CHAPTER 1

Hey… you must be reading this story. Or maybe you’re listening to it. Either way, hi there.

My name is—

Oh, wait. I almost forgot. I don’t have one.

At least, not one I remember. No one ever called me by a name. I grew up answering to the same words over and over again: “Hey, you.” That was who I was. That was all I was.

I guess you could call me that too. Hey you.

It sounds pathetic, doesn’t it? But when you’ve never been wanted, never been claimed, never been loved, you learn to take whatever scraps the world gives you. Even if it’s a name that isn’t really a name at all.

I was born into the Blood Moon Pack. Raised in it. Trained in it. For a long time, I thought I was just like the others. I thought if I worked hard enough, smiled enough, or fought hard enough, I’d belong.

But the truth came crashing down the day I turned eighteen.

That was the day I learned who I really was. Different. Useless. Unwanted. The day my life turned into something I wouldn’t wish on anyone.

The Alpha, his Beta, his Omega, and the wolves with no mates—they saw me as nothing more than a body. A thing to use. A slave. A toy. A shadow that didn’t matter enough to deserve kindness. And I wondered… Why me? Was it my skin tone? My face? My weakness?

I’ll never know.

All I know is from that day on, I stopped being a girl. I became something else. Something broken. Something they could take and throw away whenever it suited them.

And no matter how many times I tried to run, no matter how far I went, they always found me. Always dragged me back. Always reminded me I was a mistake the Moon Goddess never should have let live.

So if you’re here, if you’re reading these words, I’ll tell you my story. The story of Hey You. The story of the Alpha’s Unwanted Mate.

---

Every morning I wake up before the wolves do, because the wolves don’t like to see me sleeping.

My bed is the floor of the linen closet beside the kitchens—two threadbare blankets and the smell of bleach and damp cotton. I lie still for a moment, counting my breaths to make sure my chest still rises. Five in, five out. The first light slips through the slats and dust dances like snow I’m not allowed to touch.

My palms are already stinging before I move; yesterday’s lye burned them raw. I wrap them in strips torn from an old towel. It’s not much, but it keeps the sting quiet. Quiet is safer than pain. Pain makes you flinch. Flinching makes them angry.

Someone bangs on the door.

“Hey you. Up.”

I am up.

---

The kitchen is a battlefield that pretends to be a room. Pots clatter, steam fogs the windows, and the omega who runs the place stares at me with eyes that never warm.

“Don’t stand there,” she snaps, thrusting a bucket at me. “Wash. And no crumbs in the porridge this time. You think we want your filth in our mouths?”

I nod. Words don’t help.

I scrub the tables until my arms shake, then the floors until the water turns gray. I wash bowls and stack them, wash and stack, wash and stack, until my wrists throb and my bandages darken. The omega slides a crust of bread across the counter without looking at me. It’s yesterday’s, hard as a stone, but when you’re always hungry there is no such thing as “too old.” I break it in half and tuck the smaller piece into my pocket for later. Later always comes.

A young kitchen girl wavers near me, her eyes soft with something dangerous: pity.

“Do you want—” she begins.

The omega’s gaze cuts sharp. The girl swallows her words and turns away. I pretend I didn’t hear. I pretend I don’t need anything.

---

Serving time. I carry the porridge pot into the dining hall. Wolves crowd the long tables—laughter too loud, shoulders too wide, eyes that weigh and measure and discard. I keep my head down and move like smoke.

A foot slides into my path. I stumble; the ladle tips. Hot porridge splashes across a warrior’s sleeve. The hall hushes.

“Watch it,” he growls, grabbing my wrist—not hard enough to bruise, just hard enough to remind.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper.

“You always are,” he says, letting go like my skin dirties his fingers. He flicks the porridge from his sleeve and the laughter starts again, casual as breathing. I mop the spill, hide the shake in my hands. The omega will dock me for the wasted ladle. I will make up for it with an extra chore. It’s fine. I am used to “extra.”

A pup at the end of the table peeks at me over his bowl. He smiles, the way little suns do before the world teaches them to go dark. His mother turns his face away with two fingers and a look that says don’t.

I keep moving.

---

After breakfast, the yard calls—by which I mean someone shouts, “Hey you, outside!” I go.

Training drills thud through the morning. Warriors circle, snapping and shifting, dust rising like a storm around their feet. I am not part of it. I am there to fetch water, to move targets, to hold posts, to be the thing that proves their strength.

“Hold it steady,” a trainer says, setting a wooden shield in my hands. The kicker doesn’t miss. The impact travels through the shield and into my bones; it leaves a faraway ringing in my ears. I bite my lip and don’t drop it. Dropping is worse than pain.

“Again,” he says.

We go until my shoulders tremble. Someone snickers. Someone else says, “She doesn’t heal right. Look at her hands.” They expect bruises to fade fast on wolves. Mine never do. I’m a bad example living among good ones.

“Break,” the trainer calls to the warriors—and then to me: “You, clear the field.”

I gather the shattered posts and splintered targets. I press a shard against my palm until it almost breaks the skin, just to feel something that belongs to me.

---

They send me to the infirmary with a sack of herbs. On the path, rogues who earned temporary permission to trade linger by the fence. Unmated wolves with nothing to lose are the most dangerous kind.

