Chapter 7 The Day My Heart Broke Open
Lyanna
Morning came too early again.
I jolted awake to the sharp thunk of Bina’s knuckles rapping the cot frame. Her dark brows pinched in that familiar “move or I’ll drag you” warning.
“Up,” she signed, already knotting her headscarf. “Laundry rotation waits for no one.”
I pushed myself upright. Every bone ached from too many nights on thin cots, but I managed a nod. Two—maybe three—days in Drakovian hands and I’d already learned that fatigue wasn’t a condition here. It was a climate. A permanent season.
Bina shepherded me through the cramped sleeping hall. Groggy omegas shuffled around us, adjusting shawls and rubbing at sleep-swollen eyes. Cold iron lamps hummed along the walls, casting a dull yellow glow across stone.
Outside, thin blue light sliced across the courtyard. Frost bit at my ankles as I stepped out. Somewhere beyond the outer wall, a watchtower bell chimed—slow, heavy, deliberate.
Bina exhaled sharply. “There it is again.”
My stomach tightened. Yesterday I’d seen red-plumed Aelorian helms on the far patrol line. Too close. Too familiar. Too dangerous. I remembered the late-night bells that rolled through the compound like funeral drums.
Sera stomped toward us with a basket under her arm, grimacing. “Probably the prisoners they dragged in yesterday.”
My heart stuttered.
Rubin—
No. Not now. Work. Move. Breathe.
We entered the laundry hall—steam-filled, stone-walled, echoing with constant clatter. Omegas moved in frantic rhythm: scrubbing uniforms, beating cloth against slabs, dragging crates too heavy for anyone else to manage.
Routine.
Grueling, repetitive routine.
I clung to it like a rope.
Bina scrubbed a bloodstained officer’s coat beside me. “Supplies are short again. No soap shipments. No fresh linens. They’ll probably move some of us deeper into the capital.”
My hands kept working, though my muscles tensed.
Sera snorted. “If they move anyone deeper, it won’t be us. They pick the pretty, quiet ones for that.”
Bina shrugged. “Exactly why Lyanna should worry.”
Farther into the capital meant more alphas. More “breeding houses.” More risk. My throat tightened.
Sera slammed wet fabric against stone. “As if these patrol rotations weren’t bad enough. Saw more Aelorian scouts yesterday—what’s left of them. Bells rang right after.”
I swallowed hard.
The morning blurred:
Fill buckets. Scrub uniforms. Haul water. Stack drying racks.
Time passed the way pain often did—quietly and without mercy.
My arms burned. My shoulders throbbed. Steam gathered on my lashes.
But I functioned.
Routine kept me upright.
I dragged a bucket toward the rinsing trough—
And the world exploded.
A violent, blinding pain slammed into my chest, ripping through bone and marrow with the force of a hammer.
The bucket slipped from my fingers and hit stone with a crack, water erupting everywhere.
Every head snapped toward me.
A second wave hit—harder, deeper—like claws raking from the inside of my ribs outward.
My knees buckled.
I collapsed onto the cold stone, gasping soundlessly.
Chaos erupted.
“What’s going on?! Is that blood?!”
“It’s from her mating mark!”
“She’s losing her mate—Mother Sun take her!”
“Cover her! Cover her—quick—if a soldier sees—”
“She’s going into frenzy—get her quiet!”
“She won’t survive sundown!”
Hands scrambled for cloth, blankets—anything. Every omega knew exactly what they were witnessing, and terror pulsed in the air.
Sera dropped beside me. “Mira—listen—keep breathing—”
Bina lunged in, throwing a cloth over me. “Cover her mark! Cover it!”
But their voices blurred into a dull roar. My skull throbbed. My heartbeat became a drum trying to crack my ribs open.
Something warm trickled down my neck.
My mark was bleeding.
A horrifying truth struck with the accuracy of a blade.
The bells last night.
The captured Aelorian soldiers.
Rubin.
He had been here.
Maybe a building away.
Close enough to hear me if I’d only screamed louder.
Rubin—
who tucked my hair behind my ear,
who kissed me like the world was ending,
who promised—
Dead.
My spine arched viciously. A strangled sound ripped out of me—part choke, part scream, part raw animal grief.
A guard burst through the far doorway at the noise.
One of the young ones—jumpy, eager, terrified of disappointing his superiors. The worst kind. His hand hovered near the baton on his belt.
“What’s happening?” he barked. “Who’s screaming? Open the doors—move aside!”
“She’s sick,” an omega called.
“She’s losing her mate,” another whispered in horror.
“She’s faking,” the guard growled, shoving past two women. “Or rejecting an assignment. Or going feral. Which means she comes with me.”
He grabbed my wrist.
White-hot pain detonated through me.
I almost screamed.
Sera slapped his hand away—hard enough to startle him. “Don’t touch her!”
His eyes widened—not from the pain, but from the audacity of being struck.
“You’ll be punished for that,” he spat.
“Now’s not the time to puff your feathers,” Bina snapped. “Move her, and she’ll snap into heat. You want that on your report?”
The guard paled. Every Drakovian soldier feared one thing: an uncontrolled omega heat.
Especially among dozens of omegas.
He backed up a step. Then another.
But he pointed at me with a trembling finger. “I’ll be back with orders. And if any of you interfere again—there’ll be consequences.”
He shoved the doors shut behind him.
The omegas exhaled shakily.
I curled onto my side as another wave tore through me. My vision splintered. I tasted blood. My mark throbbed—no, burned—and began bleeding again.
My mate mark was bleeding.
Rubin.
Rubin had come for me.
And now—
The wave hit harder than before. Harder than the bond snapping.
Dead before he could know I was alive.
Dead without ever knowing—
My hand slid weakly toward my stomach.
Our child.
Our child he would never meet.
A broken sound tore from my throat.
Sera and Bina frowned at each other, reading something in my expression they couldn’t fully decipher.
The doors slammed open again.
Two guards this time—storming toward us like they were charging a battlefield.
“Move,” one barked. “We’re taking her to evaluation.”
“No,” Sera snapped, stepping in front of me, small but furious. She shoved one soldier back.
Bina grabbed a full laundry basket and hurled it at the second guard’s knees. Wet clothes erupted everywhere.
Chaos swallowed the hall.
Guards lunged. Omegas shrieked. Buckets toppled. Water flooded the floor.
I rolled onto my back, agony pulsing through every limb, vision dimming. I couldn’t even lift my hands to defend myself.
The first guard reached for me—
And a sound cut through the hall.
Bootsteps.
Slow. Heavy. Commanding.
A Drakovian officer stepped inside—the same from the sorting yard. Blackened steel armour, dark cloak, silver insignia flashing. His presence sliced through panic like a blade.
“What is going on here?”
His voice was low. Lethal.
The entire room froze.
His gaze swept the chaos—overturned buckets, trembling omegas, wet floors, frantic bodies—before landing squarely on me.
I lay half-curled, convulsing, breath shattering.
His eyes narrowed.
“Explain,” he ordered the guards.
I tried to lift my head, but the floor tilted sharply beneath me. Light blurred into streaks. The officer became only a silhouette—broad shoulders, dark outline, haloed by steam.
My ears rang.
Pain crashed again—merciless, total.
The world caved inward.
My vision shrank to a set of silver eyes narrowing—
Then vanished.
Blackness swallowed everything.