Chapter Text
Clarke told herself it was only about the herbs.
Jasper’s fever had climbed dangerously overnight. His breathing rasped in fits, and even when he managed to stir awake, his eyes were glassy with pain. They were running out of clean cloth, out of anything sterile. The Ark’s pathetic medkit had been emptied long ago, its last pills dissolved on someone else’s tongue. The others whispered about rationing, about what they could spare for him, about whether it was even worth the effort.
But Clarke had seen flashes of green beyond the treeline. Broad leaves with purple veins. She thought she remembered them from an old textbook, an image pulled from long hours in her mother’s clinic. If she was right, they had fever-reducing properties. If she was wrong… well, Jasper didn’t have much to lose.
That was the rational reason. The reason she could admit out loud.
The other part — the part that gnawed at her every time she tried to rest — was harder to name. A clawing, aching pull in her chest that refused to let her sit idle while her people suffered. She was an Omega; her instincts throbbed with the need to protect, to heal, to provide. Bellamy might lecture her about risks. Octavia might warn her about Grounders in the woods. None of it mattered. She couldn’t breathe in camp, not while doing nothing.
So she slipped out at dawn, moving light-footed through the underbrush, her pack bouncing against her hip with each hurried step. Alone, she could move faster. Alone, no one could stop her.
The forest was damp with morning dew, light filtering pale and fractured through the branches. Clarke crouched by a patch of ferns, fingers brushing over stems, muttering dosages to herself like a prayer. “Half a handful, maybe steeped… no, boil, then strain…” She wished her mother were here. She wished she were more certain.
She didn’t notice the hush at first. Birds cut their songs mid-note, the usual chatter of the woods replaced by something sharper — a silence that pressed on her skin.
Then came the whistle. Low. Sharp. Answered from somewhere to her left.
Her heart lurched. Clarke’s head snapped up, eyes catching only a flicker of movement before shadows surged from the trees.
Hands seized her arms. Rough. Certain. A voice barked sharp syllables she couldn’t place, but she understood the meaning well enough: stop struggling.
“Let go!” Clarke twisted hard, nails raking across leather armor. Another hand clamped down on her wrists, forcing them behind her back. Her chest heaved, breath quick and shallow. Panic roared through her… and then faltered, caught on something deeper.
Her instincts.
They should have been screaming run, should have lit her blood with adrenaline. Instead, they pulled taut and still, whispering something dangerous — yield. Clarke’s muscles trembled with the contradiction. She fought anyway, but the fight felt unsteady, her body betraying her.
They bound her wrists with coarse rope and shoved her forward. The patrol moved with deadly efficiency, a half-circle around her as they guided her deeper into the woods. Clarke stumbled, branches clawing her arms, but they never loosened their hold.
Minutes stretched, and with them grew the smell of fire. Smoke. Cooked meat. The sharp tang of leather and sweat thick in the air. Clarke’s stomach knotted as the trees broke into a clearing.
A camp.
Dozens of tents dotted the space, warriors moving like shadows between them. Some sharpened blades, others tended horses, still others paused mid-task to stare at her. Clarke felt their eyes track her every step — curiosity, suspicion, something colder. The air buzzed with it, a hive of unspoken judgment.
She swallowed hard, lifting her chin despite the heat crawling up her neck. Don’t look afraid. Don’t give them that.
The patrol didn’t slow until they reached the largest tent, looming at the camp’s heart. Dark canvas marked with painted symbols she didn’t recognize. She didn’t need to. The way it anchored the camp told her everything. This was the center. The command. Whoever waited inside… was in charge.
Her stomach twisted. Instincts pulled taut again, warning and… something else. Something heavier.
The flap was pushed aside, and she was shoved through.
The air inside shifted instantly. Heavier. Denser. Clarke’s breath caught as her Omega senses roared alive, thrumming against her ribs. Alpha. The space reeked of Alpha command, a weight pressing into her bones.
At the center stood a girl.
Barely older than Clarke herself, yet the leather armor, the posture, the cool calculation in her gaze made her seem ageless. She stood behind a war table scattered with maps, her hands braced on its edge, her eyes lifting to meet Clarke’s the moment she entered.
