My nose wrinkled in revulsion as I gathered the soiled sheet, the pungent scent causing my belly to roil. I’d smelled Alpha’s release enough that I would recognize his scent anywhere. I hated it but I had nothing to do. It was the role that was assigned to me.

Shoving the offending sheet into a laundry bag, I fought back the gag crawling up my throat and breathed through my mouth to lessen the intense odour. Even though my Wolf had not yet emerged, my sense of smell was still radically sensitized past that of a human.

I tied the bag shut tightly and quickly placed it outside the door. Completing the bed with freshly laundered sheets, I moved into the bathroom, taking great care to make sure everything was sparkling clean, just right. Alpha would undoubtedly let me know if it wasn’t.

The clocked ticked through three more hours before I finished. It was now so late in the night. Others were partying but I was here with my clothes smelling like the Alpha's shit. Going back to the party was totally now useless to me.

With nothing to do, I walked slowly towards our house. My sore feet felt heavy but I didn’t stop.  I didn’t feel well... which was my normal, but it was worse today.

"Maybe I had a fever", A thought  popped in my head then immediately changed the direction, I was heading too. I didn’t have to think about where I was going. The trails were familiar, the trails of the woods were ingrained in my mind, a part of me. In a way, they were my only companions as a child.

Running about a mile, the pit of anxiety in my stomach didn’t lessen even a little. With each passing step, the churning seemed to get worse. Heat shimmered on my skin, increasing by the second.

Every nerve in my body felt like it was, aching for something I couldn’t name.

I stopped and hunched over, leaning against a broad oak tree for support. Lungs empty, I pulled long drags air into my mouth. Perhaps I was coming down with something, although, wolves didn’t get sick very often. And then the most startling discovery hit me hard...

...could this be my Wolf?!

My hands trembled as the first prickle of heat crawled under my skin, a low, electric buzz that set every nerve singing. It started behind my ribs and spread outward, a hot rod of pain that made my teeth grind. I wanted so badly to call for someone, anyone, but the sound lodged in my throat and died. There was no one to hear me anyway. No one wanted me.

The shift came like a betrayal. Bones remembered a shape I no longer recognized and rearranged themselves with cruel precision. My fingers lengthened, the nails hardening into claws that tore painful crescents into my palms. Ribs cracked and reshaped; my spine bowed and stretched as if an invisible smith were hammering me into a new frame. Every breath I took was a serrated thing, hot and shallow, each inhale a blade. The pain was animal  and utterly my own.

The first breath after the final shudder was a howl that ripped something raw and old from inside me. Steam panted from my mouth. Fur pushed through the skin along my forearms, my throat and the slope of my shoulders, prickling like tiny cold fires.

For a heartbeat, I expected recognition. A surge of belonging, the gentle gravity of my pack pulling me back from the edge. Instead, the forest held it’s breath and the smell of the woods hit me differently.

My wolf stepped into the hollow without warning. Her nostrils flared, tasting the air. She circled me once, twice and slow then later let me have back my body. 

I sank to my haunches and then to my side, the wet leaves cold against my skin, the new muscles in my flank trembling as they cooled. Blood clung to the pads of my feet where some shard had torn me during the shift. Tears, human and sharp, mixed with the grit of dirt on my cheeks. The forest continued its indifferent chorus: twig snaps, distant wings, the low murmur of leaves.

Alone, I curled into myself as best as a wolf could curl, half-human, half-beast and let the darkness  come. It was night but I already knew it that no one would look for me even if I didn’t sleep at home.

...

The sound of  boot heels woke me up the next morning.

“Mara!” I knew the sound instantly but I instead weakly curled tighter into the hollow, tried to make myself small and invisible. He immediately grabbed my shoulder with a grip that bit. The world tilted as his hand hauled me upright. My new muscles protested but he didn’t care.

“You reek,” Rourke, the leader concerned about omegas said, nostrils flaring as if I’d personally offended him. “You drag the pack into shame and then you hide? You think the Alpha will overlook this?”

“No.....” My voice was half a whine, half a growl. “I...”

“Silence.” He cut me off with a hard cuff to the back of my head, not enough to knock me out but enough to make tears spring to my eyes. It was a warning, plain and ugly. “You think your excuses matter?",

I tried to stand straighter, chest heaving, but his boot found my shin and pushed me forward. He shoved me toward the path that ran back to the pack house like a man steering an animal.

“You belong where work belongs, Mara,” he said, voice low and final. “Alpha’s quarters. Dirty sheets. You clean them. And don’t you dare pretend the kitchen’s not yours after. You answer when you’re spoken to. You do what you’re told.”

“I don’t...” I began, but the words died. A crowd of men lingered at the edge of the trees. They watched like a jury. Rourke smiled, a flat, satisfied thing.

“You mean you don’t have to,” he said, and the implication was clear: you could refuse and see exactly what that would cost.

My wolf within flinched, a dark, furious thing that wanted to lunge and shred. The abandoned animal in me had nowhere to put its anger; there was only the human part that still feared the power in other men’s hands. My protests felt small and ridiculous in my own mouth. Rourke’s thumb pressed hard along the seam of the jaw he’d lifted, pain and humiliation braided together.

“You hear me?” he asked. “Alpha doesn’t need excuses. Alpha needs things done. Start with the sheets . Then the rest. And if you try any act of defiance...”

He didn’t finish. He didn’t need to. He flicked his chin toward the path and the pack house, and the rest of his sentence was understood in the rustle of leaves and the silent weight of the watchers.

I obeyed.

The sheets in the Alpha’s quarters were worse than I’d expected, the linen was had scents that made bile lift in my throat. Rourke lingered at the doorway while I worked, making a show of checking corners, barking orders in a tone that made whatever dignity I’d had sluice away.

“Faster,” he snapped. “You move like you’re carrying the world. If you’re slow there’s someone who’ll make you faster.”

Hands numb from scrubbing and wringing, I followed instructions down to the last meticulous detail: fold this way, stack that stack, tuck the corners so the Alpha won’t complain. Every small perfection was a talisman against the shame he wanted to pin to me.

When at last the sheets were done, Rourke still didn’t leave. He watched me carry the last bundle of linen back to the laundry room, eyes narrowed as if cataloguing every possible failure.

“Kitchen next,” he said finally. “You finish there. Mop, sweep, pack away the pots. If anything’s left where it shouldn’t be, you’ll answer for it to me personally.”

I wanted to tell him the kitchen was not mine to own that I was meant to be on the linens for the Alpha’s room that night alone but I could see the flicker in his face.

He was already annoyed.