After the Alpha answered the knock, commanding us to come in from the other side of the door, Pete didn’t just open it, he basically shoved me into the office with such brutal force that my boots skidded against the rug.
Luckily for me, my survival instincts kicked in, and I managed to twist my ankles and catch my balance before face-planting onto the hard hardwood floor.
My broken ribs sparked with white-hot agony from the sudden wrenching movement, but I kept my lips locked tight.
I wouldn’t give Pete the satisfaction of hearing me whimper.
Alpha Richard was sitting perfectly straight in a plush leather office chair behind his massive desk.
The room was grand, a suffocating display of dark, polished mahogany wood and high-backed velvet chairs.
It smelled heavily of his oppressive, suffocating Alpha aura, a thick, invisible weight that always made the hairs on my arms stand up blended with the expensive, bitter tang of premium leather and the rich, choking smoke of his imported cigars.
The walls were lined with heavy built-in bookshelves packed with pack ledgers, and a massive silver wolf head emblem was mounted directly behind his seat, its metallic eyes staring down at whoever walked through the door.
He didn’t look in my direction or say a single word to acknowledge my existence.
For the next thirty minutes, all I did was stand like a statue, staring around the grand office.
It was a bizarre kind of torture, but the truth was, I had cleaned this room so many times over the last nine years that I had completely lost count.
Ironically, and as messed up as it was, this was actually my favorite place to clean in the entire packhouse.
Cleaning here meant I got to secretly pocket all the gourmet leftovers, half-eaten fruit bowls, and high-end snacks that the Alpha didn’t want.
Most especially, the rules of the house dictated that no one else was allowed to enter while I was working in the Alpha’s private quarters.
For a few hours every week, I could actually lock the door, sit on the plush rug, and rest my aching bones without the constant fear of a random fist finding my jaw.
When he finally put down the heavy fountain pen he was using to sign a stack of documents, he didn’t mention the cleaning wing like I had fully suspected he would.
Instead, he reached into the bottom drawer of his desk and pulled out a small, amber glass vial filled with a thick, dark, and foul-smelling liquid.
A cold dread washed over me.
It was two weeks already.
How could I have possibly forgotten about the stupid, nameless drink I was made to consume twice a month?
This dark ritual had started exactly when I turned nine years old, just a year after my parents died.
I didn’t know the contents, the ingredients, or the purpose of the medicine, but Alpha Richard always personally ensured that I drank it.
Every single drop.
Every single sip of it had to go down my throat under his watchful eye.
I fucking hated that drink.
But it wasn’t like I had any choice than to step forward and take it.
To a human tongue, the liquid tasted like swallowed copper and burnt ash, leaving a greasy, bitter film coating the inside of my mouth.
Worse than the taste was the immediate effect; it always made my body feel fundamentally “wrong,” as if something deep inside my soul was frantically trying to scream, only to get violently choked out by a dark force.
The moment the fluid hit my stomach, it felt like a heavy, suffocating iron curtain was falling directly over my chest.
Whenever I was done drinking it, I was left with the terrifying sensation that something living inside of me was being actively, brutally suppressed and put to sleep.
He pushed the small amber glass across the dark wood desk, the glass clicking against the surface, and gestured sharply with a flick of his fingers for me to take it.
His gaze was entirely locked onto me throughout the whole process, his wolf-blue eyes boring holes into my face.
I hesitated for a fraction of a second, my heart hammering against my fractured ribs, before dragging my hand across the desk, picking up the cup, and draining the thick, foul content into my mouth.
He didn’t blink, watching my throat move with predatory intensity to ensure I swallowed every single drop.
When he was finally satisfied that I had successfully downed everything into my system, he waved his hand dismissively, not even bothering to look at me again.
“Go back to your shack and sleep,” Richard rumbled, his voice cold and flat.
“I don’t want to see your pathetic face until tomorrow night.
You need to be completely out of the way before the guests arrive.”
I set the empty vial down, turned on my heel, and walked out of the office, slowly heading back down the corridor toward the exit.
I hated drinking that substance because I absolutely loathed the way it made me feel afterward.
Within minutes of taking it, I was always completely drowsy, dizzy, and out of my mind.
I hated not being in absolute control of my own body, and that drink forced me to lose my grip on reality every single time.
But as I stumbled across the dark dirt lot toward my abandoned storage unit, I reminded myself of the only real perk that came with taking the stupid drink.
Because the medicine knocked me out so completely, the Alpha always granted me a legal pass to sleep for a whole day without anyone bothering me, yelling at me, or beating the hell out of me.
