Bullied By The Ruthless Alpha

Chapter 1 Ivy’s POV “You can’t even do a thing properly.!” The chief maid yelled as she released the whip on my pack where I knelt, trying to hurry up with my work. “It’s been an hour and you are still here.” She added as she wiped me again and this time, I fell to the ground, clutching my back as I tried to endure the pain. “Hurry up.” Her command came with no sympathy as I nodded and then wiped my tearing eyes before resuming my work. I had always been at the bottom of the pack, an omega meant to serve. I had never known kindness, only cruelty in this pack. The Blackwood Pack thrived on strength, and I had none. At least, not the kind that mattered. The moment I was old enough to understand my rank, I was shoved into a life of servitude. I scrubbed the floors of the grand packhouse until my hands were red, prepared meals I was never allowed to eat, and endured every order, every insult, without complaint. Speaking back meant punishment. Hesitation meant punishment. Even breathing in the wrong direction around the wrong person could result in bruises. I wasn’t allowed to train. I wasn’t allowed to run with the pack under the full moon. I wasn’t even allowed to look certain wolves in the eye. Because I was an omega, and that meant I was nothing. And the Alpha king’s son, Ronan enjoyed making sure I never forgot it. He was the only son of Alpha Blackwood, the future ruler of this pack. Ronan led with sheer dominance. He was a nightmare made flesh, towering over most wolves with his broad, muscled body. His golden eyes burned with the kind of authority that made others drop to their knees without a second thought. He never had to raise his voice to make someone submit, his presence alone was enough. Ronan was ruthless, disciplined, and emotionally closed off, raised to be a ruler. He saw weakness as a disease, and in his eyes, I was the plague because I was weak and that irritated him. Reckless, emotional, and infuriatingly handsome. He had a temper, a really bad hot temper, and I was often the easiest target when he needed an outlet. I hated him. But if Ronan was my tormentor, Selene, the Beta’s daughter and future Luna, was my executioner. She was everything I wasn’t, beautiful, powerful, untouchable. With her striking beautiful features, golden hair, and flawless skin, she looked like she belonged on a throne. And she acted like it, too. Selene ruled the omegas with a cruel, iron grip, using her position to remind us just how small we were. She made it her personal mission to break me in particular. “You should be grateful,” she would say, smiling down at me as I scrubbed the tiles beneath her feet. “Without this pack, you’d be dead in the wild where you belong.” She reminded me often that I would never have a mate. That no wolf would ever claim someone as pathetic as me. That my only purpose was to serve those better than me. And I believed her. Because in the Blackwood Pack, kindness was a weakness. And weakness was unforgivable. The next day happened to be my eighteenth birthday. There was no difference between today and any other day. I woke before dawn, my body sore from scrubbing the packhouse floors the night before. My hands ached, my stomach was empty, and my mind was already bracing for the cruelty the day would bring as usual. Werewolves found their mates at eighteen, but I expected nothing. Omegas were rarely granted the gift of a fated mate. If we were, it was usually another weak wolf, someone just as unwanted as we were. But the moment I woke, something was different. The scent, strong and intoxicating, filled my room. It wrapped around me, pulling at something deep inside my chest. It was rich with power, threaded with the undeniable dominance. In Blackwood pack, the first way to identify one’s fated mate was that on the werewolves eighteenth birthday, the scent of their fated mate would wake them but that morning and if nothing. It means that the werewolf has been abandoned by the moon goddess. My legs moved before I could stop them, following the scent. My heart thundered, my breath unsteady as I was pulled forward, step by step, like I had no control over myself. And then the scent led me to Ronan. The sound of my footsteps made him turn towards my direction, his gaze boring into mine. I could feel fear shiver running down my spine, with the thought of what he would do to me. Whenever I come across him one way or the other, his presence always causes me one pain or the other. Immediately, I felt the pull. My wolf, Arya, stirred in my head and her excitement was deafening. “Mate! Mate!” she howled, her voice echoing through my head. I stood there, frozen, my entire body trembling as the realization crashed over me. My feet felt like jelly, I couldn’t take a step forward or even backwards. Fate had just sealed my doom.