The Orphaned Omega

Chapter 1

[Dorothea’s POV]

I’d been scrubbing baseboards and the grout between tiles for the past 4 hours trying to get them sparkling clean. My hands were nearly raw between the scrubbing I’d done today and the workload of the past week. I could feel the chemicals of the cleaning solution stinging at the sensitive skin. I looked down at them and saw they were not just raw but prickling with fresh blood. My breathing hitched but I took up the scrub brush again and kept going. My knobby knees were sore from leaning on them all morning and my shoulders ached with each pass of the scrubber. I heard footsteps approaching me and I hastened to speed up my scrubbing, hoping that I would please her.

“Dorothea!” she screeched, stomping her foot at me.

“Y-yes, Ms. Jillian?” I asked, looking up at the woman before me. She was a shorter woman, with a bird-like nose and beady, piercing eyes. She wore a scowl on her face that could wither my soul for days. Her hands were on her hips, and she kept tapping her foot in disappointment.

“Do you really think this is acceptable?” she huffed, gesturing to the grand ballroom we were in. “You’ve barely finished half of the room! And it still looks grimy, young lady.”

It was true. It didn’t seem to matter how much I scrubbed, and scrubbed, and scrubbed, the floor just always seemed dirty. When I tried to get clean water in hopes it would help, by the time I returned with my bucket the water within it was brown again with dirt. This had been happening over and over again.

“I-I’m—” I didn’t get a chance to finish before she smacked me across the face. My cheek stung with the power behind the blow of a full-grown werewolf, and I knew I would have a welt there by tonight in the shape of her hand. Tears pricked at my eyes and threatened to fall even as I valiantly tried to keep them in. She reached down and gripped me by the hair, pulling it down so I would be forced to look up at her.

“Don’t even think about a measly apology. Apologies mean nothing if not backed up by action, Dorothea,” she snarled. She was pulling so hard that I swore she would rip a chunk of hair out of my head. “And stop your blubbering. No one gives a s**t about your tears, girl. They are a waste of my time.”

I blinked tears out of my eyes the best I could. When her face was in better focus, I found it slowly starting to morph. It became a rabid wolf’s head, jowls dripping with saliva and eyes crazed and bloodthirsty. The hand on the back of my head I suddenly realized had grown claws, and the sharp points were digging deep into the skin of my scalp. I could feel blood beginning to drip down my back. I opened my mouth to scream, and nothing came out. Not a single sound. Not even a whisper.

“I told you, girlie,” the wolf said. “No one cares.” She tilted her maw back and began to cackle loudly.

I bolted upright in bed, throwing the covers off me. I was slick with sweat, and I could feel wetness on my cheeks that told me I had been crying in my sleep. I hated that even after four years I still had nightmares about living with Ms. Jillian. She was the Dark Pine’s pack foster handler who took me in after my father died. I was only eight when I lost my father in a battle against rogues. With him gone, I had no next-of-kin. My mom, where I got my human half, had died giving birth to me and her family had been so distraught they shunned my father. They didn’t want me, blaming me for her death. As the story goes, my Lycan father had been banned from his own pack when he took my mother for his mate. It was considered abhorrent by many for Lycans to breed with humans. He, too, had nowhere else to go and that’s how we ended up in Dark Pine, where I still live to this day.

Ms. Jillian was a bitter lady that couldn’t conceive her own pups (and looking back, that was probably for the better). But she wasn’t kind and compassionate like one may think a woman who wanted a child would be to children. Instead, she was cruel. She took out her insecurities on us. She was a lowly omega but had been stationed as Head Omega which gave her an air of superiority. She would drag the children around with her to do chores. And saying we went with her to do the chores would be putting it nicely. She forced us to do them for her. We spent twelve-to-fifteen-hour days cleaning the entire packhouse, cooking for the pack, doing laundry, washing cars…if we were called upon, we were there. The work itself wouldn’t have been too bad. It wasn’t like I found it demeaning or anything to be a servant to the pack. It was respectable in its own right. The problem was she forced two children to do the bulk of these tasks themselves, with no other help. And while the omegas often got days off during the week, we worked 7 days a week. She claimed to the Alpha we were homeschooled, but we received no schooling. We worked from sun-up to well past sundown. If the tasks weren’t done to her standards and on her timeframe, we were beaten. We were fed little, housed in a tiny broom closet, and kept generally out of eyesight of the rest of the pack.

My heart began slowing again in my chest as I looked around and realized I was safe. I wasn’t in that tiny broom closet Ms. Jillian had deemed a bedroom fit for two growing children. I was in my little room in the cottage I had grown to love over the past four years, after I escaped the pack foster care. Just after I turned 12, I had been lucky enough to be taken in by a widower. Her mate had died not even a year previously, and her only son had been killed when he was just 19 by a drunk driver. Not really the usual way a Lycan, or even a wolf, dies, considering our healing abilities. But the car had burst into flames and by the time anyone got there he had passed. It had just been me at the time under Ms. Jillian’s tutelage – the other survivor had been adopted by a family in a neighboring pack when she and their son had hit it off during a gathering. Rumor has it the two were destined to be mates.

Little old Rosemary took me into her home in the hopes she could give someone love again. She had never had much money and was a Lycan omega by birth and by trade, but she gave me all she had. She homeschooled me until I was old enough for high school, which helped me catch up for the years I had lost with Ms. Jillian. Living with her had been the best time in my life even if I was bullied when I started high school and suffered night terrors from my time with Ms. Jillian. Rosemary was kind and she was sweet, and she loved me as if I were her own. She had raised me in this tiny, two-bedroom, one-bath cottage on the outskirts of the pack’s land. She taught me what kindness and forgiveness truly were and encouraged my hopes and dreams.

