The Chubby Luna The Alpha Mock Rescued Him From Death

Chapter 1: The Favorite Daughter

"Mercy! Get up before I drag you out of that bed myself!"

My mother's voice cracked through the thin wall like a whip. I was already awake — I'd been awake since the rooster's first cry, staring at the water stain on the ceiling that looked like a crying face. If I answered too quickly, she'd find something else to be angry about.

"I'm coming, Mama," I called, and my voice came out smaller than I meant it to.

I threw off the thin blanket and my bare feet hit the cold cement floor. Through the wall I could hear Mary's steady breathing, slow and deep, undisturbed. Her room was the only one with a proper mattress. Mine was a mat rolled out over the floor, folded away each morning so it wouldn't "take up space" in the parlor.

By the time I reached the kitchen, my mother was already standing over the firewood stove, arms crossed, foot tapping against the floor like a countdown clock.

"Sweep the compound. Fetch water. Wash the pots from last night. And don't forget the chickens need feeding," she said, not even looking at me. Her eyes were fixed on the pot of pap bubbling in front of her — pap I knew was not for me.

"Yes, Mama."

I moved fast. I swept until dust rose around my ankles like smoke. I hauled two buckets of water from the well, my shoulders burning under the weight, my work uniform already sticking to my back with sweat before the sun had fully risen. I scrubbed the pots until my knuckles ached, threw grain to the chickens, and by the time the church bell rang for six, I was already thinking of the bus fare in my pocket, praying I still had enough time to make it to the office.

"Mama, I have finished everything," I said, wiping my hands on my wrapper. "Can I go and get ready now? I can't afford to be late again. Mr. Ethan already warned me last week—"

"Wait." My mother turned from the stove, and something in her face made my stomach drop before she even opened her mouth. "Your father needs someone to help him offload the new stock at the shop this morning. Go there first before you go to work."

I felt the panic rise in my throat like bile. "Mama, please. The shop is almost forty minutes from here, and the office is on the other side of town. If I go there first, I will not just be late — I might lose my job."

"So?" She waved a hand like she was swatting away a fly. "You'll manage.

"Mama, please," I said again, Mary should go since she is just at home. "Let Mary go. She's still sleeping. She has nothing to do this morning. I have a job. If I lose it—"

The slap of her palm against the kitchen table made me flinch.

"Mary is resting," my mother snapped, her voice sharpening into something dangerous. "She was up late studying for her business meeting. You want me to wake her up and stress her for nothing? Is it not you that always has strength for everything? Go and help your father. Now. Before I lose my patience with you this morning."

"Yes, Mama," I whispered, and walked out of the kitchen with my chest tight and my eyes burning, blinking fast so the tears wouldn't fall before I even left the compound.

The walk to my father's provisions shop took twenty-five minutes if I half-ran the whole way. By the time I got there, my father was already outside, directing two young boys as they unloaded crates of soft drinks and bagged rice from a rusted pickup truck.

"Ah, Mercy, you're here," he said, not even breaking stride. "Good. Take this bag of rice and this carton of oil to Mummy Gloria's shop. She already paid for it last week, I just forgot to send it."

I stared at the bag he was pointing to. It looked heavy enough to need two hands and a prayer.

"Papa, Mummy Gloria's shop is on the other side of the market. If I go there now, I will never make it to work on time. I'll lose my job."

"It won't take long," he said, already turning back to the truck. "Just drop it and come back."

"Papa, please—"

But he wasn't listening anymore. He was shouting instructions at the delivery boys about which crates went where, his attention already gone from me like a candle someone had blown out.

I looked down at my phone, and the time on the screen made my heart drop into my stomach. Seven forty-two. If I didn't leave right now, there was no chance that I would make it to the office before eight.

I don't remember deciding to run. I just remember my legs moving, my sandals slapping against the dirt road, my father's voice calling my name behind me and fading with every step. I didn't look back. If I looked back I would stop, and if I stopped I would lose the only thing in my life that was mine my job, my small paycheck, my four walls of independence in an office where at least some days I felt like I existed as more than a pair of working hands.

My mother left the house not long after I did, a covered plate balanced carefully in both hands, steam still rising from the akara and yam porridge she'd made that morning. She walked the same road I had just run down, except she wasn't rushing. She never rushed when it was for Mary, and this food, I knew without asking, had been set aside first for my sister before anyone else in the house had touched the pot.

She found my father exhausted and sweating by the shop counter, and she set the plate down between them, and they ate together, laughing about something one of the market women had said, my mother's laughter high and easy.

It was in the middle of that laughter that two twins passed by.

Two little girls, maybe three years old, identical in every way except for the ribbons in their hair, one pink, one yellow walking hand in hand beside their mother, giggling at something only children find funny. My mother's eyes followed them the way a person's eyes follow a memory they didn't ask to have.

"Look at that," she said softly, and my father followed her gaze.

"Twins," he murmured. And then, slower, like the word itself weighed something: "Just like ours."

My mother went quiet. I wasn't there to see her face in that moment.

She remembered, she told my father, the night the twins were born. The old woman who had delivered us had held Mary first in one arm, and then me, and looked at my mother with eyes that didn't blink enough.

One of these girls is not fully human, the woman had said. She carries the wolf. When the black wolf comes for your people, she will be the one who saves them. She will have power beyond anything you can imagine. She will have wealth beyond your understanding. Guard her well, for the world will need her.

And then, before my mother could ask her name or thank her or even understand what she had just heard, the woman was gone, no goodbye, no footprints leading away from the gate, as if she had simply dissolved into the dark.

My mother told my father this story again now, sitting there in the shop, the way she must have told it a hundred times before.

"It has to be Mary," my mother said, wiping a bit of oil from the corner of her mouth. "She came out first. The eldest by one minute. Everyone knows the firstborn carries the family's fortune. It has to be her."

My father nodded slowly, already convinced, already certain, the way he was certain about most things that required no evidence at all. "Then we treat her like the treasure she is," he said. "We don't take chances with destiny."