Immediately I got inside the pack house, the first thing I did was grab the cleaning supplies from the ground-floor utility closet and head straight upstairs.
There were roughly about a hundred rooms in the guest wing alone that I needed to clean before the sun went down.
The Silver Ridge pack house wasn’t just a home; it was a big, enormous fortress built of heavy gray stone and dark pine timber that could easily house about six thousand wolves if the entire territory ever needed to retreat behind its walls.
It was located right in the absolute center of our lands, towering over everything else like a monument to our Alpha’s arrogance.
The building was four stories high, surrounded by iron-reinforced balconies and massive windows that let the high-ranking members look down on the rest of the world.
On the inside, the floors were made of polished oak that reflected the light of crystal chandeliers, and the air constantly smelled of expensive pine wax, roasted meats, and the heavy, mixed auras of dozens of dominant wolves.
Not every wolf in Silver Ridge lived under this one roof, of course.
The pack house was mostly occupied by the Alpha, the Beta, and the Gamma’s families, along with the young wolves who hadn’t found their fated mates yet, the standard omegas, and a large rotation of elite warriors.
There wasn’t anything like true privacy in a house built for shape-shifters, so mated wolves usually moved out as soon as they paired up, living in their own private homes.
There were various small houses and neat brick cottages scattered across the valley where people who didn’t want to live in the chaotic main house could raise their families in peace.
I used to live in one of those peaceful little houses with my parents, down by the southern creek where the wild clover grew.
But that was a long, long time ago.
To an outsider, the Silver Ridge Pack was what humans would consider a bustling, self-sustaining town, complete with our own schools, clinics, and hunting grounds.
But to me, it was just a highly organized cage.
I finally reached the third floor, dragging the heavy plastic bucket of bleach, rags, and polishes into the sprawling guest wing.
I decided it was a good idea to start from the very end of the long hallway so I could work my way back toward the stairs.
I pushed open the heavy oak door of the first room, dropped my rattling equipment onto the floor, and forced the large glass windows open to air out the musty space.
My standard routine never changed: I would start first by dusting the high corners and sweeping the floors, before moving on to mopping the tiles and polishing every single piece of wooden furniture.
Not to forget the bathroom, I had to clean that very well too, scrubbing the porcelain until it gleamed, because Beta Jackson would absolutely check the corners for any sign of neglect.
The guest suite was a cruel, hard laugh compared to what I called a room.
While the only piece of furniture I had to my name was a stained, ruined mattress resting on raw concrete, this room was nothing short of absolute luxury.
The floors were covered in thick, plush cream carpets that sank beneath my feet, completely swallowing the sound of my steps.
The windows were framed by heavy, sweeping silk drapes that felt smoother than anything I’d touched in nine years.
I grabbed the bottle of expensive lavender polish, spraying it onto the mahogany nightstands, the sweet, floral scent instantly filling the air.
The contrast between the room and my own body was sickening.
I was a bleeding, sweaty, and completely broken state, standing in the middle of a room fit for royalty.
Every single time I stretched my arms upward to dust a curtain rod, a sharp, grinding pain flared in my side.
I struggled to breathe and move while cleaning the room, with the pains from my freshly broken ribs making every tiny movement an absolute mountain to climb.
At some point, when I bent down to scrub the baseboards, the world tilted violently to the left, and my vision went totally black.
I thought I was going to pass out right there on the plush carpet, but no such luck.
My body simply wouldn’t let me escape into unconsciousness.
My left eye was so severely swollen from Alpha Richard’s final punch that it was difficult to see out of it, forcing me to tilt my head just to keep the room in focus.
Plus, my head was constantly banging with a fierce, rhythmic pulse behind my temples, and my ears were ringing nonstop like a distant alarm bell.
It didn’t help that I was completely starving, too.
I hadn’t eaten a single bite of food since yesterday morning, and I knew the other omegas wouldn’t save a single scrap of breakfast for me.
Yes, I wasn’t the only omega in the Silver Ridge pack, but the others had a good, functional life compared to my miserable existence.
They got to eat the regular meals after the warriors were done, they got to sleep in actual beds in the pack house basement under warm blankets, and the ones my age even got to go to the pack school every morning.
They got to have free days off to relax or wander the territory.
Except me.
I was the slave of the slaves.
The other omegas weren’t kind to me either; they treated me exactly like how the rest of the pack did, turning their noses up whenever I walked by.
They wouldn’t even be caught alive talking to me, terrified that my curse might somehow rub off on them.
Some days, as I scrubbed their filth, I felt like the Alpha had a deeply personal vendetta against me.
But what could I possibly have done wrong to deserve a lifetime of torture?
I almost laughed out loud at that thought, but I couldn’t because the sudden movement made my ribs hit me with a fresh wave of agony.
Of course you know what you did wrong, the dark voice in my head whispered.
You killed your parents.
You left them in that clearing and you ran like a coward.
But what exactly were they expecting me, a tiny, wolf-less eight-year-old girl, to do against massive, bloodthirsty rogues?
It wasn’t as if I could fight or shift or do anything to save them.
My survival was my only crime.
Despite the agony, the exhaustion, and everything I was feeling at the moment, I didn’t slow down.
I was driven entirely by the paralyzing fear of a brutal, impending punishment from Alpha Richard and Beta Jackson if the rooms were not perfectly clean by the end of the day.
Fortunately, it wasn’t incredibly hard to clean the actual surfaces, because everywhere was already somewhat tidy seeing as no one ever stayed in these suites.
They were mostly empty, reserved exclusively for visiting dignitaries.
By the time I was working in the fiftieth room, wiping down a marble mantlepiece, the heavy, dragging footsteps of Beta Jackson made an appearance in the doorway.
My heart stopped.
I immediately dropped my head, locking my eyes onto the floorboards, bracing myself for a strike.
He didn’t say a single word.
He just stood there for a long, agonizing minute, inspecting the polished wood and the immaculate bathroom with a cold, eye, before turning around and walking away down the corridor.
I was completely surprised he didn’t say anything or try to hit me.
Maybe he was just too focused on the impending arrival to bother with me.
When I finally finished the last room in the wing, the sun had already set completely beyond the mountains.
I looked out the dark window and guessed it should be around eight o’clock already.
The pack had definitely already eaten their dinner in the grand hall downstairs, and I knew that if I wanted to eat a single thing today, I had to hurry downstairs and rummage through the kitchen leftovers before everything was washed away into the garbage.
I quickly packed my dirty rags and brushes back into the bucket and hurriedly made my way downstairs, keeping close to the wood panels, trying to be completely invisible.
Coming down the grand staircase hurt my ribs more than I thought was possible, considering I had been managing the pain all day.
Every single step downward vibrated through my torso, and the constant bending I had done during my chores didn’t solve the matter at all, leaving my muscles tight and spasming.
Immediately as I stepped off the final stair into the lower hallway, I came face-to-face with Celia.
I was most definitely cursed.
Of all the people in this pack that I could possibly run into tonight, it had to be the one person that couldn’t stand the site of me.
Not even my shadow.
“You fucking cunt.”
My baby…….
someone should please save my baby from her suffering.
She have had enough.
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