The sun wasn’t up yet but the sky had turned from black to dark blue with the promise of morning, meaning I had woken up just before my alarm. I sighed and decided sleep would evade me now so I might as well get up. I hopped out of the creaky old bed and tucked the quilt back up. I grabbed my workout clothes from where I had slung them over the metal of the bedframe’s footboard and changed into them. I stretched out my sleepy muscles before starting on my morning workout. I may not be a wolf of high standing within the pack, but I still had aspirations. I know everyone either ignored me or thought I wouldn’t amount to anything, but if I worked hard, I could show them I was worthy. I could show them I was worth more than just tending to the packhouse all my life. I wanted to honor my father and become a warrior in the pack. To do that, I had to train and keep my body in fighting shape. So, I woke up early every day to get in a workout, before having to tend to my omega duties, and often would run the pack territory after school as a second workout. Exercise also gave me an outlet for my frustration and kept me out of trouble.

I finished my current workout and went down the hall to the bathroom. I paused and glanced into Rosemary’s room, thinking of her like I usually did each morning. For the past eight months, I had gone through this ritual. Opening the door, breathing in her scent, closing the door again. Rosemary had gifted me the cottage in her will, setting me up with a place to live. At just 15 when she died, I had been at risk of going back into foster care. But I had been working to help provide Rosemary and myself with money since I was fourteen, so once I proved to the Alpha that I could take care of myself and wouldn’t be any trouble, he let me be. I had also had to promise that I would still perform expected omega duties when I wasn’t working, which often involved making breakfast or dinner for the pack, tending to their laundry and cleaning the packhouse.

It was the thought of my job at the local café that had me realizing I was running late and pulled me out of my memories. I ran into the shower and quickly washed off before darting back to my room to get changed. I pulled on a worn pair of jeans, a black polo and threw on the apron before running out of the house.

I biked to work, enjoying the warm spring air on my face as I rode down the road. The sun was just beginning to crest above the horizon, so I got to enjoy the sunrise. That was the best part about heading to work – we opened at 6 am, so every day I got to see the sun rise and enjoy all the different colors it brought with it. I passed out of the pack’s territory and into the neutral, human-populated area of town. We lived in a quaint little area, flanked on all sides by the thick forest and mountainous terrain. The pack territory housed our own school and clinic, as well as all our pack members’ homes which was somewhere over a thousand families. We also had our own diners and a library that held books on Lycan lore, along with a place of worship and the ceremonial grounds. Our packhouse acted much like a town hall would in the human world, a central hub for people to come and go. It had public areas like a little eatery, gardens, and a movie room. For the most part, Lycans stayed on their own territory, cloaked by the magic that hid them from the humans.

As I rode toward town, I could see event trucks beginning to pull into the drive of the pack house. It was the eve of the Alpha Ceremony of the Dark Pine Pack, and it looked as if preparations were already well on their way. This was the sacred ritual in which the old Alpha passes down the Alpha title from father to son. Everyone was insanely excited – Alpha Harry had been training his son, Ian, for this position all his life. Ian was the golden boy, loved by all and desired by many. The passing of the torch had been wildly anticipated for months now as Ian edged closer and closer to 18. He would technically still be in training until he was at least 21 before Alpha Harry fully retired. But no one really cared about the semantics. At 18, Ian would finally be able to find his true mate.

In Lycan packs, finding the mate of the future Alpha is the most anticipated event. Elders want to ensure the line of Alphas continues by ensuring the chance for an heir. Middle-class pack members have a vested interest in ensuring their future Luna is fit for the position to continue the care and keeping of the pack. And of course, all the of-age girls hope that it will be them that is fated by our Moon Goddess, Selene, to be the Luna. It honestly is an even more respected and sought-after position than the Alpha position.

An Alpha trains to protect the pack and runs its financials and the business aspect of it. He ensures that all the different trades are trained properly, from the warriors to the healers to the teachers. He makes alliances and trade deals. But the Luna will serve the pack itself. She will continue the planning of rituals, elevate the pack’s image, and ensure the day-to-day running of the pack continues. She will ensure the Alpha is supported in his endeavors. She is the heartbeat of the pack – the one that pack members go to with grievances or issues. The one that cheers up the fallen and visits the sick. She is the mother of all mothers to the pack. But most importantly, she is considered fated by Selene herself, as she is the mate of the current Alpha, and true mates are predestined. The Luna is almost revered like…a priestess. The Moon Goddess herself deemed her to be the caretaker of the pack, to receive messages from Her, to be the connection between the pack and the Moon Goddess. There was no fighting over or winning of a Luna title. It was yours by decree of the Moon Goddess alone.

In other words, Ian’s Alpha Ceremony was less about him turning 18 and inheriting the pack, and more about him finding his mate. Tomorrow was such a big deal that our local school shut down as if it were a holiday for the Friday before the ceremony. This was all I really cared about. An additional day out of that place was blessed by the moon and stars. I know all teenagers hated high school, but I couldn’t stand it. Every day felt like it was going to bring me to my breaking point. I’d been mercilessly bullied for the past few years after joining fellows my age in high school. I was the foreign orphaned freak, and my homeschooled life hadn’t granted me any favors when it came to social skills. Plus, I was a wolf in an almost entirely Lycan pack. Wolves were the bastardized creation born from a human-Lycan relationship. Lycans looked at wolves as an inferior species at best, and as an abomination at worst. While accepted into their packs, wolves almost always found themselves as omegas, or worse yet, serfs or slaves. They rarely could gain higher status than that of an omega, unless quite gifted in medicine or fighting, or some other useful trade to the pack. I endured my bullies the best I could in the hopes I could earn my place amongst this pack.