Green. Sharp. Unflinching.
The air thickened. Clarke’s breath hitched. Her skin prickled with the urge to lower her gaze, to bow, to yield. She forced her chin higher instead, jaw tight. She refused to bow to instinct.
The girl’s eyes narrowed, curious. The Alpha presence rolling off her didn’t waver, but she tilted her head, studying Clarke like something unexpected. Like prey that didn’t run.
The silence stretched until Clarke thought it might crush her. Finally, the girl spoke — low, even, her words wrapped in the clipped cadence of Trigedasleng. Clarke caught only fragments, but the tone was clear enough. Command.
One of the warriors answered quickly, shoving Clarke forward a step. Her knees nearly buckled.
The girl’s gaze lingered on her, calm as a blade resting on skin. Then she switched to English — careful, deliberate.
“You are… Sky Person.”
Clarke’s heart pounded. “Clarke,” she said, voice steadier than she felt. “My name is Clarke.”
The girl regarded her, the faintest flicker in her expression — recognition, or maybe amusement. Then:
“I am Heda.” A pause, then, as if tasting the sound of it, “Lexa.”
The name settled heavy in the tent, in Clarke’s chest, in the space between instinct and will.
Clarke swallowed hard, caught between fear, defiance, and the strange, undeniable pull that whispered this meeting wasn’t the beginning of a war. It was the beginning of something else entirely.
Clarke didn’t move when Lexa spoke her name. She couldn’t. The air seemed to hold her in place, her instincts thrumming like a taut wire pulled to the breaking point. Alpha. Her body recognized it even if her mind rebelled.
Lexa’s gaze didn’t waver. She spoke again, this time in sharp Trigedasleng, a flick of her hand dismissing the warriors who had dragged Clarke in.
They hesitated only a moment before obeying. Boots scraped against the packed earth floor as they filed out, and with a rustle of canvas, the tent flap fell shut behind them.
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Lexa straightened, moving around the war table with measured steps. She carried herself like every motion was deliberate, as though the entire world bent to the pace she set. Clarke’s throat tightened when Lexa came close enough for her scent to hit — leather, steel, smoke… and the unmistakable thrum of Alpha underneath. Her body reacted before she could stop it: muscles loosening, pulse tripping into something that wasn’t quite fear.
Her Omega wanted to fold into that presence. Clarke bit down on the thought so hard her teeth ached.
“You come alone,” Lexa said. Her English was careful, deliberate, her accent crisp around the edges of each word. “Why?”
Clarke forced herself to breathe evenly, lifting her chin. “We needed medicine.”
A flicker crossed Lexa’s face — not disbelief, not amusement, something quieter. Her head tilted slightly, green eyes never leaving Clarke’s. “You risk your life… for herbs?”
“For my people,” Clarke corrected sharply. Her wrists still burned from the ropes, but she leaned into her defiance anyway. “They’re injured. Sick. If I can help them, then yes — I’ll risk it.”
Lexa circled her slowly, like a predator considering prey that dared bare its teeth. Clarke could feel her Alpha presence prickling against her skin with every step, demanding her attention. It took everything in her not to turn, not to track her movements like her instincts begged her to.
“You are leader?” Lexa’s voice came from behind now, low and steady.
Clarke swallowed hard. “Someone has to be.”
The silence stretched again. Clarke’s pulse hammered in her ears. She hated the way her body wanted to bend toward that voice, the way every nerve hummed with awareness of her.
Lexa moved back into view, stopping just a step too close. Clarke met her gaze because she refused not to, but the weight of it pressed down on her chest, hot and unrelenting. Lexa studied her like she could peel her open with nothing but a glance.
“You are not afraid,” Lexa observed. Not a question.
Clarke’s lips pressed into a thin line. “Of course I’m afraid.” She drew in a steadying breath, then added, “But I don’t show weakness to my enemies.”
Something shifted in Lexa’s eyes. Interest. Approval, maybe. Her Alpha scent pulsed subtly, thickening the air until Clarke’s instincts screamed louder — not yield, but belong. It was maddening, intoxicating, and terrifying all at once.
