I can ruin you

I stretched my arms to the morning daylight, basking in the faint warmth that slipped through the cracked window above my narrow bed. As an omega, it was usual of me to be awake by four, sometimes even earlier forced to rise before the sun to scrub the floors, cook meals, and remain invisible to the powerful wolves I served. But today, strangely, I woke up at eight, just a couple minutes before I could thrash around and leave for school.

Sunlight streamed through the glass like golden fingers reaching into my cramped room, casting shadows on the peeling wallpaper. I did everything quickly but nicely and in a good mood not until when I made my way to the hallway.

"The whore's going to school." When leaving, I bumped upon the stupid Beta Steven who was getting inside his car. He was probably going to a pack meeting but still he decided to provoke me.

His voice was loud and cutting, laced with the smug superiority he wore like cologne. I stopped on my steps, something I rarely ever did. Turning around, I replied to him, "The whore's going to many places. You might want to start looking out."

"Wait for it..." He laughed off my insult and got inside the car before driving past me. The bumper of the car was an inch away from parting my spine into two.

I jumped on the sidewalk and began my ten-minute journey to the school. The soles of my worn-out sneakers scraped against the gravel path as I walked, the early spring air crisp and smelling faintly of dew and pine. It was ending, the senior year. Graduation was just two months away.

Mom had many plans for me. She wanted me to continue my studies, get a degree, get out of town, become something other than an omega.

Who was going to tell her?

That I am the Alpha’s mate.

I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to stay. The horror outside the land of the Nightstalkers Pack was much worse than the horrors inside. It was much better to belong somewhere, be someone, than to be nothing.

When I reached school, I was out of breath, gasping for air. My chest heaved as I leaned against the cold brick wall, the weight of too many secrets pressing down on my ribs. I attended my first class, but my thoughts were elsewhere; they were wandering through the flashes of last night, when I had my lips over the Alpha’s dick. I never really thought that I would ever be his mate.

The heat.

It burned through my veins, even now.

I snapped back to reality when something light struck my head and fell down. Glancing down, I found a piece of paper crushed into a ball. Upon opening it, I found the five-letter word.

Whore.

I kept my face straight. My jaw tightened as my eyes scanned the paper again, heart hammering beneath my ribs. It wasn’t Chloe she wasn’t in this class and no one else saw me leave the Alpha’s office the day I gave him the blow job. Another paper landed on my head in the quiet class, it was another remark.

I turned my head quickly and found Harriet throwing them. She mouthed me the word and then acted like as if she was gagging.

She was also an omega, and Chloe might have spread the news to her.

I fisted my hands together. Anger spiralled inside my head and when the class ended, I approached her before she could leave with her group of friends.

"What is this?" I questioned, waving the paper in front of her.

"You were already a disgusting omega before but now, you’re a whore too and everyone knows that!" she giggled. "Like mother, like daughter." The girls behind her tuned in with her disturbing giggles.

Red flashed through my eyes. "Shut up before my fist is against your pretty face."

"Oh," Harriet gasped. "I’m scared. Don’t ever threaten me. I can ruin you in a second." She gave me an eye-roll before walking out of the class.

I took a couple of breaths deep ones and kept my anger for another day. I came to school for studying, not to pick up fights with bitches like Harriet.

All in good time. And I didn’t want more punishments. I knew what happens when my wolf becomes angry.

I just walked back in the class. Ms. Martha was giving back the papers of the essays we had written for Social Studies last month. Even in class, we had a sort of caste system; the higher wolves were more appreciated and the lower ones were treated like nothing.

I was the last in line, and when I came to collect my paper, I found a big fat B- marked over my essay an essay I worked so hard on, an essay that was going to get me through this class.

"This can’t be real," I scoffed while turning the pages around and finding barely any teacher’s notes. "What was the problem?"

"It was a good essay but it didn’t just have the voice," Ms. Martha said, forming up lies.

"No, no, I worked so hard on this. You need to go through this once more. Everything I wrote was in context and the essay was one—"

"Amby," the teacher cut me off with a forced smile, a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. "You need to leave. I’ve to take another class. And, I cannot go through your essay again. The mark is final. Study hard next time."

Bitch.

They wanted me to stay here for another year and not graduate. I had already failed in one other class and I couldn’t afford to fail in this one.

I clicked my tongue and picked up the paper before walking out of Ms. Martha’s class. It was the last class of hers that I was ever going to attend.

Instead of going to the next class, I decided to go to my mother’s place.

Even though the Alpha refused me to go to her place, I still had to meet Mom and the other relatives.

I took the backyard exit, the one where no one came at this time of the day, and the safest route. It wasn’t my first time sneaking out of school. I had done it more than a thousand times.

It was the only way to meet Mom before going back to the pack to work as a slave. We weren’t allowed to leave the pack before finishing all the chores.

Mom lived in a small, rented room behind a bakery, hidden from the pack’s patrol routes. I walked the last few blocks on foot, glancing over my shoulder with every other step, cautious of being seen. When I arrived, I knocked in the familiar rhythm, and the door creaked open.

She stood there in a faded apron, flour dusting her cheek. As soon as I saw her, I stepped in and wrapped my arms around her tightly.

"Oh, I missed you."

"Me too, darling." She returned a warm hug, taking away the cold in my body. As I parted myself away from her, her hands cupped my face. "You haven’t slept."

I shook my head, "No. I didn’t get time. There were too many things I had to do tonight." I replied, lying. It didn’t seem like lying more like hiding the truth from Mom.

I didn’t want to tell her anything about the mate issues with the Alpha. She hated him, she hated me working for him, she hated the fact we were omegas, she hated everything about this.