Page 2 of The Alpha King's Mate

Aliana

Present Day - Silvermere Pack Territory

The kick to my ribs didn’t wake me.

The floorboard above me did. That, and Cora’s vanilla perfume leaking down the stairs ahead of her feet hitting the hallway runner. A giggle. Sharp. Cruel.

I kept my eyes shut. I stayed curled on the hardwood floor with the thin rag I used as a blanket tangled around my ankles. October cold had seeped through my dress overnight. The pack’s central heating hadn’t been switched on yet, and Deeana had made it very clear that the basement was damp enough to freeze a wolf’s lungs.

Good thing mine barely made a sound.

“Ugh, she’s still asleep,” Cora called from the top of the stairs.“Mother, look. She’s like a stray dog we forgot to put out.”

I didn’t move. Moving meant acknowledging them. Acknowledging them meant feeding them.

But Deeana was never satisfied with being ignored. Boots thudded down the basement steps. One, two, three, and then the toe of her shoe connected with my hip. Hard.

“Up. Now.”

I opened my eyes. Grey light filtered through the small, grimy window near the ceiling. Red hair. Manicured nails. The sneer. Seven years she’d been in this house. Seven years of this.

I pushed myself up slowly, every joint protesting. My back ached from the floorboards. My hip was already bruising. I didn’t look at her. I stared at a spot near her feet.

“I want the kitchen scrubbed before the sun is fully up. The floors waxed. And do not—do not—leave your scent in the foyer before noon. Alpha Grayson is holding an assembly today, and I want this house smelling of pine and lemons. Not omega rot.”

She breathed the last two words like a prayer. Like she’d been saving them up.

“Yes, Deeana,” I said softly.

She marched back up the stairs, leaving the basement door gaping open. Her voice carried as she went. Lazy. Useless. Couldn’t believe Gerald had allowed his firstborn to become such a waste of space.

Cora giggled. Her footsteps padded towards the kitchen, and the smell of fresh coffee drifted down.

Coffee from the cabinet I wasn’t allowed to touch.

Hunger gnawed at my gut. Old news. I took a breath, held it, let the cold air numb the ache.

Then I rolled up my sleeves, grabbed the bucket of cold water from the corner, and climbed the stairs. They never gave me a mop. Rags and a worn brush.

Every day was a reminder.

Wolfless, they called me. Worthless.

They were wrong on the first count. But Zira hadn’t spoken in years, and a wolf too starved to surface might as well be no wolf at all.

? ? ?

I spent the morning on my hands and knees.

The Silvermere packhouse was modest by Alpha standards—two storeys, five bedrooms, a foyer that doubled as a dining hall on meeting days. Still too much house for one person to clean. Especially one running on scraps and two hours of broken sleep.

Deeana supervised from the kitchen doorway, sipping her coffee. Cora perched at the island, scrolling on her phone, bare feet propped up on a stool.

I scrubbed the foyer. I dusted the mantelpiece where my mother’s painting used to hang, before Deeana replaced it with a gaudy red-tinted landscape that matched her hair.

I knelt at the fireplace and scraped ash from the hearth until my fingers were raw. My reflection caught in the blackened grate for a moment—dark eyes, skin the deep brown of my mother’s, curls scraped back and dulled with dust. I looked away before I could catalogue anything else.

“You missed a spot,” Cora called from the hallway without looking up from her phone.“Under the rug. If Alpha Grayson thinks poorly of me—I mean, this house—I’m blaming you.”