The Dragon CEO's Rejected Omega

☾ Molly

The Den door unlocks before dawn, and I recognize the sound before I open my eyes.

The upper lock turns once, the lower lock turns twice, and the old hinge catches against damp stone before the door pushes inward with a soft scrape.

Greyford Hall is full of beautiful sounds upstairs. Rain taps against tall windows, silver trays clink as breakfast is set, and fires crackle in rooms I’m only allowed to enter when they need cleaning. The house carries the quiet music of old money pretending it was born gentle.

Down here, everything sounds like metal. Locks turn, buckles drag across trays, cabinet latches snap shut, and glass vials touch with soft, careful chimes.

I keep my eyes closed for one more breath and listen to the pipes above me. The hot-water line groans inside the wall, which means the kitchens are waking. The maids will already be lighting the range, checking the bread delivery, setting out cloths, and quietly arguing over who forgot to polish the blue-room candlesticks.

It also means I’ll be late if this takes too long.

“Molly.”

Dr. Hester Rowan says my name as though she’s calling me to breakfast, her voice soft, clear, and endlessly patient.

I open my eyes to the low ceiling above my cot, yellowed with age and split by a crack that begins near the left corner and spreads like a river across a map. I’ve studied it often enough that I could draw it from memory, just as I could draw every part of this room.

Gray stains have worked deep into the grout between the white tiles. A locked cabinet stands against the far wall with its frosted-glass door, and beside it, a brass scale waits on the counter beneath three shelves of labeled bottles. Hester keeps a lavender diffuser running because she says it makes the Den feel less clinical.

Lavender doesn’t hide blood. It’s only taught me to hate flowers.

Hester steps into view wearing her white coat, her gray hair pinned into a bun so tight it pulls at the corners of her face. Everyone says she has kind hands, and maybe they’re right. Her fingers are gentle when she checks pulses and smooths bandages, and they’re just as gentle when she straps down my arm.

“You’re awake.”

I push myself upright too quickly, and the room tips hard enough that I have to catch the edge of the cot before my body betrays me completely.

“Move slowly.” Hester sets her tray beside me without spilling a drop from the prepared cup balanced at one end. “You were pale when they brought you down.”

“I can still work afterward.”

She adjusts the tray until it sits square with the edge of the cot. “That depends on how well you cooperate.”

I nod, even though the movement sends another wave through my head.

Cooperation has kept me alive longer than pride ever could. Servants cooperate, omegas cooperate, and a girl with no family name worth using, no room with a lock, and no money of her own learns exactly where obedience ends and punishment begins.

I learned early enough that Hester rarely has to ask twice.

I slide my sleeve above my elbow before she reaches for it. The skin inside my left arm is bruised yellow-green from the last draw. The puncture healed faster than it should have, but the color remains as though my body wants proof even when Greyford doesn’t.

Hester’s gaze touches the bruise before she reaches for the leather strap.

“Will you use the left arm again?”

Her fingers pause over the buckle.

“I’m sorry,” I say quickly.

She lays the strap across my arm and smooths it flat. “Molly, you know right-side draws are reserved for emergencies. If we overuse both sides, we create problems, and you don’t want that.”

“No, Dr. Rowan.”

“You’re a good girl.”

The words used to comfort me. I think they did, though I can’t remember when they became something I had to endure instead.

Hester turns toward the rolling table. Glass vials sit in neat metal slots, each of them empty and waiting.

There are six, and my stomach tightens before I can stop it.

“Miss Frost arrives today,” Hester says as she checks the seal on the first vial. “The house has a great deal to prepare for.”

Everyone belowstairs knows Beatrice Frost’s name by now. She comes from old blood, northern alliances, and more money than Greyford likes to admit exists outside its walls. Last night, while I scrubbed wax from the west corridor floor, I heard two guards whispering that Frost girls don’t travel for courtesy. They travel for contracts.

“Why does Miss Frost need anything from me?”

Hester sets the vial back into its slot with deliberate care, then draws the leather around my upper arm. “The pack needs to be strong when important guests arrive.”

“The pack is already strong.”

Her mouth curves without becoming a smile. “Greyford is strongest when every member contributes according to her purpose.”

Greyford’s told me my purpose since I was old enough to carry a wash bucket without dragging it. I clean what they dirty, soothe what they break, and give whatever they ask.

When the Den door opens, I come downstairs.

