She snarled at me the second her eyes landed on my face.
I tried to press my spine directly into the wall to let her pass, but she didn’t keep walking.
Instead, she came to an abrupt, sudden halt right in front of me.
“As if my day wasn’t bad enough, I still had to run into you, bitch,” she stated, her voice dripping with pure venom.
She looked me up and down, her eyes lingering on my swollen eye and my dirty, sweat-stained clothes like I was a piece of shit or something worse.
I looked away from her immediately.
I didn’t say anything; I just kept my head down, staring at the polished tips of her expensive leather boots.
“I don’t understand why Dad hasn’t kicked you out of the pack yet.
I think being a miserable rogue would suit you perfectly,” she said, letting out a loud, mocking laugh that echoed down the empty corridor.
“That is, of course, before you end up dying from a pathetic infection in a ditch somewhere, or probably before a real pack finds you and takes you out for sport.” She smiled, a cold, cruel expression that didn’t reach her eyes.
“I wish I could be there to witness that.
I am sure it’s going to be so much fun hearing you beg for your pathetic little life.”
Celia was absolutely beautiful on the outside, with her long golden hair and perfect posture, but I was pretty sure her soul was entirely ugly.
She always enjoyed tormenting me.
Not physically, she never raised a hand to me like the warriors or the Beta did but she targeted me psychologically and mentally.
Her words were always the most painful things I had to endure.
Sometimes, as I stood there taking it, I genuinely wished she would just hit me, break a bone, and keep her mouth shut.
But she knew better.
This was her greatest masterpiece: torturing my mind until I wanted to claw my own brain out.
“Look at you,” Celia hissed, stepping closer until I could smell her expensive floral perfume.
“You’re a disgusting, deformed freak.
You don’t even have a wolf, Ella.
You’re just a parasite soaking up our food and our space.
When I look at you, I don’t see a pack member.
I see the reason two alpha warriors are rotting in the ground.
Your mother and father must have realized what a disappointment you were before they died.
They probably stopped fighting just to get away from a worthless daughter like you.”
The words cut through me like a serrated blade, making my breath hitch.
It was an insult that made me want to cry, an insult that made me completely hate myself for breathing the air my parents should have been breathing.
Celia suddenly lashed out with her foot, kicking the plastic bucket housing my cleaning supplies.
The bucket flipped sideways, and everything went flying out dirty water, bleach bottles, and wet rags scattering all across the pristine hallway floor.
I bent down immediately to pick up the mess, my broken ribs screaming in protest.
Celia just laughed louder above me, the sound sharp and grating.
“That is exactly where you belong, mute.
Right at my feet, serving me.
Don’t you ever forget that.”
By the time I managed to stand up again, clutching the damp bucket to my chest, Celia was still standing there, watching me with a strange, dark intensity.
Before all of this happened, before my endless nightmares began Celia and I used to be best friends.
We were completely inseparable as children.
We would run through the fields together, share secrets, and end up sleeping in each other’s rooms nearly every night because we simply didn’t want to be apart for a single hour.
Even right after the rogue attack, when my parents were buried and I had first been demoted to an omega, she used to hang out with me in secret.
She always brought me plates of real food from the kitchen, nice clothes from her own closet, and she was even the one who had secretly dragged that thin mattress into my storage unit so I wouldn’t have to sleep on the bare concrete.
She was incredibly nice to me until, one day, she suddenly wasn’t.
She had abruptly turned cold, joining the rest of the pack in their deep resentment of me, as if a switch had been flipped in her mind.
“The Blood Moon Alpha kills weaklings for sport.
You know that, right?” Celia said, her tone suddenly shifting into something angry and volatile.
“If he catches a single glimpse of you, he’ll rip your throat out just for looking so completely pathetic.
You’re going to embarrass our entire pack in front of our guests.
And honestly?
I can’t wait for someone to finally do us all a massive favor and kill you.” She glared at me, her chest heaving.
“I am so tired of running into you every single day.
Can you just die already and leave this pack alone?”
Leave this pack alone?
I wasn’t holding onto them; they were the ones holding onto me.
I would leave this pack in a heartbeat if they just allowed me to walk past the borders, but I knew that was never happening.
Alpha Richard would rather die than let me walk out of this pack alive or dead; he wanted me here to remind everyone of what happens to cowards.
