The first time Vanessa made me carry her kill, I thought it was a test. Something I could pass if I just kept my face blank and my back straight.
I was wrong.
She'd taken down a young buck during the weekly hunt—clean kill, quick—and stood over it with her arms crossed while the rest of the hunting party circled back toward the pack house. The carcass had to weigh close to a hundred and fifty pounds. Blood pooled dark in the grass.
"Omega," she called, not looking at me. "Bring it."
I walked over. Crouched. Got my hands under the shoulders and lifted. My arms screamed immediately. The wolfsbane treatments had left me weaker than I'd been before—muscles that used to shift a couch without thinking now struggled with weight I should have managed easily.
Vanessa walked ahead, unhurried, while I dragged the buck behind her. Every few steps she'd glance back to make sure I was still there. Still struggling. The other wolves kept their distance, eyes sliding away when I looked up.
By the time we reached the pack house, my hands were slick with blood and my shoulders felt like they'd been pulled from the sockets. I set the carcass down outside the kitchen entrance. Vanessa inspected it briefly, then nodded to one of the Deltas.
"Take it inside," she said. Then to me: "Clean yourself. You're filthy."
I went to the outdoor pump and scrubbed my hands raw. The water ran red for a long time.
That night in my journal, I wrote: *Week 2. Hunt carry. Buck, ~150 lbs. Distance: 1.2 miles. Vanessa checked back seven times. Delta Marcus watched from the tree line but did not approach.*
The pattern repeated. Every hunt, every kill—hers or someone else's—became my responsibility to haul back while the pack walked free. The humiliation wasn't in the labor. It was in the visibility. She made sure everyone saw.
The cleaning tasks got worse. Silver-laced water became standard. My hands developed permanent blisters that cracked and bled when I gripped the scrub brush. Vanessa would inspect my work with a critical eye, running her finger along baseboards, holding it up to the light.
"Again," she'd say. "Properly this time."
Meals became conditional. I'd finish a task and be told I'd done it wrong—some fabricated error I couldn't identify—and my plate would be withheld. I learned to eat in the early mornings when the kitchen was empty, scraps the cooks left near the compost bin. No one stopped me. No one helped either.
Beta Elliot enforced it all with the efficiency of a man following orders he'd stopped questioning. When a younger Delta named Soren offered me half a piece of bread one afternoon—quietly, when he thought no one was watching—Elliot materialized from the hallway.
"Omega discipline is pack policy," he said to Soren, loud enough for the others to hear. "Undermining it is a punishable offense."
Soren looked at the floor. Walked away.
I added his name to my journal. Not under *Enemies.* Under a new section I labeled *Maybes.*
The breaking point came during the weekly hunt debrief in the great hall. The entire pack gathered—Deltas standing in loose formation, higher ranks seated near the front, Vanessa beside Miles on the raised platform. I stood against the back wall where Omegas were supposed to wait, hands folded, face blank.
Vanessa rose and addressed the pack.
"The ceremonial kill was improperly prepared," she announced. "The Omega failed to follow basic protocol."
I blinked. I had prepared it. Correctly. Exactly as I'd been taught years ago when I still held rank.
"Quinn." Vanessa's voice carried across the hall. "Kneel."
I walked forward. The pack parted. Two hundred eyes tracked my movement. I knelt on the cold stone floor in front of the platform, the same floor I'd scrubbed with silver water three days prior.
"Apologize to the pack," Vanessa said, "for your incompetence."
I looked up at her. She was smiling.
"I apologize," I said. My voice came out flat. Empty. Exactly the way I'd practiced in the cellar. "For my incompetence."
Vanessa's smile faltered. Just slightly. She'd wanted tears. Wanted breaking.
She picked up the plate that had been set aside for me—my one meal of the day—and walked down from the platform. Stood over me. Tipped the plate.
Food spilled across the stone. Soup, bread, a piece of meat. It pooled around my knees.
"Clean it," she said.
I pulled the rag from my pocket. The one I kept for the silver water. Started wiping.
Someone in the crowd shifted. A low murmur rippled through the Deltas. Not loud. Just... uncomfortable. I kept my face down and worked methodically, soaking up soup, gathering bread crumbs, until the stone was clean.
When I stood, Vanessa was still watching me. Waiting for something I wouldn't give her.
I walked back to my place against the wall.
That night in the cellar, my wolf snarled.
Not the faint stir I'd felt on rejection night. A full, incandescent sound that rattled against the inside of my skull. The wolfsbane clamped down immediately—that familiar chemical cage snapping shut—but the snarl had been louder. Stronger.
I pressed my burned palms against the cold stone floor and focused inward. Pushed.
The wolf pushed back.
For three seconds, I felt her. Not dormant. Not absent. *Caged.*
Then the wolfsbane won and she was gone again.
I opened my journal to a new page. Wrote: *Week 3. Great hall humiliation. Vanessa frustrated by lack of visible break. Wolf response: stronger. Sustained 3 seconds before suppression.*
Then I added a line beneath it: *The cage has cracks.*
The mind-link flicker came two nights later.
I was lying on the stone floor, too exhausted to move, when I felt it—a thread of awareness at the very edge of my consciousness. Faint. Distant. Like hearing someone call your name from another room.
Wolfless Omegas don't have mind-links. The bond requires an active wolf. Mine was dormant.
But the thread was there.
I sat up slowly. Focused. Pressed my awareness outward the way you'd press your hand against a door to test if it's locked.
The thread held.
I couldn't reach anyone. Couldn't form words or images. But the connection existed—thin as spider silk, stretching beyond Ironclaw's borders into something I couldn't name.
I tested it every night after that. Midnight. Silence. Pushing outward with everything I had.
Someone, somewhere, might be listening.
I opened my journal to a new section. Labeled it: *The Link.*
Underneath, I wrote a single question: *Who are you?*