Hester fastens the buckle, and I breathe through my nose while keeping my face still. She seems to be watching for flinching today, though I don’t know whether it’s because Miss Frost is coming or because everyone grows sharper when important people are near. Sometimes I think the house can smell change approaching and needs someone low enough to absorb the first blow.

“There,” she says. “That isn’t too tight.”

It is, but I know better than to correct her twice.

She swabs the inside of my elbow. The alcohol bites cold through the lavender-heavy air, and my wolf stirs somewhere low inside me, weak and restless.

The tonic after a draw always makes her quieter. It dulls her instincts, blunts her reactions, and stops her from pushing toward Elliot whenever his scent crosses mine in a corridor.

Dr. Rowan says too much instinct makes omegas unstable.

I used to believe her because believing made everything easier.

Hester lifts the needle, and I turn toward the wall. The ceiling crack waits above me, spreading like a river that goes nowhere.

The needle slides in, and pain sparks sharp and familiar, though the pull that follows is worse. It doesn’t feel like ordinary bleeding. I’ve cut myself on broken glass, scraped my palms raw against stone steps, and nicked my fingers while peeling apples in the kitchen, but those wounds hurt on the outside.

This pain reaches deeper, as though something inside me recognizes the glass waiting beneath the needle and tries to follow my blood into it.

Heat unfurls under my skin.

It isn’t strong enough to show or make Hester reach for a heavier tonic, but sweat gathers beneath my collar while I hold still.

The first vial fills dark red, too bright at the edges. Hester removes it, seals it, and places it in the tray before fitting the next one beneath the needle.

“You’re doing beautifully,” she murmurs, keeping one finger against the glass as the blood rises. “Everyone gives to Greyford in her own way.”

I keep my attention on the wall.

By the third vial, something heavy rolls across the floor upstairs, probably a cart or furniture being moved for the announcement dinner everyone keeps pretending isn’t an announcement dinner.

By the fourth, my fingers have gone cold.

The heat under my skin presses against the puncture, trying to close what Hester’s opened. My body is stubborn even when I’m not.

She rests two fingers against my wrist. “Keep your breathing even.”

I draw air in slowly and let it out at the same pace.

If my pulse climbs too high, she’ll add notes to the ledger. Mrs. Huxley will read them, and I’ll spend the evening scrubbing the old south stairs because an omega who can’t give quietly can at least clean quietly.

The fifth vial begins to fill, and the white tiles blur at the edges, so I reach for the safest place in my head.

The east library smells of dust, leather, and the lemon oil used on the shelves. Beneath one loose floorboard, I’ve hidden a property-law book with a cracked spine, and I left it open to chapter seven, the section on easements.

An easement is the right to use what you don’t own.

I loved that sentence the first time I read it. I copied it onto a scrap of laundry paper and hid it in my shoe until sweat blurred the ink beyond recognition.

Greyford uses the private road beyond the east ridge, but Graves Holdings controls whether the easement is renewed. The pack owns the manor, though the old quarry rights are tangled in debt, and Greyford still behaves as though the whole world belongs to it.

Paper says otherwise, and it tells secrets when no one thinks a servant can read.

Hester slides the sixth vial into place.

“No, Dr. Rowan,” I whisper.

She looks up without releasing my wrist.

Shame burns hotter than the blood beneath my skin. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to speak.”

Her thumb settles over my pulse again. “This is important.”

My eyes sting, but I refuse to cry. Cook says crying wastes water, and I’ve never had a home to miss badly enough to need an excuse for it.

“I know.”

“Miss Frost has had a long journey, and tonight matters to Greyford.” Hester adjusts the vial when my arm trembles. “You want the pack to be well, don’t you?”

The right answer settles in my mouth like a stone. “Yes.”

“And you want the future Alpha to be proud of this house.”

They never call him Elliot down here.

My wolf lifts her head again, thinner now and wounded by the name, but she reaches for him anyway.

Elliot Huxley belongs to polished rooms, future titles, and the kind of conversations I hear only while carrying trays. He also occupies the quiet place inside my wolf that has never stopped straining toward him.

I don’t know when the bond first settled between us. Maybe it happened the winter I was sixteen, when he found me crying behind the stables after the Den took too much. He crouched in the snow, wrapped his coat around my shoulders, and told me I’d freeze before I proved anything to anyone.

Maybe wolves know things before girls are allowed to.

He’s never called me his mate, and I’ve never dared to say the word either. Words make things real, and real things can be punished.

The sixth vial fills slowly. When Hester removes it, I expect her to press gauze over the puncture and tell me I can return upstairs.

