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Rumor

“You better hurry up, Rumor.” One of my parents’ house omegas, Lily, whispered low, only for me. “You don’t want today to go…you know.”

You know , meaning, my parents would give out consequences and not to me. No. They would never lay a hand on me because they knew it would look bad upon the alpha house. Instead, they would pick one of the house omegas, preferably one I was friendly with, and bleed them slowly in front of me and the others as a lesson.

Fuck that noise.

They chose more demeaning ways to punish me. By adding things to my daily chores like toilet cleaning or cleaning out the trash cans. Things I hadn’t ever been trained for.

I was trained and raised to be an alpha, like my twin sister Reyna. Until everything changed.

“I just need to get my hair tied back.” And it had to be perfect. I wasn’t allowed to have a strand of it out of my braid. My mother said the braid showed that I wasn’t a lowly servant, even though I was doing servant work. It didn’t.

And I was the lowliest in this family. Everyone else in this house was an alpha or an alpha’s mate.

“I’ll help.” Lily worked quickly and we were downstairs in the kitchen getting ready for tonight’s dinner.

My twin sister convinced my parents to have a “dinner party,” something she saw on a human television show. She said it would be “fun,” but really she meant, it would show the pack that she was powerful and important, which she was. Our larger pack and her pack. Her harem. Men who treated her like royalty. Men who were supposed to be mine.

She paraded her power and prestige any chance she got.

Once upon a time, I was too. Powerful and mighty despite my shorter stature. Twin alphas born to the alpha family was the stuff of hierarchy dreams. Only I wasn’t an alpha at all, presenting as omega for the first time on my eighteenth birthday. Happy fucking birthday to me.

They say a parent’s love is unconditional and that twins share a connection like no other. They lie. The second my perfume tickled a local pack member’s nose, my parents locked me away and turned me into nothing more than a glorified servant—heavy on the servant, low on the glorified.

They never failed to remind me that my place in this family was shaky.

“How many are coming?” The list of food we had to make for the evening was missing a head count. Did they expect me to guess? Setting me up to fail? Honestly, at this point, nothing would surprise me. My family was determined to make me as small as possible—a whisper of a person.

“All of them?” Lily uncovered the commercial mixer. “And they want fresh bread, of course.”

“All…as in the entire pack?”

Lily nodded. “And they pulled the other servants to work on…they didn’t say what.”

Odds were, they were pulled for nothing, and this was a test. Not for Lily. She was there because they needed someone’s safety to hold over my head, and she was the closest to my age and as sweet as the cupcakes I made for dessert.

She deserved a pack to treat her as the queen she was. All omegas did. Lily had been the one to teach me about perfuming and about scent blockers. She said the rest would be saved for when I got a pack.

“Let’s do this thing.” It wasn’t worth discussing. It wasn’t as if we had the ability to change any of this.

Hours later, we had everything prepped or cooked and the table set. All that was left was the serving. I was getting pretty good at cooking and didn’t mind it as a rule, but this meal had been labor-intensive, even for an army of omegas. They wanted too much made in too short a period of time with too few ovens. As if they were intentionally setting me up to fail.

The harsh reality was, that might be exactly what they were doing.

Everyone arrived on time—exactly. My parents expected it, and the pack obeyed. I wasn’t the only one they were shitty to. I wish I had seen how bad it was when I was younger, back when I had the potential to make a difference.

Lily and I served the dinner, standing to the side to clear empty plates, fill drinks, and offer seconds. We were to be invisible while on top of things. It was an impossible expectation, but one I’d gotten better at over the years.

“The dinner is lovely.” My sister set her fork down, looking around to make sure all eyes were on her before adding, “Rumor has become quite the little baker.”

“I agree. She’s quite the little cook all right.” My father mimicked her use of the word little.

My family loved that word. It was a way to put me down with plausible deniability. They weren’t being mean; it was simply a descriptor. At least, that’s what they wanted others to perceive.

Otherwise, they came off as monsters. Cruel alphas and leaders of this pack.

Gods, I hated it here. If only I were brave enough to leave. But they’d hunt me down or, worse, they would hurt someone on my behalf. I was stuck here until they determined otherwise, and why would they? I did their bidding and showed the pack no one was immune to their power. I was invaluable to them—just, not in the way I wanted to be.

As the pack settled in with coffee and cupcakes, Lily manned coffee refills, and I started the dishes. There was no room for a dishwasher even though there was. Most nights, it wasn’t too bad, but tonight, there were a ton, and the sooner I got started, the better the odds I’d get a few hours’ sleep tonight.

“You forgot one.”

I didn’t turn around. It was Tyler. Once upon a time, when he thought I was going to be the next alpha, thanks to being born three minutes before my sister, he wooed me like I was a treasure. And my dumb ass? I believed he wanted me for me, that he thought I was special, that he might even love me. Not once did I suspect him to be my mate, but that was fine. I was going to be alpha. I didn’t need a love match. I needed someone to rule by my side who didn’t try to usurp my power.

“Leave it on the counter.” I felt him come up behind me and add, “Please.” I didn’t get all the way through tonight to ruin everything by being rude to Tyler. I refused to give him that power over me.

“You know…” He scented me deeply, pressing his nose into the crook of my neck. His closeness caused my beast to press me for release. I had to force her down. Taking my fur in the kitchen would not end well. “I’m not opposed to you being a side piece—with discretion, obviously. Baby, we could be so good together. I remember the way you taste. I could never forget it.”

I twirled around, attempting to get some distance between us, and the glass in my hand crashed to the floor and shattered into a thousand pieces. And as my father walked in, Tyler whispered, “There’s no shame in it, kitten. No shame. We’ll make sure you are well kept. If you don’t, well, you might never see me again after tomorrow.”

There wasn’t even a second to ask him what that meant, my father calling for Lily to clean up my mess.