01

“Thief! Stop her!” 

The crowd barely had the opportunity to part when the girl torpedoed through their bustling bodies, swerving and dodging with all the precision she could muster. Her dirt-stained shawl unwound from her neck and billowed before her eyes like the wings of a trapped bird, briefly obscuring her vision, but her hand was quick to dart out and clutch it.

Huffing shortly and raggedly, diamonds of perspiration glimmered on her dark brows as she ran and they trailed over her brown eyelids before dripping into either eye, making her blink. But the stinging sensation was numbed by the burst of adrenaline that surged through her veins like white fire.

Alessia cast a brave glance over her shoulder at the approaching guards from behind, led by three brown wolves with teeth bloodied and bared, ears pricked forward in a vengeful need for retribution. 

Fucking hell. Could they run any faster?

She elbowed and shoved her way through the bodies pressing in from either side. The marketplace air was staunch with the rancid smell of sweat, metals, gunpowder, spices, and cheap perfumes, but they were familiar scents to the girl. She leaped over a cart of over-ripened fruits dotted with fruit flies, her ankle catching one of the apples that slipped and rolled away.

“Excuse me,” Alessia panted, half-heartedly sucking her stomach in and slipping sideways between strangers. “Pardon, sir- he means the other thief, not me-”

It was barely noon with the sun a pale sphere of persimmon to the east that glowered its ardent hues of orange and purple across the skies. The scorching weather, hotter than satan’s ball sacks, did little to benefit the little thief as it wrapped tendrils of heat around her exposed, brown limbs. And yet somehow, they continued to pump and carry her through the market like a thread being yanked from one end. 

“Someone stop the fucking mutt!” 

Alessia ducked under a low stall roof when suddenly, she was yanked back; the insidious hands around her throat caused her to let out a strangled gasp, only to realize what had caught her. 

A nail. Her shawl snagged on a fucking nail.

Desperately turning, Alessia fumbled with the material caught on the hook whilst gazing fearfully and wildly at the wolves closing in. “Come on, come on, come on,” she pleaded to herself. Her fingers trembled recklessly as she tried and tried again to remove the snag. When her attempts came to no avail, she yanked it hard, hoping her strength would rip it somehow. 

“You!” 

Her head snapped up at the voice to find that one guard was gaining on her. 

Glancing back at the shawl, the internal conflict that raged within her diminished to a conceding grunt. If a scarf was to be the cause of her demise, she’d never forgive herself. And so Alessia grudgingly unlooped the fabric from around her neck and took off in the other direction, leaving it billowing on the tack.

She could feel the market people’s eyes on her as soon as she’d left the post. As she sprinted ahead, the thick, dark ringlets of her hair came loose and fell like curtains about her countenance, one strand glowing as if it had been touched by the moon among the nest of inky blackness. 

A streak of white.

The mark of an Omega.

Omegas were not rare in the sixth kingdom of Ithaca. They made up the lower quartile of the population while the other wolves made up the majority, and the Elite made up the final eighth. What was rare, however, was to have an Omega steal so shamelessly and openly; and to see one without their shawl, their only shield from a world they were not welcome in. At least, they were not welcome until noon when a majority of the better goods had already been traded off and all that remained was the scraps and rotted pieces, or those items unworthy of being sold to nobility.

But Alessia had broken every rule: leaving before noon, stealing high-end items, and surrendering herself to the rebuke of the superiors around her.

Her mind, which had always run along straight and candid lines, blurred over with a fog of adrenaline. Years of mastery-thieving seemed like mere seconds at the thought of getting caught. It was rare for such an occurrence to happen, yet in a moment of utter recklessness whilst swiping items from the foreign gypsy tradesmen, her false sense of bravado had her forgetting to check sideways for onlookers and most importantly, for the owner.

Maker, Alessia desperately prayed to the Moon Goddess above. If I survive tonight, I swear never to steal and to live a life of honesty from now on.

...Or just for a little while, but She didn’t need to know that.

Fear twisted like a dial inside the girl as she rounded a sharp corner and dashed into the alley. The soles of her worn-out sandals slapped against sodden concrete. A skinny rat darted out from a hole in the wall, briefly distracting her and making her stumble.

One moment she was standing and the next, her world was turning. Her body slammed to the ground, hard enough to rattle her teeth beneath pursed lips, but all she could do was curse that cursed rat. Barely did she register the pain when vice-like hands were gripping either forearm and hauling her off the floor.

A rush of cool air brushed Alessia’s face moments before the back of a hand connected with her cheek. The silver rings cut through her skin and burned the flesh on impact. It sent her head flying. Eyes wide, hair sticking to her face, the stinging sensation in her cheek dissolved into her mouth as the metallic taste of blood danced on her tongue.