It was a single, rare day where I was actually allowed to rest.
A day with no grueling chores, no random beatings, no cruel cursing from the warriors, no Celia, and most especially, a twenty-four-hour escape from the crushing weight of the pack hierarchy.
To the rest of the Silver Ridge wolves, I simply didn’t exist for the day.
I stumbled back into my room, my hands shaking so badly I barely managed to slide the rusty bolt lock into place.
The drug was immediately taking a massive effect on my system.
I felt incredibly weak and tired all of a sudden, a wave of exhaustion crashing over me like a physical tidal wave.
My limbs felt like they were made of heavy lead, my vision blurred into a sea of smudged shadows, and my brain turned to absolute, thick fog.
I collapsed onto the thin mattress, not even bothering to take off my shoes, and welcomed the dark, heavy sleep.
I lay completely still, letting my broken ribs finally rest without the agony of movement, drowning in the blackness.
************************************************************************
Hours later, my subconsciousness was suddenly jolted onto high alert.
I was still heavily under the influence of the Alpha’s drink, completely trapped in a dense, drug-induced twilight sleep.
I couldn’t move a single muscle, and I couldn’t force my eyelids to open more than a tiny slit, but my senses were suddenly hyper-aware of my surroundings.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
I wasn’t alone in my room anymore.
Someone had successfully sneaked inside.
I heard the rusty hinges of the metal door creak open with a low, agonizing scrape.
Immediately, my nose was completely overwhelmed by a very specific, intense scent.
It wasn’t the gross, aggressive smell of the male enforcers or the sweaty musk of the hunting guards.
It was something entirely different.
It was a sweet, sharp fragrance, a scent I knew all too well from a lifetime of shared memories.
It was Celia.
Through the tiny, blurred crack of my eyes, I could feel the distinct heat of her presence standing directly over my sleeping body.
Fear sparked in my chest, but the drug held my limbs down like heavy iron weights.
What on earth was she doing here in the dead of night?
Was she here to finally end it all?
Had she completely lost her mind and decided she couldn’t wait any longer for the Blood Moon Alpha to rip my throat out, so she had taken matters into her own hands to finish the job herself?
I lay completely paralyzed, wondering what it was she could possibly want from a broken omega in a dark storage unit.
I felt her lean down, her shadow completely blocking the faint moonlight filtering through the window.
She dropped something soft and metallic next to my mattress, the object landing with a quiet thud against the concrete floor.
In the quiet of the room, I could hear her whisper something under her breath, her voice trembling slightly, but the thick fog in my ears made it impossible to make out the exact words she was saying.
I tried with everything I had to fight the overwhelming drowsiness, desperately wanting to scream or wake up to confront her, but the heavy drug relentlessly dragged my consciousness back under the surface.
Then, something happened that made my entire mind freeze in pure shock.
I felt a soft, gentle pressure touch the top of my head.
Before I could fully process it, her lips came to a halt against my hair.
Did Celia…
did she really just kiss me on my head?
My mind reeled in absolute confusion.
What was going on tonight?
Maybe the Alpha’s strange drink was finally driving me insane, making me imagine things that were not actually there.
I immediately began to preach to myself, forcing my thoughts to shut down, telling myself not to believe a single bit of this was real.
Celia hated me.
She wanted me dead.
This had to be a drug-induced hallucination.
Almost immediately after the touch, I heard her breath catch in her throat, and she rushed out of the room, her boots clicking frantically against the floorboards before she slammed the metal door shut.
Before I could even begin to process the strange event, the heavy black waves of the sedative dragged me back into a deep, dreamless sleep.
By the time I finally woke up, blinking against the bright light filtering through the cracked glass, it was the morning of day three.
The heavy drowsiness was completely gone from my system, leaving my mind clear and alert.
I sat up slowly, bracing for the usual stab of pain in my ribs, but stopped dead in my tracks.
The sharp, lingering floral scent of Celia’s perfume was still hanging thick in the stagnant air of the storage unit, proving with absolute certainty that it hadn’t been a dream at all.
I looked down at the floorboards right beside my thin mattress.
Resting on the dusty concrete was a small, clean roll of professional medical bandages and a small tube of expensive, high-grade pain relief ointment, the kind only available in the Alpha’s private medical wing.
My heart did a strange, painful flutter against my ribs as I stared at the items.
It was real.
She had been here.
With shaking fingers, I reached down to pick up the medicine, knowing that tomorrow, the Blood Moon pack would finally arrive, and that the worst could happen.
OMG, while would Celia do something like that.
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