Instead, she reaches beneath the tray and draws out another vial.

There were only six in the metal slots. She brought the seventh separately.

“Hester,” I whisper, fear making me forget her title.

Her hand stills over the open line.

“Dr. Rowan,” I correct quickly. “Please don’t.”

She places her free hand over mine, her palm warm and dry against my cold fingers. “There’s no reason to frighten yourself. You regenerate beautifully.”

She doesn’t say I heal. She says I regenerate, like I’m something listed on an inventory sheet.

The seventh vial begins to fill, and the room fades at the edges. My heartbeat sounds far away, muffled behind stone, and by the time Hester finally removes the needle, my entire arm throbs.

She presses gauze over the puncture and guides my hand into place. “Keep steady pressure.”

I obey, though my fingers shake badly enough that she must see it.

Hester doesn’t comment. She labels the vials one by one in neat black ink, recording my initials, the draw date, the volume, the potency, and the intended use.

I look away, but not quickly enough.

On the final vial, she writes: M. W. High potency. Ceremonial use.

The word ceremonial settles beneath my skin colder than the needle.

I’ve seen healing use, recovery use, burn salve, fever tonic, shift support, and warrior restoration. I’ve never seen that designation before.

“What ceremony is it for?”

Hester’s pen stops. Before I can lean closer, she turns the label toward her palm.

My stomach drops. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”

“No, you shouldn’t have.”

She sets the vial at the back of the tray, where I can no longer read it, then opens the lower cabinet and removes a brown glass bottle.

The stabilizer waits inside, dark and bitter, and my mouth dries before she pours it into a cup.

“You need to drink this.”

I take it with both hands because I don’t trust one not to spill. The tonic tastes of burnt herbs, metal, and something that numbs the back of my tongue before settling like a weight in my stomach.

My wolf recoils and then falls quiet.

The heat in my veins dims.

Hester watches until the tension leaves my shoulders. “That’s better.”

Her own posture loosens as she reaches for the gauze.

She wraps my arm tighter than necessary, then pulls down my sleeve and pins the cuff so the bandage won’t show.

“No one needs to see it.”

She smooths the fabric until there isn’t a wrinkle left to betray what happened beneath it. I give below ground, and I smile above it.

Hester helps me sit, and the movement pulls a sound from my throat before I can swallow it.

“Take a moment.”

“I’m needed upstairs.”

“Yes, you are.”

At Greyford, rest belongs to people whose pain matters. Girls like me are given moments.

I lower my feet to the floor. The stone bites through my thin shoes, and heat flickers inside me again, pushing against the stabilizer, the cold, and the hollow place the vials left behind.

The metal tray rattles.

The sound is slight, but Hester turns immediately.

I freeze until the glass settles.

Her gaze moves from the vials to me, and the calculation in her expression sharpens.

Without speaking, she lifts the tray and carries it to the locked cold cabinet. I watch the vials disappear behind frosted glass, seven pieces of me vanishing with them, and she locks the door before returning with a stale biscuit wrapped in paper and a cup of sugar water.

Together, they count as post-draw care in the ledger.

I eat because I’ll faint on the stairs if I don’t, and fainting creates work for other people. The biscuit tastes old, and the sugar water barely tastes like anything at all.

“Miss Frost can’t arrive to a weak house,” Hester says as she folds the empty paper into a neat square.

“I’ll work.”

“I know you will.” She brushes a crumb from my skirt, then touches my cheek as though I’m a child who has pleased her. “You always do.”

My eyes burn again, and I hate that some small, ruined part of me still wants those words to mean affection.

Hester steps aside, leaving the Den door open.

Beyond it, the narrow back stairs climb toward Greyford Hall, the kitchens and polished floors, the east library and my hidden books, Elliot’s scent in corridors where I’m not supposed to linger, and Beatrice Frost.

I take one step, and the world sways hard enough that my hand catches the doorframe.

Hester doesn’t reach for me. Her gaze drops to my feet and rises with me, attentive in the same way she watched each vial fill.

I straighten until my balance returns.

My sleeve hides the bandage, and my face hides everything else.

At the bottom of the stairs, I look back once. The cold cabinet hums while the lavender diffuser breathes its sweet lie into the room, and behind frosted glass, my blood waits for a ceremony no one will explain to me.

I climb toward the house because Greyford’s always told me my blood is useful, and until today, I thought useful was the closest a girl like me could come to being wanted.