Evangeline Snow

Evangeline Snow was not nearly as unconcerned as her parents.

The moment I pushed the cart into her quarters, her gaze landed on me, sharp and unyielding. I lowered my head, shrank in on myself as I had in the Gathering Hall, but it returned the opposite result. Where the pack nobility ignored my huddled form, Evangeline's gaze narrowed, piercing as ever.

"You'll get a curve in your spine," she hissed, rising with the fluid grace of a hawk, circling its prey from high above. "Straighten up, slave."

I obeyed instinctively, back cracking straight as an arrow as I pushed further into her space.

"Better, but still... pathetic. Your name, it's Aurelia, yes?" Her painted lips twisted with a scowl, as if the taste of my name was an insult to her refined palette.

"Yes, young miss," I replied, nodding my head as I finally came to a stop beside her drawing table. I slowly, carefully unloaded the cart of her meal, presenting it in her preferred fashion. At least, I hoped it was still her preferred way. The Young Lady's tastes and moods fluctuated like sunshine in Spring. One moment warm and pleasant, the next, violent and cold.

"Aurelia Drow, Drow being the name given to those without family names. Servants. Slaves. Not fit to carry the name Snow," she stepped from behind her desk, looming over me. Those piercing aquamarine eyes bore down on me, practically radiating with palpable disdain. "A Drow will always be a Drow. That's what my father said. But that wasn't so for your little friend, Phillipe, was it?"

I stiffened at the sound of his name on her lips. Anger jolted through my body, but it was immediately doused with the cold, hard truth. She was right.

He was a Drow who became a Snow, welcomed into the fold as an orphan, but a child of Snow Pointe now, regardless. All because of his mate bond.

"He was fortunate. Beta Draymond was easily swayed by Jessica's affection for the gangly thing. And he's since thickened up into a proper warrior now." Evangeline mused, circling me as I emptied the cart of her meal.

"Tell me, Aurelia. Do you think fate will bless you with such good fortune? When your seventeenth arrives on Friday, will you meet your wolf and find a place in Snow Pointe as more than a Drow? Do you hope?"

It wasn't an earnest question. It was a probe. A trap. Did I dare step into the snare of admitting I desired something? Especially that which she knew I had no hope of attaining.

"It is the desire of all Drow, I imagine, to one day prove ourselves worthy to bear the name Snow," I said, voice low and strained under the weight of her gaze. A diplomatic answer... one that would have satisfied any other ranked pack member.

But not Evangeline. Never her.

"Then you admit it," she snickered, stooping to my eye level. "You admit that you want to be a Snow. That your wolf will somehow save you and make you worthy of one of Snow Pointe's elite males. Disgusting."

She spat at my feet and turned her back on me.

"No self-respecting wolf would ever accept a bond with something like you. So weak. So pathetic. I'm insulted by the very fact that your seventeenth mars the same day that I'm to celebrate mine."

There was the uncomfortable truth of it all.

Evangeline and I shared a birthday, a fact I learned the hard way on my fourteenth, when I dared to smile and celebrate with Phillipe and Dr. Andromeda in the infirmary. When word got out that a slave had the same birthday as Evangeline Snow, she was irate.

Her fury knew no end. She destroyed everything I received in a fit of rage until there was nothing left except the cold, hard fact:

I would never celebrate my birthday again.

"You are not to leave the slave quarters at all on Friday. Do you understand?" Evangeline hissed, glaring at me over her shoulder. She carried herself with the air of the Lycan prince's betrothed--appropriate since she was. The way she held her head high, you'd have thought she already wore the crown.

"Yes, Young Lady." I bowed, grabbing hold of the cart to flee.

"I do not want your ugly face darkening a single door during my seventeenth celebration. And when I gain my wolf, I do not wish to cross your weak, hobbled form in the forest during my first run. You'll gain your wolf in the cramped slave's cabin where you belong, Drow."

"Yes, Young Lady." I bowed again and bit the inside of my cheek, her orders curdling in my stomach. Anger and sorrow in equal measures formed a stone in my gut that joined all the others.

Staying in the slaves’ cabins on the day I was to meet my wolf and take my first run, that was an order more cruel than any she gave before. But I knew better than to argue or disobey. A weak omega slave had no footing in Snow Pointe. Despite the unfairness, even if I protested, I would have been beaten for simply attempting to speak up for myself against the Alpha's daughter.

A moment of silence stretched between us before Evangeline, no doubt satisfied with her authority, turned away to the window. The proud set of her shoulders cast a dark shadow over me as I wheeled away the empty cart.