I woke before dawn. I hadn't really slept.
The silver gown was still on the floor where I'd let it drop. I pulled on the gray Omega tunic someone had left folded outside my door and went up to the kitchen.
The pack house was quiet. The hearth was cold. I built the fire myself, the way I had during the packless years when no one else would do it for me. I cracked eggs into a bowl. I sliced bread. I poured cream into a small pitcher and set it beside the plate.
I made Veronica's breakfast the way I'd made every meal in this house for three years. Precisely. Without waste. My hands knew what to do even when the rest of me didn't.
When she came down the stairs, she was in a silk robe I recognized from my own closet. She saw the plate on the table. She paused for half a second. Then she sat down and picked up the fork.
She didn't look at me.
I stood at the counter with my hands folded in front of me, the way an Omega stands, and I waited.
She ate slowly. She buttered the bread. She drank the cream. She took her time.
She never dismissed me.
When the plate was empty, she stood, pulled the robe tighter, and walked out without a word.
I cleared the dishes. I scrubbed the table. Then I got down on my knees with a bucket of water and started on the floor.
The stone was cold through the tunic. My knees ached within ten minutes. I kept scrubbing.
From the doorway, I felt her watching. I didn't look up.
---
By the second day, she'd found her rhythm.
She wanted lamb for breakfast. Then she wanted it again, but rarer. Then she wanted the eggs poached, not scrambled, and the bread without crust. She gave the instructions in her pleasant voice, the way you'd ask a waiter to adjust an order.
I made what she asked. I didn't speak.
The bowing started that afternoon. She passed me in the upstairs corridor with two she-wolves trailing behind her—pack members who'd come to my door last winter when their pup was sick, and I'd sat up with them through the night. They didn't look at me now either.
"Omegas bow," Veronica said gently, as if reminding a child.
I bowed.
The she-wolves passed without slowing.
That evening she stopped me on the main staircase. The great hall was full—delta warriors coming in from patrol, kitchen staff carrying trays, half the pack in motion. She waited until every head had turned.
"You missed a spot on the stairs, Omega." Her voice was soft. Reasonable. The voice of a woman who'd never raised it in her life. "Start again."
I looked down at the stairs I'd scrubbed that morning on my hands and knees. There was no spot.
I went and got the bucket.
I scrubbed every step from the top to the bottom while the pack filed past. My hands were red and the water went gray. I did not let my hands shake where anyone could see.
When I reached the last step, Soren—the young Delta who'd shown me to the basement—was standing at the bottom holding a tin cup. He didn't say anything. He just set it down on the floor next to my bucket and kept walking.
Water. Cool, clean water.
I drank it in three swallows and set the cup back where he'd left it. I memorized his face.
---
On the third morning, Camden's mother came down to the basement.
She didn't knock. She opened the door and stood in the frame, surveying the small room the way a landlord surveys a rental.
"I've come to see how you're settling in," she said.
I stood at the foot of the cot with my hands at my sides.
She walked the perimeter of the room. She touched the edge of the candleholder. She straightened a folded cloth on the shelf that hadn't needed straightening. Her fingers moved constantly—adjusting, arranging, smoothing—as if the world around her was always slightly out of order and only she could fix it.
I watched her hands.
"Your work has been adequate," she said. Pleasant. Measured. The tone you'd use to compliment a parlor maid. "Veronica is pleased. That matters a great deal in this household."
She turned to leave. At the door she paused.
"I always thought you were a sensible girl, Layla. I'm glad to see I wasn't wrong."
Then she was gone.
I stood very still after the door closed. I listened to her footsteps climb the stairs. I thought about her hands. About how they never stopped moving. About the woman who'd needed to control every fold and every angle in a room she'd only stepped into for ninety seconds.
I filed it away.
---
That night I heard the fight.
It started just after moonrise—a snarl from the training yard, then a second one answering it, low and furious. I went to the small window near the ceiling and stood on the cot to see.
Two wolves in the yard under the floodlights. Camden, black-furred, broad through the shoulders. And his Beta—smaller, leaner, but moving with the controlled rage of someone who'd been holding something in for a long time.
No Alpha tone. No commands. Just the Beta's body launching at Camden's throat.
The fight was brief. Camden was bigger and his dominance was older, and he pinned the Beta to the dirt within a minute and held him there until the Beta's body went limp in submission.
But before he submitted, the Beta's claws caught Camden's flank and dragged.
I saw the blood from three floors up. It came in a dark sheet down Camden's side, soaking the fur, dripping into the dirt.
Camden limped off the yard alone.
I climbed down from the cot. I sat on the edge of the mattress in the dark and pressed my thumb against the cold mark on my neck.
Someone in this pack had broken first.
It wasn't going to be me.
