Stolen Minutes

POV: Trishelle

With the dough resting and the counters wiped down, Trishelle let herself have the one good thing about her damn day. She went to the back of the fridge, past trays of orange juice and bowls of cut fruit, and pulled out the container she'd stashed the night before. Mashed potatoes gone stiff, gravy crusted at the edges, a fistful of salad greens starting to wilt. She'd learned to hide food the way other people hid their dirty secrets, tucked in spots nobody would bother checking, insurance for the days when there just wasn't enough to fill the hollow ache in her gut.

Best meal she'd get all day. No fucking contest.

She ate standing at the counter, fast, the way you eat when you've learned meals get interrupted or taken away without warning. Her shoulders stayed locked even as she chewed, some primal part of her brain listening for footsteps, for voices, for anything that might end this five minutes of peace. Nobody came. Small mercy number two, and the sun hadn't even fully cleared the trees yet. She let herself feel something close to grateful. Thin and worn out as that gratitude was, she'd take it.

Dishes done, she slipped into the half bath she was allowed to use and splashed water on her face, scrubbed her teeth, peeled off the damp clothes that had been sticking to her since the bucket incident. She wasn't going to think about that. There wasn't room in her day for it, and thinking never fixed anything anyway. She pulled on fresh clothes, or as fresh as anything she owned ever got, and caught her reflection for half a second in the cracked mirror. Tired eyes looked back at her, ringed with the kind of exhaustion that never really went away. A face that used to have color in it, before eighteen years of this life sanded her down into someone quieter. Someone smaller than the girl she used to be.

Still here, she told the reflection. That counts for something. Probably.

She said it like a prayer she'd given up expecting anyone to answer.

Training usually ran three hours, and that gave her a window, so she used it. Bread came out of the oven golden, filling the kitchen with a warmth that almost tricked her into thinking this was a place she'd choose to be. While it cooled, she diced fruit into neat little bowls, apples, berries, melon. The one idea she'd ever brought to this pack that hadn't gotten her a sneer or a slap in return. She still remembered how strange it felt to be told yes for once. Small victories. She'd take them where she found them and make them last as long as she could.

Then came the part that got her heart pounding for a completely different reason.

She grabbed her sheet, her thin blanket, the handful of clothes that made up her whole wardrobe, and slipped toward the laundry room like she was running contraband. Because really, she was. Every step made her heart beat a little harder, that same old fear that never fully dulled no matter how many times she'd pulled this off. The omegas who ran laundry outranked her, which still made zero sense to her after all these years, and if they caught her sneaking a load in without asking first, she'd get reported. Beaten. Then beaten again for good measure, because that was just how the math worked around here.

Ask permission to wash a blanket. Ask permission to breathe next, why don't you.

But those omegas wouldn't stir until the warriors got back from training, sweaty and starving with a fresh pile of laundry to dump on them, and Trishelle knew their schedule better than she knew her own name at this point. She started the wash, timed to finish before anyone noticed, and hurried back to the kitchen just as the bread cooled enough to slice. Her pulse only started to settle once she was back among the pots and pans.

She hung her clothes in the basement instead of risking the dryer. Not ideal, but she'd run this play long enough to know they'd be dry by nightfall, and dry was dry, however it happened. There was something almost comforting in the ritual of it, in knowing exactly how to handle each small crisis before it turned into a bigger one.

The clock turned mean after that. Less than an hour left, and she moved through the kitchen like she was fighting a war on four fronts: eggs in one pan, sausage in another, thick bread slices dunked in batter for French toast, coffee brewing fresh because James would notice if it wasn't. Sweat beaded at her hairline, her arms ached from the nonstop motion, but she didn't slow down. She was good at this. Good in that specific, miserable way that comes from never having another choice for most of your life. A skill she never asked for and couldn't seem to set down.

One oven stayed off, saved for keeping the finished toast warm while she set up the dining hall for the buffet. Only the Alpha got a plate brought straight to him. If there'd been a Luna, she'd have gotten the same treatment, but James hadn't found his mate yet, and Trishelle had watched enough rejections in this pack to know that finding a mate and keeping one were two completely different animals. She thought about those moments a lot. The sharp cruelty dressed up as pack law. Every time, it left the same bitter taste in her mouth.

She'd watched alphas turn their backs on fated mates for rank and standing like it cost them nothing, watched women fall apart in the aftermath while the pack just kept moving like nothing happened. Even Drew, the old Alpha, and his Luna had never been true mates. Not really. She'd picked that up from enough kitchen gossip, whispered between omegas who either didn't notice she was listening or didn't care. And the females weren't any better, sleeping their way up the ranks, picking mates based on ambition instead of anything real, trading affection like currency instead of something that was supposed to matter.

Real romantic. No wonder nobody around here believes in soulmates.

If this was what mates and love looked like inside Bloodmoon pack, all cruelty and convenience and rejection dressed up as tradition, then Trishelle decided, not for the first time, that she wanted no part of it. For a second she let herself imagine what it might feel like to matter to someone the way a Luna was supposed to matter to her Alpha. Then she shoved the thought aside, because wanting things she couldn't have had never once done her any favors.

If this is what it's like, I'd rather be alone.