~Kendra~
My fingers were raw and aching by the time I finally made it out of the pit. They bled too—but this was already normal for me.
Routine.
If I breathed too loudly. Stared longer than someone liked. Or existed—simply justexisted—I got tossed in the pit. Or the well, if I was particularly unlucky.
Then I'd crawl out around this time—midnight—when I had ample time to wash up by the stream. A place I was restricted from during the day when most of the pack was awake. But also, absurdly, at night—when they clearly weren't.
So I mustn't get caught.
Luckily, the stream didn't care about those things, so it couldn't report me like anyone else immediately would.
It didn't care whether I came by night or day, whether I was a freeman or a slave—but it also didn't care about… other things too.
Things I wished anybody else gave a shit about.
Like the fact that I hadn't eaten in almost two days.
As if summoned by the admission, my stomach growled. The pitiful sound was long, embarrassing and alarmingly loud in the quiet.
"Oh, be quiet," I closed my eyes, muttering under my breath. "You'll get us killed."
It growled again, the traitor.
"I know," I whispered. "I know."
Sigh.
What a life.
I stretched my arms towards the flow of water and winced. My left shoulder still throbbed badly from where Delta Corvus's wife had struck me with the handle of a broom—for arriving minutes late to rub her hands and feet.
And then four more times. In the exact same spot. For not immediately getting the directions she gave.
"Not there, foolish girl!" she'd hissed. "You must want me dead—don't think I don't know your evil plans!"
She groaned as she spoke, spiteful even as the pain troubled her. Her face twisted in anguish—as itshould—as though I were the one harming her.
But unfortunately, I wasn't.
I wished I were.
That, however, would earn me the hangman's noose.
She deserved worse, if possible.
The witch suffered from some kind of seasonal arthritis. Sometimes, I wished the disease would just take her already, but regrettably, it wasn't chronic.
The stream moved peacefully despite my troubles, threading steadily between mossy rocks beneath the old willow trees and reflecting my—
Goddess.
I looked—
My auburn hair was bedraggled, dirt and grime clinging to the stands. My face was smeared with sooth, with bruises—new and fading. And my eyes… once vibrant and green, looked almost grey. Like all the life had been sucked from them.
It had, over and over, for six years.
But I still had some fight left.
Still, I didn't know what had happened to my eyes. Or maybe I simply mourned what they used to look like.
I dipped my hands into the cold water and watched the blood dissolve—letting the chill numb my fingers and dissolve my thoughts along with it.
My knuckles were badly cut where I'd scraped them across the stone walls of the pit. But also from weeks of hauling logs inside overnight—while the rest of the household slept in the warm comfort of their beds.
Speaking of—if anyone woke up right now, I was dead. And if they didn't kill me outright, my fate would be the well.
After I'd been roughened up a little, of course.
The thought made me shudder as I remembered how I'd ended up there the last few times…
~~~~~
Delta Corvus's kitchen had smelled of roast pheasant and spiced wine all evening.
Temptation itself.
The whole household had been celebrating something—don't ask me what; these demons always had something to celebrate—and goddess help me, after more than nine hours on my feet and nothing to eat for longer, I entertained the foolish… foolish thought of slipping something—anything—into my mouth as I served the tables.
Only a taste.
But the witch saw me. Of course she did.
And I was thrown into the pit after a mild beating.
Mild—because I've endured far worse.
Mild—because, compared to others, it was almost merciful.
It would still have been enough to kill a twelve-year-old.
Such was my fate.
The fate of a slave.
A slave who received wounds nobody acknowledged—because acknowledging it meant admitting that I was a person who could be hurt.
And that would make them guilty.
So it was easier not to consider me a person at all.
The cruelest part was that the other omegas—the ones who should've understood. The ones who should've known what it was like to be at the bottom of everything—wanted nothing to do with me.
Even the slaves.
Everyone found it easy to look down on a girl whose wolf had never come.
Wolfless, they called me.
Among other things I didn't care to name.
Every other wolf in Velton Pack had shifted by the age of sixteen. Most by fourteen or fifteen.
I was nineteen.
Nineteen—and I had never shifted. Not once.
There wasn't even a flicker of another presence at the back of my mind, as the sensation was often described by people who said I'd never get to experience it for myself.
That stung.
But what could I say?