Stunned, she stared at the wall of the alley with a sort of dazed expression before tentatively rolling her tongue around, then shifting her jaw back and forth to test its placement. Not broken. Cautiously, she raised her head to face the harrowing figure poised before her.

“Where is it?” he demanded, wild-eyed.

Alessia swallowed the blood in her mouth. “Where’s what?”

The second slap felt like a clap of thunder across her unmarked cheek, the velocity of his hand brutalizing her ear and starting a hum of rings that tunneled through her. 

She didn’t have time to recover before the same hand was grabbing her jaw and yanking her face back to his. The guard’s hot, rancid breath steamed against her parted and panting lips as eyes full of venom gazed down into her own. “I will not ask you again.”

The little barrel of her chest rose and fell rapidly as she dared to bare her bloody teeth at him. “You hit like a milk-fed catamite.” 

In hindsight, Alessia knew stirring the wolf’s anger was not wise, especially when he had two other men who were more than willing to pin her to the wall behind once those words left her mouth. For a moment, he stared at her, almost amazed by her foolish courage, only for such an expression to melt into an uncanny smile.

“I suppose I can break a few bones before interrogating,” he said almost nonchalantly. The girl gulped as he started to roll his sleeves up past his forearms, revealing aged tattoos and scars. His hands were what she focused on, however: the roughness to each palm; large enough to cover her whole face; and the absurd number of rings which he began to pull out from his pants, drawing them on one-by-one before flexing his fingers into beefy fists. 

“H-Hey now, catamites are pretty boys and-”

“Hold her steady.”

Those simple words were enough to lance a wave of panic through her. She began to wriggle in her captor's arms but it was no use.

The first punch volleyed at her vulnerable gut and she doubled over with a wheeze, only to be jerked upright. “I said hold her steady,” he growled at the men’s lack of coordination.

The punches were brisk and perfunctory thereafter: aimed at the belly until she wheezed, the ribs until they snapped, her nose which dislocated at the bone, and the final driving blow to her diaphragm, expelling all air from her shriveled lungs. 

Their hands left her body and she swayed on the ghost of her knees before toppling to the floor, landing in a crumpled bloody mess with a thump. 

“Is she dead?”  

Alessia felt a boot nudge her achy side and she groaned in turn, pressing her face into the cold gravel that scraped her skin. Her body curled in on itself to prevent more blows, but there was nothing other than a soft gurgling sound and a heavy thump of spit landing on her exposed neck. It was warm and thick, making her skin crawl.

“No.”

“Check her for the item.”

Hands began to pat down her sides, roughly grabbing and pulling her limbs aside before fumbling beneath her torn cloak, then shirt. They groped her non-sexually for no one desired an Omega and they were perhaps the least sexually assaulted species in the wolf kingdom. 

Who would want to breed a population loathed by many, if not all?

“Nothing,” muttered one of them and their hands left her briskly. 

Alessia gazed after their retreating figures as a foggy haze slowly clouded her vision. It was like the onset of glaucoma, a murk of white and grey that crawled in from the sides. With much effort, her chest rose and fell in a staccato rhythm, growing heavier and deeper as tendrils unhurriedly wrapped around her body in a numbing cocoon and she succumbed to the darkness.

When she next awoke, it was to the dull pattering of rain on her body. Cold rivulets of water thinly trailed down her russet skin and pooled beneath her bruised, shivering body. The fragrance of petrichor was faint in the air yet brought a sense of reality to Alessia.

She blinked in the dark alley, then braced a palm on the ground to slowly rise.

"Maker-" Alessia hissed between gritted teeth as she pressed a palm to her side. The pain lanced through her, jolting a fresh wave of heat at the back of her eyes. She stayed like that, half-kneeling in the gravel while struggling to draw in measured breaths, afraid that if she breathed too deeply, her expanding lung may puncture from a broken rib.

Eventually, the pain abated to a tolerable level that allowed her to rise gingerly on one leg, then the other. Alessia raised her head and peered through her drenched curls at the open end of the alleyway; the evening had begun to charcoal and with it came the depletion of crowds as people began to close shop and make their way home where their fireplaces crackled and pots bubbled over with soups and curries.

Alessia limped through the street, cautiously lowering her gaze to avoid the looks that cruised her figure each time someone passed her by. Despite not seeing their faces, she could feel the degree of disdain shifting their countenance, the tightness to their mouths. One mother yanked her child off the sidewalk and into her arms. Two men roughly bumped her shoulders, which almost sent her sprawling. Another shop purposely closed its door.

They did not have to see her face to know what she was.

The white streak in her hair was enough.