I haul the bucket up the stone steps, water sloshing over the rim and soaking through my worn dress. The cold seeps into my skin, spreading through the thin fabric until I'm shivering. My arms shake under the weight. No one offers to help.
I don't expect them to anymore.
"Look at her."
The voice carries across the courtyard, clear and cutting. Lucen. One of the Alpha heir twins. His tone drips with the kind of casual cruelty that comes from never being told no, from growing up with the certainty that the world exists to bend to his will.
"Still pretending she belongs here," Draco adds, his voice a perfect mirror of his brother's disdain.
Their laughter follows me up the steps like a physical weight pressing between my shoulder blades, pushing me down with each footfall.
I keep my head down. Speaking only makes it worse. I learned that years ago when I was still foolish enough to think fairness mattered in Nightfang Pack, when I still believed that working harder might earn me something other than more work.
The bucket slips in my grip. Water splashes across the stone, darkening the grey surface. My heart lurches.
"Can't even carry water properly."
Cassian. The future Beta. His voice is cold and measured, clinical in its dismissal. Cassian doesn't mock me the way the twins do. Cassian dismisses me. Like I'm a problem that will eventually solve itself if he ignores it long enough, a stain that will fade with time and neglect.
I crouch to lift the bucket again, wrapping both hands around the rough wooden handle. My fingers ache, joints protesting. The full moon is three days away, and my body has started doing that thing it does every month. A strange pulling sensation deep in my bones, like something inside me is trying to answer a call I can't hear. Scents sharpen until I can smell individual herbs in the kitchen from across the compound, until the world becomes almost overwhelming in its detail.
No one else seems to notice.
Or maybe they do, and they just don't care.
"Move."
I step aside as Bastien, the Gamma warrior, shoulders past me without slowing. He doesn't look at me. None of them do unless they're making a point of how little I matter, unless they need someone to remind themselves they're better than.
The water finally makes it to the hall. I set the bucket down near the fire, my arms trembling from the strain, and turn to leave before anyone can find another task for me.
"Aphrodite."
I freeze, my whole body going still.
The head housekeeper stands in the doorway, her expression pinched and tired. She's not cruel, exactly. Just tired. Tired of me being here. Tired of explaining why the pack keeps a human who can't shift and serves no purpose.
"The Alpha wants the western storage cleared before sundown."
My chest tightens. The western storage is full of rotting supplies no one's touched in months. It'll take hours, and I'll miss the evening meal.
Again.
"Yes, ma'am."
She doesn't thank me. She just turns and walks away, her footsteps echoing down the hall.
I head toward the storage shed on the far edge of the compound, where the trees grow thick and the shadows never quite lift. The work is exactly as miserable as I expected. Moldy grain that makes my eyes water. Broken tools with rusted edges. Everything covered in a layer of dust and damp that clings to my skin and works its way into my lungs.
I'm halfway through when I hear them.
"How much longer are we keeping her?"
I go still, hidden behind a stack of crates. The voice belongs to one of the senior wolves. I can't see him, but I recognize the low rumble of authority, the tone that says he's used to being obeyed.
"The Alpha hasn't decided," another voice answers. "But he's considering binding her permanently. Make it official."
My blood turns cold, ice spreading through my veins.
Binding.
That means a blood oath. A magical tether that would lock me to this pack forever. I'd never be able to leave. Never be free. The pack bond would wrap around my soul like chains, holding me here until I died.
"She's useless," the first wolf says. "Why bother?"
"Because she's a loose end. And the Alpha doesn't like loose ends."
They move on, their voices fading into the trees, leaving me alone with the weight of their words.
I stay crouched behind the crates, hands shaking so badly I have to press them against my thighs to make them stop.
A loose end.
That's all I am to them. A problem to be solved. A stray that wandered in and never left because there was nowhere else to go.
I don't remember my parents. I don't remember a time before Nightfang. I just remember waking up here when I was small, confused and alone, and no one ever told me why. No one ever explained where I came from or why I was different.
The pack took me in. Fed me. Kept me alive.
And they've made me pay for it every day since.
I finish clearing the storage as the sun dips below the horizon, painting the sky in shades of orange and red. My body aches in that deep, bone-tired way that comes from hours of manual labor. My stomach growls, empty and angry. The dining hall will be full by now, and there won't be anything left by the time I get there.
I don't go.
Instead, I walk to the library.
It's a small building tucked between the training grounds and the healer's cabin, easy to overlook. Most wolves don't read much. They don't need to. Instinct and tradition guide them, passed down through blood and bond.
But I've always liked it here. It's quiet. No one bothers me. No one even notices when I slip inside.
I close the door behind me, and the silence settles over me like a blanket.
The air smells like old paper and dust, like knowledge preserved and forgotten in equal measure. Moonlight filters through the narrow windows, casting long shadows across the shelves that stretch from floor to ceiling.
I move through the stacks until I reach the back corner. The section no one touches. The books here are older, their spines cracked and pages yellowed with age.
Forbidden knowledge, some of the wolves call it.
I call it hope.
My fingers trail along the shelf until I find the one I'm looking for. It's thin, bound in cracked leather that's gone soft with age, with no title on the cover to announce its contents.
I pull it free and flip it open carefully, mindful of the fragile pages.
The text is written in old script, the kind that takes effort to read, where the letters curl and connect in unfamiliar ways. But I've studied it before. Late at night when no one was watching, when the compound was asleep and I could pretend, for a few hours, that I was something other than what they made me.
A Grimoire of Severance.
It's a ritual. A way to cut ties with a pack permanently. To sever the bonds that tie a wolf to their territory, their Alpha, their Moon. To walk away and never look back.
I've read it a dozen times, but I've never tried it.
Because the book warns, in small, careful letters at the bottom of the page: Only those with true lunar blood may survive the rite.
I always assumed that meant wolves.
But tonight, with the threat of binding hanging over me like an executioner's blade, I wonder if maybe it means something else. Something I haven't considered.
I close the book and tuck it under my arm, holding it against my chest like a secret.
The full moon is three days away.
If I'm going to do this, it has to be then. The ritual requires moonlight, requires the Goddess's attention even as it seeks to sever her hold.
I leave the library and walk back to my small room at the edge of the compound. It's barely more than a closet. A cot with a thin blanket. A single shelf. A cracked mirror that shows a distorted version of my reflection.
I set the book on the shelf and stare at it, at the cracked leather cover that holds the promise of freedom.
Tomorrow, I'll start preparing. I'll gather what I need. I'll make my plans.
Tomorrow, I'll decide if freedom is worth the risk.
But tonight, I lie down on the cot and stare at the ceiling, listening to the sounds of the pack outside my door.
Laughter. Voices. The kind of easy belonging I've never known, the casual intimacy of people who fit together like pieces of a puzzle.
I close my eyes.
And I let myself imagine a world where I don't have to carry water for people who hate me.
A world where I choose.
That night, I dream of chains breaking and moonlight flooding through cracks in stone. I dream of running, of wind in my hair, of freedom that tastes like cold air and wild earth. I dream of being something more than a loose end waiting to be tied off.
I wake before dawn with the decision already made, settling into my bones with the weight of certainty.
The book sits on my shelf, waiting.
I reach for it.