Empty. A mask I had slipped on the moment one of the soldiers grabbed my chin earlier and shouted my name.
If these men knew I was the mate of Rubin Aramesi, the lord who’d kept them away from Aelorian borders for years, things would go from bad to unspeakable quickly.
I let my jaw hang, my gaze drift, giving no sign I heard the words. I repeated the act now, letting my face settle into stillness.
Another sharp tug on the chain made us begin to walk.
We had been “walking” for what felt like forever. Days? Weeks? The march blurred together, each sunrise identical to the last—grey, cold, merciless.
We stopped only when the soldiers felt like it, sleeping in piled heaps on muddy ground while our captors took shifts drinking, gambling, and deciding which prisoner would be beaten awake for us to continue.
My boots—Rubin had given me these boots—were already soaked through. The terrain was rough, unforgiving, as though the earth itself resented our footsteps. Roots curled like fingers waiting to trip us. Rocks vanished into the night until they slammed painfully into shins and ankles.
A woman behind me sobbed into her gag, a wet choking sound. The Drakovian who tied it had done so with little care, wrenching it so tight the fabric dug into her cheeks. All the omegas had been gagged except the elderly ones, who could barely whimper.
The alphas barked at each other in their rough, granite language. One soldier jabbed a spear at the man to my left—an Aelorian omega with grey streaks in his hair who walked too slowly. The tip tore through his sleeve and scraped his skin.
“Pick up your feet,” the soldier said in Aelorian, though his accent mangled the gentler cadence.
The man hurried forward, trembling. I kept my gaze low.
Rubin…
I allowed the thought only because no one could reach inside my head to punish me for it. His name became a hope I clung to.
Rubin… I’m here. I’m alive. Find me. Please…
I had whispered those same words every night since the raid—at every forced stop, every dawn where my body screamed to collapse. Hope frayed thinner each time the sun rose on another stretch of foreign land, and Rubin did not come.
A crack sounded ahead—someone falling. The chain jerked, and I pitched forward, barely catching myself before my face struck stone. The prisoner three links ahead lay sprawled in the dirt. A boy. No older than thirteen. Barely into his first heat cycle. His limbs shook violently from exhaustion or cold—likely both.
“Up,” an alpha snapped.
The boy tried. Tried again. Couldn’t.
The soldier exhaled loudly, annoyed. “Dead weight.”
My stomach lurched. Before I could blink, the soldier yanked his sword free. A gleam of steel. A single downward motion. A wet thud.
The chain jolted violently as the boy’s body was kicked aside. Blood soaked into the earth. A woman screamed against her gag. Another tried to shield her child with her body, but a soldier ripped her aside, shoving her back in line.
I swallowed down the bile burning my throat.
“No stragglers,” one of the alphas said. “If they fall, make an example of them. Or better—lighten the load.”
The laughter that followed scraped at my bones. Lighten the load. That was all we were reduced to.
The march resumed. The blood-scent drifted upward, sweet and metallic, carried by the wind straight into our throats like a curse. Someone retched behind me; another soldier cuffed them hard enough to send teeth scattering.
Hours blurred into each other. The moon flickered behind drifting cloud—appearing, disappearing. Every time its pale glow returned, I caught glimpses of faces along the chain: swollen eyes, split lips, bruised throats. A mother with her infant strapped to her chest fought to keep her pace even; a guard struck her every time she slowed, screaming that if she dropped the child, he’d throw both into a ditch.
I kept walking. One foot. Then the next. Autumn wind. Iron chains. Dead leaves. Rubin’s voice in my skull: “We will see the sunrise again together.” I repeated it silently, like a prayer.
We crested a small ridge, revealing a small Drakovian village down below. One of the many we had passed on our march. We had trudged through abandoned farmsteads, frost-bitten orchards, and even forded a half-frozen river where a prisoner slipped under the ice and never resurfaced. Civilization grew sparser by the day.
This village was like the others—simple structures with stone foundations and wooden walls, roofs patched with hides. Only a few lanterns flickered along the single street.
From one shadowed corner, a figure emerged—an omega woman carrying a basket of laundry. She moved stiffly, wearing a thin wool shawl. Her hair was dark, braided tightly, her eyes quick and darting. She looked Drakovian-born. Pale skin with the faint ashy undertone typical of their colder climate. Blue-grey eyes that missed nothing.
A soldier barked at her to get out of the way. She stepped aside without hesitation, bowing her head just enough to avoid being slapped. Still, she watched. Her gaze skated across the line of prisoners… and stopped on me.
I kept my expression slack. My posture loose. Spine curved as though my thoughts were elsewhere, floating.
The Drakovian omega studied me with open calculation—first dismissive, then curious. She shifted the basket in her hands. For a moment, I thought she might speak, but one of the alphas shoved her back toward the houses.
“Keep moving, Sera,” he snapped.
Sera? Now was not the time to remember names.
The woman cast one last long look at me before disappearing behind a doorway. No pity in her eyes. But something sharper—interest, maybe. Or suspicion. I didn’t dare give anything back. I dropped my gaze at once and shuffled forward as though unaware.
On we marched.
The temperature dropped further the deeper we moved into Drakovian land. The wind whipped so hard it felt personal, slipping beneath fur collars and tearing at skin. A flurry of early frost glittered along the edges of the path, catching the moonlight like shards of ice. My breath clouded in pale bursts. My fingers were numb from the chains, my wrists raw.
The soldier on horseback at the front yanked the reins and stopped suddenly.
“Look alive,” he barked.
A ripple of dread passed through us. A man behind me whispered a prayer. Another muttered his child’s name. I repeated Rubin’s in my mind like a chant.
The ground sloped ahead, falling away into a steep valley. At the far end, rising like a slab of midnight carved straight out of a mountain, stood the structure.
The Drakovian border fortress. Black stone. Towering. Impossibly tall walls that seemed to suck in the moonlight instead of reflecting it. Atop the ramparts, rows of torches burned in neat lines, dozens upon dozens, casting an ominous amber glow across the battlements. From this distance, with the flares flickering in the wind, they looked like dragon eyes blinking awake.
A heavy boom echoed from within—gates shifting, gears grinding. My stomach knotted. The chain tugged forward again. My knees threatened to buckle, not from exhaustion but from the suffocating pressure of the moment. Crossing that threshold meant something final. Something irreversible.
Behind me, the mother with the baby began to cry softly into the gag. The sound was barely audible, but it carried despair like smoke. I swallowed hard.
The fortress loomed larger with every step. The walls stretched outward like arms ready to close around us. A breeze swept down from the parapets, carrying the scent of cold stone, damp metal, and something else—something animal. A shiver ran down my spine that had nothing to do with the temperature.
I forced my shoulders to slump further, my eyes distant again. As we reached the ridge overlooking the main gate, I dared one last glance at the world behind me—the forest, the rolling hills, the faint orange glow still rising from burning Aelorian cottages.
Aeloria felt impossibly far away.
Rubin… hurry.
The soldiers barked orders. The chain twisted into two lines. The gates began to part, iron grinding against iron. The fortress opened its jaws.
I inhaled sharply, a silent plea I could barely contain. I didn't want to go in. I felt as though I’d never be found inside there.
The torches flared in the wind, glowing like hungry eyes. The line lurched forward. The Drakovian fortress swallowed us whole.