THE ALPHA’S WET NURSE

Chapter Two

The water hit her like a fist. Cold. Immediate.

Everywhere at once.Mara gasped and sat upright, her hands clutching the soaked blanket, her heart slamming hard before her eyes had fully opened.

She blinked water from her lashes and found Edna standing at the foot of the bed with the empty bucket swinging from one hand.

"Market opens in an hour." Edna said flatly. "The mushrooms and cabbages have been sitting since yesterday. Get up." She dropped the bucket on the floor and walked out without closing the door.

Mara sat in the cold and the wet and said nothing to the empty doorway. Her cheek still ached from the night before — deep and settled, the kind of pain that had made itself comfortable.

She pressed two fingers against it, felt the warmth still there and dropped her hand. She got up.

She wore the brown dress — worn at both elbows, washed so many times the colour had gone patchy. It was dry. That was enough. She braided her brown hair back with her fingers, no mirror, no effort, secured it with a strip of cloth from the windowsill and loaded the cart with cabbages and mushrooms without waking Edna again.

The morning air was cool on her face as she pulled the cart through the empty streets. She kept her eyes ahead and her pace steady and tried not to think about how long it had been since she had done this.

Six months.

The market hit her before she saw it — the smell first, bread and raw meat and something sweet, then the noise layering on top of itself, voices and wheels and children running between legs.

She found a spot near the east end, spread her cloth on the ground and arranged her goods and told herself this was fine.It took less than five minutes for the staring to start.She felt it the way you feel weather — before it arrives, in the air.

She looked up from arranging the mushrooms and found a man two stalls down watching her with his arms folded and his mouth slightly open. He was maybe thirty, thick necked, the kind of man who was used to being looked at himself. He was not used to this.

He leaned toward the man beside him without taking his eyes off Mara and said something low.

The second man looked.

Then a third.

Mara straightened and looked back at her mushrooms. She knew what they saw. She had caught herself in the washbasin mirror that morning without meaning to — the brown hair already escaping its braid and framing her face in pieces, the deep blue of her eyes standing out against the tiredness around them, her mouth set in a way that had nothing to do with invitation.

The worn dress pulled slightly at the shoulders. She was too thin. Six months of barely eating had carved her down in ways she was still discovering. None of it seemed to matter to the men watching.

"How much?" The thick necked man appeared at her stall, his eyes moving over her face like he had forgotten there were goods on the cloth beneath him.

"Three silver for the mushrooms." Mara said."Two for the cabbages."

"Just the mushrooms." He said. But he didn't look at the mushrooms. "You live around here? I haven't seen you before."

"Three silver." She said.

He smiled slowly. "You always this direct?"

"When I'm working." She said.

He paid. He lingered two beats longer than necessary, his eyes dropping briefly to her mouth before he picked up his mushrooms and moved away.

Another man took his place almost immediately — younger this time, lean, with the restless energy of someone who had rehearsed what he was going to say.

"Those are fine cabbages." He complimented with a smile.

“Thank you." Mara nodded.

“Finest I've seen all morning actually." He said with a grin that told her the cabbages had nothing to do with it.

"Two silver." She said with no room for more conversation..

He laughed. "No haggling?"

"No." Her voice was sharp with precision.

He bought two and asked her name on his way out. She was already looking at the next customer.

Across the aisle, behind a stall of dried herbs, two women watched.

"Is that Mara?" The first one said, squinting. Her name was Delia and she had lived three houses from Mara for four years and had not visited once since the funeral.

"It is." The second woman — Breta, arms folded, mouth pursed, tilted her head. "First time she's shown her face since everything happened."

"She looks well." Delia said. The way she said it carried something underneath it that had nothing to do with concern.

"Too well." Breta said quietly. "Six months since she buried her husband and her child and look at her. Standing there like she's at a festival."

"She was always like that." Delia said. "Even when Eddan was alive. Men couldn't keep their eyes off her. You remember how they used to watch her at pack gatherings?".

“Eddan deserved better." Breta said flatly. "A woman that looks like that is nothing but trouble. Always was."

“Poor child." Delia said, though her voice carried less grief than she intended.

"Born too early. Didn't even make it a full day."Breta shook her head slowly. "Some women aren't meant to be mothers." She said. "The goddess knows what she's doing."

They watched as another man stopped at Mara's stall and said something that made him laugh at his own joke. Mara didn't smile.

"At least she's not encouraging them." Delia said.

“ Not openly." Breta said.

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By midmorning the cloth was almost empty. One bunch of mushrooms. Three cabbages. Mara's back ached and the noise of the market had become the kind of loud that sat behind the eyes.

She sold the last of it to an older woman who paid without conversation and she was grateful in a way she couldn't explain. She folded her cloth. Tucked the coins into the pouch inside her dress. Lifted the cart handles and turned toward the east gate.

The crowd parted naturally around her as she moved through it — men stepping back slightly without knowing why, eyes following the line of her as she passed, conversations pausing just a beat too long.

She kept walking. She was four steps from the gate when it came. Not loud. Not urgent. Just a voice — low and certain , threading through the market noise like it knew exactly where to find her.

"Gwen."

Mara stopped.

The cart handle went still in her hands. The market noise continued around her — completely indifferent, completely unaware.

She stood perfectly still while her heart climbed into her throat and her blood went cold and every carefully placed piece of the last six months tilted sideways.

Nobody called her that.

Nobody here even knew that name.She turned slowly, just slightly, her eyes cutting back through the crowd behind her — searching, scanning, moving across faces that meant nothing.

And found no one looking back.

Whoever had said it was already gone.Or had never been there at all. Her hands tightened on the cart handles. Her heart was still racing.

She stood at the gate with the morning sun on her face and the market at her back and the ghost of that name sitting in her ear like something that refused to leave

Gwen.

She swallowed hard.

Then she walked through the gate and didn't stop until she was home.