“Hey,” one of them calls, the word oily. Not hey you—just hey. I keep my eyes on the ground and walk. Another steps into my path and inhales near my hair, as if scent is a language where I’ll be fluent in surrender.

“Move,” I say, softly. My voice is small but unbroken.

He grins. “Feisty. The pack keeps you on a short leash, little mouse.”

I slide sideways and keep going. I’ve learned how to make myself thin as a shadow. Shadows cannot be caught. Not for long.

At the infirmary door, the healer takes the sack from my hands without thanks. “You’re late,” she says, though I am not.

“I’m sorry,” I say, though I shouldn’t be.

She shuts the door. I stand there a heartbeat longer, letting the quiet press against me like a cool cloth. Then I turn back.

---

On my way to the kitchens, the forest edge tugs at me: the old pine with the wide branch and the view. My one small rebellion. I slip into the trees and climb until the pack’s territory shrinks and the house's roofs look like toys. Up here, the wind remembers my name—even if I don’t.

I fold my legs and hug my knees. The bark bites my skin. The biting makes me real.

You might be thinking, Why not run? I tried. I tried more than once. The first time, I made it to the river. The second time, to the ridge. The third time, I didn’t make it past the gate. They always find me, and the finding is worse than the staying. Wolves are very good at tracking what they don’t want to keep.

Sometimes I wonder if it’s the color of my skin, the shape of my face, or the way my eyes don’t match the rest of me. Sometimes I wonder if it’s something inside—something bent where it should be straight, quiet where it should be loud. Different, the word they don’t say. Different, the word that sticks to me like burrs.

A crow lands on a nearby branch and cocks its head, as if I’m a curious thing. “I know,” I tell it. “I know.”

Back to the kitchen. Back to the bucket. Back to the floor that must shine enough for them to walk on me without noticing I am a person.

---

Laundry. Hauling. Scrubbing. The day is a long rope I pull hand over hand. When my arms tire, I borrow strength from the thought of night and the way silence will feel like mercy.

At the well, two she-wolves lean against the stones, eyes on me as if I’m a story they’re retelling for the hundredth time.

“Maybe if she could shift, she wouldn’t be so… creepy,” one says.

“Maybe if she had a name,” the other answers, and they laugh like breaking glass.

I fill the buckets. I don’t look up. I don’t ask the question that scratches my throat: Would a name make me human to you? Or would it only give you something else to grind into the dirt?

The rope burns my palms. I carry the water back anyway.

---

When the sun begins to fold itself into the trees, the hall fills again. I serve. I clean. I disappear. The Alpha passes by once, a wall of cold with eyes that never soften. He does not look at me. That is the kindest thing he does.

The omega sends me to the pack house with a basket of towels. The corridor is all stone and echo. I wait outside a door for permission that doesn’t come. I wait long enough to understand that waiting was the lesson: know your place, and your place is the hall.

When I return the empty basket, the omega gestures at a spill near the hearth. “On your knees,” she says. The brush is stiff. The floor bites back. I scrub until the tile gleams with a version of my face that doesn’t look like anyone’s daughter.

A hand claps twice behind me. “Hey you. Faster.”

I am fast.

---

Back in the closet, I sit with my back to the wall and unwrap my palms. Fresh strips. Fresh sting. I split the saved bread and chew slow, saving the edges for morning. Hunger is a clock I’ve learned to soothe, not stop.

From the window slats, I can see a thin piece of moon, pale as a scar. I want to ask the Moon Goddess a child’s questions—Why am I like this? Why did you make me?—but I’ve learned that prayers spoken aloud sometimes sound like invitations. I hold them in my mouth instead, and swallow them like crumbs.

Someone passes the door. Their steps pause. For a breath, the air tightens—then loosens again as they move on. I let out the breath I didn’t know I was holding.

I fold onto the floor. The blankets smell like old rain. I close my eyes and count backward from twenty, a trick I taught myself to fall asleep between alarms.

Twenty. Nineteen. Eighteen—

I stop there, on that number. The one where everything broke. The number I can’t uncurl from.

Before I can finish the count, the door crashes open.

The sound makes me flinch, my heart clawing at my chest. In the doorway stands the Beta, tall, shadowed, his eyes colder than the night itself. He doesn’t speak. He never does when it’s me. His hand clamps around my wrist like iron.

I don’t fight. Fighting only makes it worse.

He drags me down the hall, his grip bruising, my bare feet scraping against the stone. I know where he’s taking me. I always know.

To the Alpha.

The door looms before us, dark wood carved with the mark of Blood Moon. My stomach twists, bile rising to the back of my throat. The Beta throws it open, shoves me inside. I stumble and hit the floor hard, pain blooming across my knees.

The door slams shut behind me.

From the shadows, his voice comes—deep, commanding, impossible to ignore.

“Get up.”

I push myself off the ground, shaking. “O-okay,” I whisper, my voice small, broken, barely mine.

“Position.”

The word is colder than ice. My body reacts before my mind does. It always does. This is the ritual, the one carved into me like chains I’ll never escape.

I walk forward, each step heavier than the last, until I reach his desk. The wood is polished smooth from years of command, but to me, it’s only ever been a place of shame.

I flip my dress up with trembling hands, bend over, and press my face against the desk, burying my tears in the grain of the wood.

And then… it happens.

What always happens.

What I never want to speak of.

The story I cannot tell out loud.

The story that makes me wish I had never been born.