I had tried running away once when I was fourteen, but everyone knows that once you leave your home pack grounds without an alpha’s permission, you become an un-bonded rogue literal sport for wandering rogues and hostile packs to hunt down.
If they just let me go freely, I would definitely join another pack as a migrant worker, but they preferred that I suffer here rather than have any freedom whatsoever.
“Now I have to go for a run just to forget the fact that I ran into your cursed bitch face,” Celia said finally, crossing her arms before turning her back on me and walking upstairs toward her family’s private quarters.
That hurt.
No matter how many times she did it, her words always managed to strip away whatever little armor I had left.
I slowly released the shaky breath I had been holding in and started making my way to the kitchen again.
When I finally got inside, the room was quiet.
Some of the older omegas were washing the massive metal pots at the sinks, while some were clearing the final tables in the dining area.
Washing the dinner dishes was something they usually forced me to do entirely alone, and I hated the fact that they got to work in pairs, chatting and finishing early, while I had to slave away by myself for hours.
I walked quietly towards the large steel pots that had been used for cooking the night’s beef stew, hoping against hope to see if I could salvage anything from the bottom.
But it was totally empty, scraped clean down to the metal.
I looked around the counters, only to see that all the regular plates had already been thoroughly cleared of their leftovers.
As if on cue, my stomach let out a loud, hollow grumble, and just the sudden internal movement hurt my broken ribs all over again.
“You can have this plate.
Someone didn’t touch their food tonight.”
I turned around immediately, my good eye widening in shock.
An older omega woman, one of the cooks who usually ignored me, was standing there holding out a large, heavy ceramic plate stacked high with thick cuts of roast meat, potatoes, and bread.
This was a complete first.
I didn’t move, my mind spinning.
I didn’t know what it is she could possibly want from me, or if this was some kind of cruel trap designed to get me caught stealing.
She saw that I wasn’t reaching out for it, so she sighed softly, stepped forward, and took my trembling hands, forcing the warm plate right into my fingers.
“You should probably keep those cleaning equipment in their normal place and quickly carry the food out to your room, child.
We all know what the Alpha would do to you if he saw you with that much food in the main house.”
I was still completely surprised, standing frozen like a statue, my fingers warming against the ceramic.
“Go on,” she whispered, glancing nervously toward the dining hall doors.
“I can trash it right now if you don’t want to eat it.”
That threat brought me straight back to my senses.
“Thank you,” I said quickly, the words a low, raspy whisper.
I turned, practically throwing my bucket of equipment into the nearby utility closet, and walked rapidly out of the kitchen through the narrow back exit before anyone else could walk in.
I sprinted across the dark dirt path as much as my broken ribs would allow, every step sending a jolt of fire up my side.
When I finally made it safely inside my storage unit, I slammed the heavy metal door shut, turned the rusty lock, and immediately started wolfing the food down.
I choked more than five times, the thick meat catching in my throat because I wasn’t even allowing myself to slow down and breathe while eating.
I had to eat as fast as possible to avoid the risk of someone walking in on me and seeing the meal.
I couldn’t remember the last time I had tasted real meat; I couldn’t remember the last time I had eaten a genuinely good, warm meal.
Barely forty seconds later, the plate was completely spotless.
I took a chipped plastic cup from the small window ledge beside my bed, poured some lukewarm water into it from my bucket, and drank it down, forcing the heavy food to settle in my stomach.
Knock.
Knock.
The sudden, heavy sound of knuckles striking the metal door made me freeze instantly.
I stopped breathing, my heart slamming into my throat.
I listened intently to the silence outside, trying to figure out who was standing in the dark.
Knock.
Knock.
“I know you are inside there, you fucking mute.
I can smell the grease on you.”
I bolted upright, panic making my mind race.
I immediately grabbed the empty ceramic plate and shoved it deep among the messy piles of rusted tools and discarded cardboard boxes in the corner of the room, burying it beneath an old blanket.
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, walked quickly to the door, and swung it open.
“What the hell took you so long, bitch?
Do you honestly think I have all day to stand in the dirt?” Pete snarled at me.
He was one of the younger pack warriors, an arrogant enforcer who loved using his minor strength to push omegas around.
He glared down at my swollen face, a cruel smirk touching his lips.
“Alpha Richard sent me to come get you right now.
So move your ass, bitch.”
I didn’t say a word.
I simply closed the storage door behind me, clicked the lock, and started the long, painful walk back toward the bright lights of the pack house, wondering what new nightmare was waiting for me.