A DEBT PAID IN FLESH AND SECRETS

My ribs ached before I opened my eyes.

That was how every morning started. Pain. A dull, steady ache burned on my left side where Alpha Thorne had kicked me two days ago. My crime? I hadn't scrubbed the blood out of the training mats quick enough.

It wasn't just that my ribs ached. The screaming also woke me up this time around.

I bolted upright on the thin, freezing mattress in the corner of the cellar. The air was biting, cutting right through the old and worn t-shirt clinging to my bruised skin. Above me, the heavy oak floorboards of the packhouse were shaking. The wild, panicked thud of heavy boots. The shattering of glass. The clear, wet sound of flesh tearing.

And the scent. Oh, God, the scent.

Pine. Ash. Hot, fresh blood.

An enemy pack.

Blind panic grabbed my throat, choking me. I scrambled backward until my spine hit the damp stone wall of the cellar. My hands were shaking so violently I could barely grab the small, rusted tin hidden under my loose floorboard. I popped the lid off, my fingers clumsy and slipping, and shoved three of the bitter, black pills into my mouth. I swallowed them dry. They scraped down my throat like crushed glass, leaving an awful burning feeling in my stomach that made me want to dry heave.

Blockers. Toxic, cheap, and slowly destroying my liver. But they kept me breathing.

In a world where male Omegas were myths or worse, breeding slaves traded between the elite Alphas until their minds broke, being discovered was a fate worse than death. I was nineteen. I had spent my entire life as the nameless, scentless punching bag of the Silvermoon Pack. They thought I was a broken Gamma. A born mistake. They beat me, starved me, and worked me until my hands bled, but they let me live because I was useful for taking out the trash.

If they knew what was underneath the chemical block in my veins, Thorne would have chained me to a bed years ago.

The cellar door at the top of the stairs blew open with a thundering crack. Wood splintered everywhere, raining down into the dark.

"Get up!"

It was Beta Garret. He was covered in blood, his left arm hanging uselessly at his side, exposing white bone. His eyes were wide with a terror I had never seen in him before. He lunged down the stairs, grabbing me by the back of my shirt.

"Garret, wait, what's happening..."

He ignored me. He just yanked. My knees slammed into the stone steps, tearing the skin right through my thin pants, but he kept pulling. He dragged me up into the main hall, and the sheer volume of the killing hit me like a physical blow.

The packhouse was destroyed. The massive front doors were ripped off their hinges. The bodies of our strongest warriors, the men who made a sport of torturing me, were scattered across the floor, their throats ripped out. The smell of death was so thick I could taste it.

"Move, you useless piece of trash," Garret snarled, shoving me toward the gaping hole where the doors used to be. "They want everyone in the courtyard. If you make me late, I'll snap your neck myself."

I stumbled out into the blinding white snow. The storm was howling, freezing the sweat on the back of my neck instantly.

We were surrounded. Massive, heavily armored wolves stood in their human forms, forming a tight ring around the survivors. They wore black leather and heavy cloaks lined with fur. Their eyes were glowing with leftover shift-lust, their hands dripping with Silvermoon blood.

The Blackwood Legion.

My breath hitched, creating a white cloud in the freezing air. Everyone knew the stories. They were the most ruthless army on the continent, commanded by a monster who slaughtered entire bloodlines just to make a point. They left nothing but ash behind.

"Sort them!" a voice barked over the howling wind.

A Blackwood soldier grabbed me by the collar. He was massive, smelling of smoke and violence. He took one look at my bruised face, my thin arms, and my shivering, starving and skinny frame, and he scoffed. He threw me aside without bothering to grab iron cuffs.

"With the breeders and the rot," he grunted, shoving me hard to the left.

I hit the snow hard, scraping my palms. I scrambled up and realized where he had thrown me. I was huddled with the weeping women, the terrified children, and the elderly. On the other side of the courtyard, the few surviving Silvermoon fighters were being chained together, treated like actual threats.

I was weak, scentless throwaway trash. Invisible. Garbage.

I kept my head down. Don't look at them. Be invisible. Be nothing. It was the only way I had survived this long.

Then, the crunch of heavy boots on the snow silenced the entire courtyard. Even the weeping women stopped making a sound.

A pair of massive, steel-toed combat boots stopped ten feet away from me.

"Alpha Thorne."

The voice commanded absolute, terrifying submission. It was a low, heavy rumble that vibrated straight through the frozen ground and up into my bones. My inner wolf, the Omega I kept locked away in the dark, starved and beaten into submission, whimpered and pressed itself flat against the walls of my mind.

I risked a fraction of a glance through my messy, overgrown bangs.

Cillian Vane. The Lycan King.

He was a nightmare spun from ice and shadow. Broader and taller than any Alpha I had ever seen. He stood coatless in the freezing storm, a black shirt clinging to the deadly, cut muscle of his chest and arms. His jaw was clenched, his expression empty of mercy or warmth.

And Alpha Thorne, the cruel bully who had terrorized me my entire life, was kneeling right in front of him, sobbing in the bloody snow.

"Your Majesty," Thorne begged, pressing his forehead into the dirt. "Take the territory. Take the wealth. Take the women! Look at them, take whoever you want. Just let me live. I'll swear loyalty."

Thorne pointed a shaking finger toward our huddle. He was offering up the women. He bypassed me completely. To Thorne, I lacked the value of even a bargaining chip to save his own life.

Cillian looked down at Thorne with pure, cold disgust.

"You run a fighting ring out of your borders," Cillian said, his voice terrifyingly calm. "You sell pups to the northern rogues. And you offer me your packmates to save your own pathetic life."

Cillian reached down, his hand blurring with speed, and grabbed Thorne by the throat. He lifted the massive Alpha off the ground with one single hand. Thorne kicked and choked, clawing uselessly at Cillian's arm.

Crack. Thorne's body went limp. Cillian dropped him in the snow like a piece of rotting meat.