Azalea
3 months and 10 days…
3 months and 10 days…
I keep repeating this in my head as I move from chore to chore around the pack house. In 3 months and 10 days, I will graduate from high school. When I graduate, I can get a full-time job and move out of this pack house closer to the human side of the territory. When I move out of this pack house, I will be able to steer clear of all the werewolves that make my existence miserable.
I cannot really blame them after all. My parents did try to help overthrow Alpha Robert. They were traitors. And I had traitor's blood. Alpha Robert only showed me mercy after their execution because I was 5 and knew nothing at the time.
After becoming an orphan with traitor's blood, no family in the pack would take me in. Alpha Robert and Luna Lyssa permitted me to stay in the pack house if I were to earn my keep. It started with simple chores around the pack house, but expectations grew as I got older.
Now here I am. 16 years old, only 1 month from turning 17, and just trying to bide my time until I can leave. Every morning I get up before everyone else and sneak down to the omega showers to quickly wash and change. I have collected and mended enough clothes to make sure I have 3 outfits for chores and 3 outfits for school. I usually get to the kitchen in just enough time to make breakfast for those that live in the pack house and wash the dishes used to make it before running up to the attic to get ready for school. I try to sneak out of the house well before everyone is finished with breakfast so that I can walk to school in peace.
After school, I race back as fast as I can to begin work on all the daily chores. If I can finish in time, I can study and get to sleep at a decent hour. But that is not usually the case. Thank Goddess I retain all the information I read making school much easier because the other teenagers living in the pack house live to make life more difficult for me.
The pack house houses a few orphans like me, the Alpha, Beta, and Gamma families as well as a few pack warriors. It is also just my luck that the Alpha, Beta, and Gamma eldest children are all about my age as well. This can mean for a lot of people around the pack house when everyone is out of school. A lot of people who do not care for me.
Around the pack house, the favorite pastime is harassing the traitor. No one cares that I was not a part of my parent's plot. I am just a traitor with traitor blood. I take their torment, their comments, and harassment. I take it and remind myself that soon I can move away from the wolves and go live on the human side of our territory. Over there, I will just be another girl. I can earn money and live a simple, quiet life by myself. My wolf has not spoken to me since about 2 months after she came so I might as well be human at this point. I never even shifted.
One last chore to do today. I look at my cracked watch and see that it is only 9:30pm. Maybe I can sneak into the kitchen before bed and see if there were any leftovers from dinner. The last chore of my day is folding the laundry I washed after school. I don't mind it so much because I can prop my textbook up next to me and study while I fold.
I head to the laundry room with my literature book in hand. As I walked over to the folding table where the baskets were already awaiting me, I flipped through my book looking for the page I left off on. No one came to the laundry room much because clothes were always delivered to rooms by the next morning. So, it was to my utter surprise when I smacked right into a wall of muscle, a 6ft 2in wall of lean muscle. As he turned, my stomach just dropped, and I involuntarily gulped in fear.
Liam
I really need to talk to mom about the staff just coming into my room and taking clothes to wash. Seriously, I am almost 17 and as soon as I find my mate, I am going to be Alpha! I think I can set out my laundry like everyone else when I need things washed. Or at least when I am down to one pair of boxers…
I stood there in the laundry room looking at what I hoped were all the clean clothes washed today. The baskets were not labeled so I wasn't sure how I was supposed to know what basket belonged to who. After looking at all the baskets for a solid 5 minutes, I was giving up my search for my favorite sweatshirt and about to turn and leave when someone crashed into me from behind.
I turned around not immediately seeing anyone until I looked down on the floor. My anger boiled a bit as I looked down at the tiny traitor girl my father has let stay in the pack. She looked up at me with fear in her eyes. I noticed the book next to her. I quickly bent over and grabbed the book noticing it was for the literature course at school.
She quickly stood and bowed her head to me. In a soft squeaky voice, she said, "I'm sorry Alpha Liam. I wasn't paying attention. It won't happen again."
I grunted my acknowledgement at her.
"Is there anything I can do for you Alpha Liam?" She said barely above a whisper. I could see her small frame shake slightly under her old, worn clothes. I guess her fear was reasonable seeing as she was only about 4ft 10in and exceedingly small. Some people didn't even believe she had a wolf with how small of a body she had.
"Where are my clothes?" I replied, irritation evident in my voice. All I wanted was my sweatshirt. I am irritated with mother for allowing the omegas to just come collect my clothes to wash. She nodded and looked at the baskets of clothes around us. She found mine and placed it on the folding table. An idea struck me.
"So, they aren't folded and ready yet? Well, that won't do," I said as I started flipping through the pages of her book still in my hands. "I think you will fold them now. And I am just going to play with this while I wait."
I started to flip the pages a little bit harder. Her eyes widened as the next page I flipped ripped right from the book.
"Oops. Better work quickly." I sneered at her. I dropped the ripped page as she began to quickly fold my clothes. I didn’t have to be a jerk to her, but it was sort of a habit after all these years.
Azalea
My heart dropped right into my stomach. No, no, no. It was a good day. I only got pushed into one locker and tripped in the hallway once today. I was going to be done before 11pm and able to sleep tonight! And the last time one of my textbooks got ruined Luna Lyssa made me do extra chores for 4 solid weeks before I had "paid back" the book cost.
I started folding as fast as I could. By the time I had finished folding laundry he had slowly ripped about 10 pages from my book, dropping them on the floor at our feet.
He looked over the pile of clothes finding the one item he wanted, his favorite sweatshirt, and snatched up before dropping my book on the table.
"You can send the rest up, oh and clean up this mess," he said as he turned to walk away.
Why him? Of all of them, why did it have to be him? By far, Gwen was always the meanest, but Liam was the one I was the most afraid of. He and Damien were similarly sized, but Liam was an Alpha. He was always going to be stronger and faster than everyone else. And one day, not too far in the future, he would be Alpha and could cast me out as a rogue.
As he walked away, I turned to pick up the pieces and set them aside so I could just fold these baskets and go back to the attic. I thought I heard his footsteps pause for a second but as I glanced over my shoulder, all I saw was the swinging laundry room door.