Lexa must have felt it too. Clarke saw the tension in her shoulders, the way her nostrils flared almost imperceptibly as if catching the thread of Clarke’s scent. For one unguarded moment, their instincts tangled between them, Alpha and Omega reaching across the gulf of distrust, whispering of recognition, of inevitability.
Lexa blinked slowly, breaking the pull. Her expression hardened back into cool composure. “Sky People fell from the sky,” she said, voice flat now, purposeful. “Why?”
Clarke latched onto the shift in topic like a lifeline. “We didn’t choose this,” she snapped. “Our home was dying. We had no choice but to come here.”
“And now you take from our land,” Lexa countered, every syllable sharp, “without asking, without respect.”
The words hit like a blade, but Clarke met them with steel of her own. “Because my people are dying. Just like yours would, if you didn’t fight for them.”
The air between them thickened again. Clarke’s chest heaved, Lexa’s gaze locked with hers, neither of them giving ground. Their instincts roared like a storm, pulling them closer even as their words cut and clashed.
Finally, Lexa spoke again, her tone quieter but no less sharp. “You are reckless. Stubborn. But… brave.” A pause, her eyes lingering just a heartbeat too long. “I will decide if you are enemy… or something else.”
Clarke’s stomach knotted at the weight of it. Her mind screamed at her to be careful, to guard herself. But her body — her instincts — whispered a different truth entirely: you already belong to her.
Clarke tore her gaze away first, not out of submission but survival. “Do what you want with me. But know this: hurting me won’t stop my people. And it won’t stop me.”
Lexa’s lips curved, not quite a smile, not quite mockery. Something more dangerous. “We will see, Clarke kom Skaikru.”
The name — her name, wrapped in that new cadence — slid over Clarke’s skin like a mark.
The tent felt suddenly too small. Too charged. Too inevitable.
The silence stretched taut, a bowstring between them. Clarke’s pulse beat loud in her ears, but she forced her voice steady.
“I need to get back to my people,” she said. It wasn’t quite a plea. There was demand beneath it, steel glinting through. “They’re injured. Sick. They need me.”
Lexa didn’t move at first. Then, slowly, she turned and crossed back toward the war table, steps unhurried, silent as shadow. Clarke’s eyes tracked her, the absence of that Alpha presence pressing so close making her feel almost dizzy, like she’d been dropped into cold water.
At the table, Lexa lifted a carved piece from the map, setting it aside with precise care. “You are healer,” she said at last. Not a question.
“Yes.” Clarke’s answer came fast, hot, her chin tilting up though Lexa wasn’t even looking at her. “That’s why I need to go back.”
Lexa’s fingers stilled on the edge of the table. She glanced over her shoulder then, her gaze sharp, weighing. “Tell me what it is you heal.”
Clarke blinked. “Everything I can. Burns, cuts, fever, infection—”
“Infection.” Lexa turned fully now, interest flickering in her eyes. “You know how to fight sickness.”
“Yes,” Clarke said quickly, seizing the thread. “Better than anyone else in my camp. I trained for this, all my life. They need me. Without me—” Her throat closed around the words. “Without me, they’ll die.”
Lexa studied her for a long, unblinking moment. Then she moved back to the table, brushing her fingers over the carved ridges of the map as if the whole world rested in those grooves. “An Omega who heals,” she murmured, more to herself than to Clarke. “Uncommon.”
Clarke swallowed, fighting the urge to step forward, to demand Lexa actually look at her. “You don’t understand. My people are scared. We’ve lost so much already, and if I’m not there—”
“You are here,” Lexa cut in, quiet but firm.
The words slammed against Clarke harder than if she’d shouted. Here. Not there.
Clarke clenched her fists. “Then let me go.”
Lexa didn’t answer. She traced another path across the map, her profile calm, unreadable. “You said you trained your whole life,” she said instead. “Who taught you?”
Clarke’s mouth went dry. The careful way Lexa shifted the conversation, so controlled, so deliberate — it dawned on her then. Lexa wasn’t ignoring her request. She was sidestepping it. Redirecting. Holding all the power with the ease of someone who had never lost it.
“My mother,” Clarke said after a beat, her voice hardening. “She was a doctor. She taught me everything she knew.”