The only way I'd be able to shut those bastards up was if my wolf appeared. But she—if she existed at all—was buried somewhere so deep inside me that I sometimes feared she had simply… died there.
Quietly.
Like the colour in my eyes.
It was like a wound that refused to heal. A bruise that refused to fade.
At least bruises had a cause. If someone struck me, I could trace the shape of their cruelty. Put a name to it. Memorize their face while I plotted their demise.
But the absence of a wolf?
That was a different kind of shame.
It followed me everywhere—giving everybody who already wished to degrade me one more reason to do so freely.
"Can't even shift," the kitchen girls would snicker as I passed, pretending not to hear. Until— "If her people were the same, it's no wonder they got wiped out pretty easily."
"The fuck did you just say?!" I'd spin around, unable to ignore such a barb.
A mistake.
Always a mistake.
A fight would break out and I'd be outnumbered—beaten to stupor. Then dragged on my knees before Delta corvus's wife—Belinda.
The witch.
She would look down at me with those cold blue eyes, blood-red lips curved in disgust.
"Oh? You forgot you had no wolf before picking fights again?" she would say lightly. "When will you learn your place, girl? When you die? Or shall I arrange that sooner?"
She already was.
"Or," she'd continue, tilting her head, "don't tell me you're still hoping to find a mate. Elevate your status from slave to common folk?"
"That's if her mate isn't also a slave," someone whispered.
The maids snickered.
"Quiet!" Belinda would snap, not because she disapproved—but because she hated competition. Or not being the one to deliver the deepest insults.
She'd bend closer then, lowering her voice as though sharing a tender secret.
"Even if you find a mate, what decent wolf would want you?"
Her gaze would travel over me slowly.
"You're… unfinished."
Unfinished.
"Take her away," she'd say, straightening. "Throw her in the pit until she remembers what she is. Send a rope down when I'm satisfied. Or let her crawl out, if she dares. I don't particularly care."
Then her gaze would snap back to me.
"And if you're not available the next time I require you, I'll have you stripped in the town square. Tied to the pole. And whipped until there's more blood than skin left on your back!"
Long story short—
I was whipped that day.
But only because I needed an excuse to visit the pack infirmary—another place a defective wolf like me was not allowed without cause.
I had questions.
And I hoped the physician wouldn't be so cruel as to withhold answers.
The pack's healer, old Mother Irenne, had examined more than my wounds that day.
Off record.
The first time with a reassuring smile.
The second time with poorly-disguised pity that felt worse than the prodding.
"You always end up here badly bruised," she sighed. "I don't know if all these injuries are worth the trouble of coming to see me. You don't even heal like the others."
I didn't press her for more. Didn't dare.
I said nothing—just stared at the floor and tried not to hiss as antiseptic was pressed into the flayed skin of my back. I kept silent while she answered the questions I was too afraid to voice.
"She's still there, you know?" she had said gently.
Then why can't I feel her?
The question burned at the back of my throat, but I swallowed it as she continued.
"Just dormant. Or stubborn. Sometimes it takes longer in omegas with—"
She paused.
She didn't finish.
She didn't need to.
I knew what she meant.
Deficiencies.
Malnourishment.
Chronic stress.
A body worn down since childhood by hard labor and poor rations—and by the particular toll constant fear takes on a young nervous system.
~~~~~
And now, here I was… by the stream. Breaking more rules as if I didn't have enough reasons for people to despise me.
"Best hurry up, then," I muttered to myself.
It was already past curfew for omegas of my station.
My station.
As if I had one.
With a sigh, I rinsed my face and raised it to the moon.
It wasn't full tonight—thank goddesses for that—otherwise there'd be heightened wolf activity. But it still hung enormous above the treeline, closer and brighter than it ever seemed on ordinary nights. Its rays—did moons even havethose?—pressed down on the world like—
Wait.
That was me.
I felt it in my sternum. That pressure.
A strange heat bloomed at the base of my spine, and I realized I had felt this before. That almost-feeling. The thing that rose in me like a tide…
A tide that refused to crash.
Always refused to crash.
But it wasn't a full moon tonight, so why—
No.
"Don't harbour stupid hope, Kendra," I told myself. "You'll only—"
The pain came without warning.
It started at the base of my skull and tore down my spine like lightning.
"Fuck!"
Someone had struck me.