The Breaking Yard

I was not given food or water.

A few hours after Cillian left me in the dark, the iron door shrieked open again. Two massive Beta guards dragged me out by the chains, my bare feet scraping against the freezing stone. The sudden influx of torchlight felt like daggers in my eyes. My head was pounding with a sickening, rhythmic thud.

The suppressant withdrawal was fully setting in.

Every nerve in my body felt stripped bare and rubbed with salt. My skin stretched too tight, flushing with unnatural, rolling waves of heat that made my teeth chatter. Deep in my lower abdomen, a dull, terrifying ache coiled tight. The pre-heat. My body, starved of the toxic chemicals that kept it dormant, frantically tried to wake up the Omega inside me.

If it hit full force while I was surrounded by a castle full of enemy soldiers, I wouldn't survive the night.

The guards dragged me up three flights of stairs and threw me through a heavy wooden door. I hit a wet, greasy cobblestone floor, sliding slightly in a puddle of dirty water.

The scullery.

It was a massive, chaotic cavern of heat, steam, and shouting. Servants rushed back and forth carrying entire roasted boars and massive vats of stew. The smell of the rich meat hit my ruined stomach, and I violently dry-heaved onto the stones, bringing up burning yellow bile.

A sharp kick to my ribs sent me sprawling onto my back.

"Get up, you filthy Silvermoon rat."

I gasped, clutching my side, and looked up. A severe, heavily scarred Gamma woman stood over me, holding a bucket of grey, caustic lye soap.

"I'm Hilda," she spat, her eyes raking over my bruised face and shivering, malnourished frame with absolute disgust. "The King gave specific orders about you. You are nothing. You are the dirt on our boots. You are not to speak, you don't look anyone in the eye, and you don't stop working until you drop."

She threw a ragged, coarse burlap tunic at my face. "Put that on and get to the training yard. The warriors need their armor scrubbed and the blood washed from the sparring mats. Move!"

I stripped off my torn, bloodied shirt with shaking hands and pulled the rough burlap over my head. The coarse fabric scraped against my hypersensitive skin, making me want to scream, but I bit my lip until I tasted blood. I grabbed the heavy wooden bucket of lye and stumbled out the back doors into the biting winter wind.

The Alpha training yard was a sprawling, fenced-in arena of packed dirt, melting snow, and absolute brutality.

Over a hundred Blackwood warriors were sparring. The air was thick with the suffocating, heavy scents of aggressive Alphas sweat, iron, wet fur, and dark musk. The sheer concentration of dominant pheromones slammed into my waking Omega senses like a physical wall. My knees buckled, and I leaned heavily against the wooden fence just to stay upright.

My inner wolf whined, a desperate, pathetic sound echoing in my skull. It wanted to submit. It wanted to bare my throat to every single one of them just to stop the overwhelming pressure.

No, I told myself, digging my fingernails into my palms until the pain grounded me. You are a ghost. You are nothing.

I grabbed a stiff bristled brush and dragged my bucket to the edge of the sparring mats. The ground was slick with mud and fresh blood. I dropped to my bruised knees and started scrubbing.

The lye water was freezing, but the chemicals burned like fire. Within minutes, the skin on my knuckles was cracking and bleeding, mixing with the dirty water. My arms ached with every frantic motion, but I kept pushing. If I stopped moving, the fever burning in my blood would consume me.

"Well, well. Look what the King dragged in."

A shadow fell over me, blocking out the pale winter sun.

I froze, keeping my eyes glued to the muddy mat. A pair of heavy combat boots stepped directly into the puddle of dirty water I was trying to clean.

"I heard the King spared a Silvermoon runt," a voice sneered. An Alpha. His scent was sharp, aggressive, and unstable, reeking of rotting pine and burnt copper. "You don't look like much. You smell very funny. What are you?"

He kicked the side of my bucket. The freezing, caustic water splashed all over my chest and face.

I gasped at the shocking cold, my vision spotting with black dots as I fell back onto the mud. Laughter erupted around me. A group of five Alpha recruits stopped their sparring to circle me like a pack of starving hyenas.

They didn't know I was an Omega. The lye, the blood, and the freezing air temporarily masked the sweet, heavy scent of vanilla desperately trying to bleed out of my pores. But their Alpha biology sensed a weak, submissive male in their territory, and their basest instincts screamed at them to dominate, humiliate, and destroy it.

"Stand up when an Alpha is talking to you, rat," the leader snarled. Torin, the massive guard from the raid.

I pushed myself up onto my hands and knees, my arms violently shaking. The fever spiked. My vision blurred at the edges. Just take it, I told myself. Just take the beating. As I looked down at the mud, a terrifying realization hit me. I was sweating through the freezing water. My body burned up. The lye would fail to hide my scent soon.

"I said stand up!" Torin roared.

He grabbed a heavy, solid oak training sword from the rack. Before I could brace myself, he slammed the blunt edge directly into my already bruised ribs.

The crack echoed across the yard.

I refused to scream, denying them the satisfaction. All the air left my lungs in a violent rush, and I collapsed into the freezing mud, curling into a tight ball as agonizing pain exploded through my left side. I tasted blood in the back of my throat.

"Pathetic," Torin spat, stepping closer. He pressed the heavy heel of his boot directly onto my bleeding, lye-burned hand, grinding it into the dirt.

A broken gasp tore from my lips. The pain was blinding.

Above us, the heavy wooden doors of the royal balcony slammed open.