Samantha

The pack dining hall felt suffocating tonight.

I stood against the wall near the kitchen entrance, a serving tray balanced on my hip, watching the assembled pack members eat and talk and laugh like everything was normal, like I wasn't standing here in a server's apron, relegated to the role of servant in the pack I'd grown up in, among people who'd once smiled at me with warmth instead of this careful, uncomfortable pity. Some of them barely concealed their satisfaction from seeing me ...