Fated To The Alpha Who Hates Me

Broken

Maris pushes me into a tiny room at the end of a dimly lit corridor, and I catch myself just before I hit the floor. My knees wobble anyway, I collapse onto the wooden floorboards, my body finally giving in to the pain and exhaustion I've been fighting off for two days.

"This is where you'll be sleeping," Maris declares as he stands in the doorway, his voice thick with disgust. "If you can even call it sleeping. You'll be in the kitchen at dawn. You'll work until they let you out and you will eat last and only if there's something left over, which there always isn't."

I didn't respond. I'm too busy remembering how to breathe through the pain from my wrists. The burns from the silver chains has sunk deep, perhaps to the bone, and my wolf isn't powerful enough to heal.

"Answer me when I'm talking to you, Corvane."

I push my head up, confronting his cold gaze. There's hate there and something else that appears almost like sorrow.

"My sister was murdered during the coup your uncle orchestrated," he continues, his voice low and threatening. "She was twelve. So don't expect sympathy from me, and don't expect it from anyone else in this pack. You're dead as far as we're concerned. You're just too stupid to lie down yet."

He slams the door shut, and I hear the sound of the lock clicking. Good. They're locking me in here like an animal.

Luckily, I'm too tired to care. I'm more concerned about my wolf that is screaming at me to get back to Silas and make him accept me. She doesn't know that this bond is the worst thing the Moon Goddess gave us.

I didn't bother to switch out of my torn and bloodied dress as I laid down on the empty mattress in the corner of the room. My whole body throbbed painfully and I drifted off to sleep after a short while.

I'm standing in a dark room. There is blood everywhere and a woman laid on the floor at my feet. Her throat had been slit and her eyes were wide and lifeless. I looked down at my hands and they were covered in blood.

With trembling hands, I knelt down and begin to apply pressure to her chest. "Please," I beg. "Please don't die. Please."

I sensed another presence in the room and when I turned, everything goes pitch black.

I wake up gasping for air. The sun shone in through the windows and I heaved a sigh of relief, thankful it's all a dream. For a moment I tried to remember where I am. Then it all floods back. The trial. The sentence. Silas. The bond.

My wrists throb painfully, and when I look down I see that the burns has worsened during the night. The flesh around the silver scars has gotten inflamed and I can feel infection setting in. I need a doctor, but I already know I won't get one.

The lock snaps open and a woman steps inside. She's middle-aged, at least fifty, with her gray hair pulled back in a hard bun and a mouth set in a perpetual scowl.

"I'm Greta," she says. "Head cook. You'll be working in the kitchens. Get up."

I struggle to my feet, staggering a bit. My stomach feels empty and my mouth is dry so much that my tongue feels like sandpaper.

"May I have some water?" I croak.

Greta's expression doesn't change. "You'll drink when I say you can drink. Move."

She leads me through the hall and all the pack members we encountered stops to stare at me. Already, word has spread of who I am and what I have done.

"Murderer," someone hisses as we pass.

"Corvane trash."

"Should have been killed."

I keep my gaze directly in front of me, not willing to satisfy them by providing a reaction. I've endured twenty two years of this. I can endure more.

"Your job is simple. You clean. You haul supplies and you obey. You don't eat until the rest of us have eaten. You don't talk unless you're spoken to. You don't look at the Alpha or any of his inner circle. Break any of these and you'll be punished. Got it?"

"Yes."

"Yes, what?"

I swallow my pride, what is left of it. "Yes, ma'am."

"Better." She hands me a bucket and a scrub brush. "Start at the floors. All of them. And they'd better be spotless when the pack comes down for breakfast."

My wrists throb with every scrub and the rest of the kitchen staff step over me without a word, treating me like a piece of furniture. One point, someone tips over a kettle of boiling water next to me, and I have to move out of its way in order not to get scald.

"Watch yourself, murderer," the woman who spilled it smirked.

By breakfast time, I'm shuddering with agony and exhaustion. The smell of food makes my belly knot into savage cramps, but I don't even think about reaching out. Pack members pour in and flood the huge dining hall, and I keep my head down, trying to stay hidden.

Then he comes.

I don't have to look up to know it's Silas. The mate bond came to life inside me and pulled at me with a strength that makes my knees tremble. Against every bit of common sense I possess, my eyes find him.

He wore a dark blue jeans and a black T-shirt that stretches over his broad chest. He doesn't appear to have slept any better than I did. There are bags under his eyes, and his jaw is set so tightly I can see the muscle coiling.

My wolf whimpers with pain to race towards him. His eye blazes amber, his wolf fighting to get free, and I see raw hunger in his face for an instant.

Then his face shuts down, going cold and blank. He turns away, taking a seat at the head table with his back to me.

The rejection feels like a knife to the chest. My wolf whimpers, and I have to blink back tears.

"You." Greta's coarse voice cuts through my misery. "Stop standing there. There are dishes to wash."

I tore my eyes away from Silas and stumble towards the kitchen, my eyesight blurring with unshed tears. The link is torture, an incessant pull towards someone who will never want me, who has every cause to hate me.

As I plunge my damaged hands into scalding dish water, I finally let myself acknowledge the truth.

This isn't going to get better. This is my life now, for however long Silas decides to let me live.

And the worst part is that some broken, desperate part of me still wants him to look at me again.

Despite knowing it will destroy me.