The Lycan King’s Forbidden Obsession: The Rejected Omega’s Ascent.

"You are not worth the floor you're standing on." I have heard some version of this my entire life. But hearing it from Mira's mouth, in front of every omega in the packhouse kitchen, with her nails already digging half-moon crescents into my wrist, it still lands like a fist in the throat. "I'm sorry," I say. The words come out automatically, worn smooth from overuse. "You're late." She twists my wrist and I feel the bones shift in protest. "We have visitors arriving before sundown and the east hall isn't touched. Do you understand what happens to me if this packhouse embarrasses us in front of guests?" I do not point out that it would happen to her. I bite the inside of my cheek and nod. "Good." She releases me and smooths her hair with the same hand, as though touching me was the inconvenience. "The chandelier in the east hall needs polishing. Every crystal. I want to see my reflection in each one by the time those guests walk through the door." She leaves before I can answer. She always leaves before I can answer. It is one of her small gifts to herself. The other omegas drift back to their stations without looking at me. I'm used to that too. I find the ladder in the supply closet and drag it down the corridor. The east hall is the tallest room in the packhouse, the ceiling a full thirty feet above the marble floor. The chandelier hangs at the center of it, crystal drops catching the gray afternoon light and scattering it into fragments. I have been afraid of heights for as long as I can remember. I have never told anyone this, not even Dorian. Admitting to fear in this pack is the same as marking yourself for worse treatment. I set the ladder under the chandelier and look up. My stomach folds in on itself. Just start climbing, Maya. Just start. I tuck the polish and rags into my apron and grip the sides of the ladder. The first few rungs are fine. The next few are less fine. By the time I am halfway up, my hands are slick with sweat and the floor below has developed a pulse, rising and falling like something breathing. I make myself look up instead of down. Focus on the crystals. Focus on the work. I am almost close enough to reach the lowest ring of the chandelier when the ladder shifts. Just slightly, just a centimeter, but at this height a centimeter is everything. My weight tips to the left. My foot skids off the rung. My hands grab for something that is not there. For one terrible second I am fully airborne, the ceiling above me, the floor rushing up, my lungs emptied of every thought except the certainty that this is going to hurt in a way that does not end. Then someone catches me. Two arms lock around me from below and my fall is stopped so cleanly it feels less like being caught and more like the world simply deciding to hold still. I am pulled against a chest that is warm and solid and smells like cedarwood and something cold, like mountain air before a storm. "I have you," a voice says. I look up. Dark hair, sharp jaw, steel-gray eyes watching me with an expression I cannot read. He sets me on my feet slowly, his hands staying at my waist for a moment longer than necessary, as though he is not quite sure I will not fall again. "Dorian." I breathe out, then immediately feel the heat rush to my face because it is not Dorian. It is nothing like Dorian. This man is taller, darker, and looking at me with none of Dorian's easy warmth. "No," the man says simply. "I'm sorry, I don't know why I said that, I just—" I stop. "Thank you. For catching me." "You're welcome." His voice is flat but not unkind. His eyes move to the ladder, then back to me. "You shouldn't be up there." "I know." I pull my apron straight and try to look like someone who was not just falling to her death thirty seconds ago. "But it was assigned to me." He looks at me for a moment longer. Something moves behind his eyes and then he steps back, creating the appropriate distance between a stranger and a servant, and nods once. "Be careful," he says, and walks away down the corridor. I stand in the center of the east hall listening to his footsteps fade and trying to remember how to breathe properly. "Maya." Mira's voice cuts through the doorway like a blade. I turn. She is standing with two of her friends, all three of them wearing versions of the same expression. Hungry and satisfied at once. "I saw that. If you think wrapping yourself around every man who walks through this door is going to improve your situation, you are dumber than you look." I do not answer. "East hall. Crystals. Now." She points at the ladder. I climb back up. I am more careful this time. I am always more careful after something frightens me. I work through the afternoon with numb fingers and a throbbing wrist, polishing each crystal until it gives back light. By the time I reach the last ring, the hall is beginning to gleam. That is when Mira comes back. I hear them before I see them, voices and footsteps below, and then the ladder shifts again. Deliberately this time. I feel the jerk in my hands and I drop to the rungs hard, gripping with everything I have as the ladder rocks side to side. "Oops," someone says, and laughs. I do not fall. I hang there, shaking, until they tire of it and leave. Then I climb down slowly and sit on the floor with my back against the wall and my hands between my knees and I wait for them to stop trembling. The east hall is silent around me. The chandelier hangs above, throwing soft light across the marble. I did that. They tried to undo it and I did not let them. I stand up. I straighten my apron. I go back to work. Later, when the guests have arrived and the packhouse is full of noise and food and laughter I am not part of, I wrap up the kitchen scraps they leave me and tuck them in my bag. My pay. Three years of work in this packhouse and that is what I am worth. Leftovers in a cloth napkin. I start the walk home to the little shed at the pack's edge that passes for my quarters. The cold hits me as soon as I leave the packhouse warmth, cutting right through my worn coat. I walk faster. Because tonight, for the first time in as long as I can remember, I have somewhere to be. Someone waiting. And for reasons I cannot fully explain, that matters more than the cold, more than the wrist Mira twisted, more than the ladder and the fall and all the rest of it. I just need to get home.