THE THIEF

💫RAYNE💫

My stepmother’s scream hit me before I even crossed the kitchen.

“What do you mean you didn’t get any vegetables!”

“The money you gave me was not enough.” My voice came out low. I had learned a long time ago that talking too loud in this house only made things worse.

“But you were able to buy your dress for the bonfire tonight huh, you fatass!” Dahlia walked into the kitchen holding up the gown I had thrifted from the local market. She held it by the shoulders like it disgusted her to touch it.

“I bought that with my own money.” My hands curled into fists at my sides. “Dad bought you a new dress with money that could have lasted us another moon. He bought nothing for me.”

“Because you’re ugly Rayne.” Dahlia’s eyes dragged down my body, slow, the way she always did before she said something meant to cut deep. “You’re fat. You think they make expensive dresses in extra large? Let alone four extra large?”

She never got tired of it. My weight was the one thing she could always reach for, the one wound she knew would never fully close. It did not matter that she had our father’s red hair and I had my mother’s silver. My hair was the only beautiful thing I had left, and she hated me for it more than anything else.

“What does your dress have to do with my vegetables?” My stepmother’s hand found the spatula on the counter, the one with the crack running down its handle. “So you couldn’t buy the vegetables I need to cook for my beautiful daughter Dahlia, but you could buy a dress. For what?”

I took two steps back. The wall stopped me before I could take a third.

“I’m sorry mother.” The word slipped out of habit, and I regretted it the second I saw her face change.

“Who’s your mother?” She stepped closer, close enough that I could smell the sourness on her breath. “I’ve told you several times not to call me that. I could never birth a pig like you.”

She took another step forward. I took another one back, only for Dahlia’s hands to shove into my shoulders from behind.

I stumbled forward, straight into my stepmother’s swing.

The spatula cracked across my shoulder first, then my arm, then the side of my face.

“Argh.” The sound tore out of me before I could stop it.

“Do you think you’re going to that bonfire tonight?” She hit me again, and again, each word landing with another blow, while Dahlia stood in the doorway laughing, telling her mother not to stop, to keep going, her voice bright with something that sounded almost like joy.

Every inch of my back burned by the time she finally lowered her arm.

“I’ll get the vegetables.” My voice came out broken, tears running hot down my face. “I’m going right now, I promise, just let me go and get them—”

She grabbed me by the collar and shoved me toward the door so hard I nearly fell down the front step. “Don’t come back without them. I mean it, Rayne.”

Behind her, Dahlia lifted my gown in both hands and tore it straight down the middle. The fabric gave way with a sound I felt in my chest more than heard.

The only beautiful dress I had…gone.

Ronan would have scolded me if he’d seen me stand there and let Dahlia tear my dress apart.

“One day,” he’d always say, “we’re leaving this place.”

I wanted to believe him.

I did not stay to watch the rest. I turned and ran, wiping my face with the back of my hand as I went, my feet already carrying me toward the only place I knew that had enough to fill my bag before the sun went down.

I had done this before. I had just never done it in daylight.

I dropped to my knees at the edge of the first row and started pulling. Carrots came first. Then onions. Then bell peppers, the fat red kind Dahlia liked roasted in butter, the kind my stepmother never once let me taste. I shoved them into the bag tied beneath my skirt one after another, my fingers moving faster than my heart could keep up with.

Then I heard voices carrying across the field.

My hands froze around a fistful of onion tops.

Oh no. The owners were still here.

I shoved the rest of what I had plucked deeper into the bag and dropped low, crawling back toward the fence so I would not be seen. My knees sank into the soft dirt with every movement, my arms shaking under my own weight. My stomach scraped against the dirt as I tried to force myself beneath the fence.

It had been easy when I was younger.

Now…

My body refused to fit.

This was the moment I always hated most, the moment I wished for a different body like Dahlia. Slim, fast, and flexible. The kind of body I needed in times like this.

“Hey who’s there!”

The voice was deep. A male voice. He was close.

I did not wait to see who it belonged to. I pushed myself up and threw my body over the barricade, landing hard on the other side. My ankle twisted beneath me the second I hit the ground, but I forced myself upright and ran anyway.

Footsteps pounded the earth behind me. Not one set. Several.

I looked back once and my stomach dropped straight through the ground.

Three men were chasing me.

Damn it.

They were not ordinary farmhands. Their strides were too even, too controlled, like men who had chased thieves before and always caught them.

“Catch the thief!”

My lungs burned with every breath. The bag slammed against my hip with each stride, vegetables digging into my leg through the fabric. I did not care. I just kept running, my legs screaming, my chest heaving, praying that this one time my body would carry me far enough.

I did not make it far before a hand closed around my arm and yanked me backward off my feet.

I hit the ground hard. Dirt filled my mouth. One of the men dropped his knee onto my back, pinning my wrists before I could even scream.

“What do we do with her?” one of them asked, his voice rough, still catching his breath.

“Take her to the Alpha.” The other one’s voice was flat, final, leaving no room for argument. “The Alpha Prince will decide her fate.”