The Alpha And His Omega

8

Rena

The sting of Tristan’s words lingered long after the sound of his boots had faded down the hall. An eyesore. I gripped the wooden handle of my brush so hard my knuckles turned white, the rough grain biting into my skin. It shouldn't have hurt. I had been called worse things by the other servants, and certainly by the high-ranking wolves who viewed us as nothing more than living furniture.

But from him, it felt like a physical weight on my chest. Because for a split second, when he was standing so close I could feel the heat of his breath, I hadn't seen an Alpha looking at an "eyesore." I had seen a man looking at a woman with a hunger that terrified me.

I forced myself back to the floor, scrubbing with a frantic energy until the stone gleamed. I needed to finish. I needed to disappear back into the laundry or the kitchens—anywhere the sunlight didn't reach.

"Still crawling on the ground, I see."

The voice was like silk stretched over a razor blade. I didn't need to look up to know who it was. The scent of cloying, expensive lilies reached me first, thick enough to make my throat itch.

Nora.

I sat back on my heels, keeping my gaze firmly fixed on the soapy water in my bucket. "The corridor needed cleaning, Lady Nora."

"Everything in this wing needs cleaning," Nora said, her voice dripping with a casual, practiced cruelty. She stepped into my peripheral vision, her polished leather boots stopping inches from my wet hands. "The air is getting... stagnant. Far too many low-bloods wandering where they don't belong."

I didn't answer. Experience had taught me that silence was the only shield an Omega had against a Beta’s boredom.

"Tristan was just here," she continued, her tone conversational, though I could hear the sharp edge of a probe. "He looked quite agitated. He doesn't like his space being cluttered by... distractions."

She reached out with the toe of her boot and tipped my bucket.

It happened in slow motion. The dirty, gray water surged over the lip, soaking into my dress and spreading across the floor I had just spent an hour scrubbing. I gasped, scrambling back as the cold liquid seeped through my thin clothes.

"Oh, how clumsy of me," Nora purred. She didn't look sorry. She looked delighted. Her eyes, a sharp, calculating green, pinned me down with the weight of her status. "But then again, you’re used to the dirt, aren't you? It’s practically your natural habitat."

"I'll clean it up," I whispered, my voice thick with a humiliation that felt like a hot flush on my cheeks.

"You'll do more than that." Nora stepped closer, forcing me to look up. She leaned down, her face inches from mine, her voice dropping to a hiss that only I could hear. "I see the way you look at him, little mouse. I see the way you freeze when he walks into a room. Do you actually think a wolf like Tristan—an Alpha Heir—would ever see you as anything more than a smudge on the floor?"

"I don't think anything of the Alpha," I lied, my heart hammering against my ribs.

"Good. Because if I even suspect you are trying to catch his eye with that pathetic, wounded-doe look you have, I will make sure you are reassigned to the winter camps."

The winter camps. The death sentence. My breath hitched.

"He is mine, Rena," she whispered, her fingers reaching out to grip my chin, forcing me to meet her gaze. Her claws were sharp, digging slightly into my skin. "We are of the same blood. The same fire. You are nothing but a flicker in the dark that’s about to go out. Don't make me blow you out myself."

She released me with a flick of her hand, as if she had touched something rotting. With a triumphant tilt of her head, she turned and walked away, her laughter echoing down the hallway.

I stayed on the floor, sitting in the puddle of dirty water. My chin throbbed where her claws had sunk in, and my dress was ruined. But it was the coldness in her eyes that stayed with me. She wasn't just marking her territory; she was hunting.

She's right, I told myself, the words a bitter mantra. You are nothing. He is an Alpha. You are a maid who can't even find her own wolf.

I reached for the brush, my hand shaking. I had to finish. I had to stay invisible. But as I looked at the mess on the floor, a tiny, unfamiliar spark of anger flickered in the pit of my stomach. It wasn't the roar of a wolf, but it was a heat—a quiet, stubborn refusal to be completely extinguished.

I cleaned the floor again. I cleaned it until my muscles screamed and the sun began to dip below the horizon.

As I finally gathered my things to leave, I caught my reflection in a darkened window at the end of the hall. I looked small, bedraggled, and utterly insignificant. But then, for a heartbeat, the light hit my eyes in a way that made them look... different. Not brown, but something deeper. Something that shimmered with a faint, metallic silver.

I blinked, and the light was gone.

I shook my head, dismissing it as a trick of the evening shadows. I was tired. I was under pressure. I was imagining things because I was desperate for a sign that I wasn't as broken as everyone said I was.

I hurried back to the servants' quarters, keeping to the shadows. I didn't see Tristan again that night, but I could feel him. The pull was like a thread tied to my sternum, tugging me toward the upper floors where the Alphas slept.

I lay on my hard cot, listening to the rhythmic breathing of the other girls, and tried to ignore the way my heart skipped a beat every time I heard a heavy footstep in the corridor outside.