“And you believe you are the only one who can heal your people.”
“I know I am.”
Lexa hummed, low, almost thoughtful. She still hadn’t given Clarke her answer, not once. And the longer it stretched, the more the truth set in.
Clarke’s stomach turned, heat prickling under her skin as realization washed over her. Lexa had no intention of letting her go. She wasn’t weighing the choice — she’d made it already. The Commander’s interest wasn’t in whether Clarke would return to her people. It was in what Clarke could do here. What use she could be.
Her chest tightened, anger and fear tangling with the deeper, more dangerous pull she couldn’t shake. The air between them thrummed, heavy with instinct, with something primal whispering that she was meant to stay. Clarke bit hard on the inside of her cheek, trying to drown it out.
She met Lexa’s gaze across the tent, heart hammering. “You’re not going to let me go, are you?”
Lexa’s expression didn’t flicker. She neither confirmed nor denied, only let the silence linger, her eyes dark and steady.
And that silence was answer enough.
Clarke’s demand hung in the air like smoke.
“You’re not going to let me go, are you?”
Lexa didn’t answer. She didn’t need to. Her silence was more damning than words, the weight of her gaze steady, unwavering.
Something prickled at the edge of Clarke’s senses then. Subtle at first, then sharper, unavoidable. The air grew heavy, rich with a thread of Alpha scent — cedar and smoke, edged with steel. It rolled out from Lexa like a tide, slow, deliberate, pressing against Clarke until her knees wobbled with the urge to bow to it.
Her breath hitched. She fought to square her shoulders, but her body betrayed her, her Omega keening under her skin, preening at the attention, at the unmistakable claim woven into the air. The scent clung to her, seeped into her lungs, into her bones.
It was claiming.
Not a word spoken. Not a hand laid on her. But Clarke felt it as surely as if Lexa had pressed a brand into her skin.
Her pulse thundered. Fury flared hot and sharp. How dare she. Without her consent, without her agreement — Lexa was marking her in front of no one but them, staking silent dominance in a way every warrior in camp would know the moment Clarke stepped outside.
And yet — beneath the fury, something traitorous curled low in Clarke’s belly, warm and soft. Her Omega instincts stretched toward it, satisfied in a way she didn’t want to name, as if some deep, primal part of her had simply accepted what her mind could not: that Lexa’s claim was right. Inevitable. Already written.
Clarke’s nails bit into her palms as she forced herself to glare. “You think you can just… keep me here. Cage me. Claim me.” Her voice trembled with the strain of holding steady against the weight pressing down on her. “You don’t own me.”
For the first time, Lexa’s head tilted, the barest flicker of something like amusement ghosting across her features. She didn’t step closer — she didn’t have to. Her scent still wrapped the room, thick, undeniable.
“You are Skaikru,” Lexa said quietly, her voice smooth as a blade’s edge. “You are in my camp. That is enough.”
Enough.
The word slashed through Clarke, final and inescapable. Her chest ached with fury, with betrayal by her own instincts that purred even as her mind screamed.
Lexa straightened then, the cool mask sliding firmly back into place. She flicked two fingers toward the guards outside the tent.
The flap rustled, and two warriors entered. Their eyes flicked to Clarke, then away again, but Clarke saw the way their nostrils flared, the way recognition sparked. They smelled it. Lexa’s scent clinging to her skin, threaded through her hair, woven into every breath.
Claimed.
Clarke’s jaw locked. She seethed, her body hot with humiliation, with rage — and with the Omega satisfaction that made her want to claw her own skin off.
“Take her,” Lexa said simply, not looking at Clarke anymore as she returned her attention to the war table. As if Clarke was already dismissed, already decided.
The guards moved to either side of her, and Clarke let them lead her out, her head held high despite the flush burning her cheeks. Every Grounder eye followed her, nostrils flaring, mouths tightening in recognition. Lexa had marked her — without a touch, without a word — and the entire camp would know it.
Clarke swallowed the bile in her throat, fury curling hot and sharp in her chest.
She did this without my consent.
And yet, deep inside, her Omega crooned with pride, preening at the weight of it: that she was already Lexa’s, whether she admitted it or not.