Chapter 2

Alpha Brock looked down at me from the doorway, a nasty grin on his face. It was obvious he’d been waiting there for me.

“You’re late Pooh,” he snapped, his nickname for me dripping from his lips as though he were a toddler spitting out his lunch in disgust. “Your work won’t do itself. If you think you’re entitled to a free ride, just because you’re an orphan, I have news for you. I don’t tolerate laziness. Get your ass in line.”

He stepped over my body and I scrambled up and away, picking up my apple, grabbing a cloth to wipe the spill from the floor. I retrieved my coffee cup and refilled it quickly. I balanced my apple and pillowcase in one arm and held my coffee in the other, carefully using my hip to push open the door.

I made my way down the stairwell at the end of the hall, and along the concrete passage until I arrived at another door, just past the furnace pipes. I pushed it open and quickly made my way across the room, dumping everything onto a little folding table. I wiped a tear from my eye and yanked off my shirt, looking down at the angry red skin.

I walked over to a cardboard box and rummaged through it, pulling out a large tee shirt with a logo from a band I didn’t recognize. I slipped it over my head and sighed. I’d gotten off easily, despite the burn. Alpha Brock must have been hungry. Usually he’d spend a bit more time tormenting me.

I took a bite of apple, and turned to survey my workload. The large roller bin of towels from the gym sat by the door. Two more roller bins sat empty, ready for me to gather the laundry bags from the halls of the pack house. Not everyone from the pack stayed in the pack house, but many of the best warriors and their mates, and the closest friends of Alpha Brock lived here. It was like a frat house really. Many families lived scattered throughout the woods or in a series of town homes nearby.

I had the privilege of doing the laundry for anyone living in the pack house. They used to do their own. Every floor had a laundry room, but the machines on each floor often sat unused. I used to just gather, wash and fold the gym towels, and then I’d return them to the gym before training began.

That all changed when Brock became alpha. His father had been harsh. No one had ever really liked me or trusted me since they found me in the woods 10 years ago, naked, clutching a pocket watch. Especially because I hadn’t said a single word to any of them since the day I arrived. I’d been taken in by the Luna, put in the little garage room, which at least ten years ago was not quite as drafty and rotted. But after she died, the old alpha had taken out his frustration on me. Brock learned it from his father, and had grown up tormenting me. His friends took their cue from him.

At first they just tried to get me to talk. They made a game out of it, jumping from behind doors to scare me, bumping in to me, pulling my hair. But as soon as they put me in school the real torture began. They locked me in a closet for an entire day until a janitor found me. They put me in the basement in the dark. The girls attacked me in the locker room and shoved me into the showers under a stream of freezing water.

Still I never spoke. I swore to the goddess that I would never give them the satisfaction of being the ones to make me talk. And I held to my oath for ten years.

But when the alpha died just a few months ago, Brock began his torture anew. He tripled my chores and I worked dawn to dusk, running the large washing machines, pressing and mending and altering clothes, delivering fresh laundry to every pack house member, and washing the bedding and dining hall linens. In between all of that, he and his friends would attack me whenever they found an opportunity. My frail body was covered in bruises and burns on any given day. I was a slow healer, probably from a lack of proper nourishment, and because I didn’t have my wolf.

I began to sort the towels in to the washing machines. When I had filled the industrial sized machines I grabbed one of the carts and rolled it out to the hallway. I took a service elevator up to the fourth floor and rolled my cart down the hall, grabbing the bag from outside of Brock’s room and then his Beta’s. The rest of the rooms here were empty, albeit massive. Brock liked his space.

The third floor was my next stop and by the time I’d rolled the cart from one end to the other, it was half full. The second floor was the same. I was making quick progress. Most of the pack members would be at breakfast already before heading to morning training. It was always easier when they were gone.

I hit the button for the basement. The first floor was the kitchen, dining hall, meeting rooms, lounge areas, and offices and I rarely went to those. I arrived back in the laundry room and drank my lukewarm coffee and then began to sort the clothes. Most items just needed to be washed. There were a few requests for mending and alterations. And as always, some pranksters stuffed the shredded scraps of clothing from a werewolf shift into a bag with a note to make it look new. I threw their tired joke into the waste bin.

I laid out all the empty laundry bags across shelves. They were numbered. I’d wash the clothes and put the corresponding labeled items, neatly folded, back in to the bags. I was pretty proud of my system. I’d been hit so many times for messing up a delivery that I’d learned to adapt.

I switched the towels to the dryers and began new loads in the washers. I started on a bit of mending while the machines thrummed behind me, filling the room with a thick vapor of steam and detergent.

The door suddenly slammed open and my heart skipped a beat. Alpha Brock stood in the door frame, his hair slicked back, still damp from his post-training shower. My knuckles whitened on the shirt I was holding. This was the situation I often feared most. Being alone with him in a room. My fears weren’t baseless. I had scars, deep scars that would never go away, because of that fateful day. And he seemed to relish catching me by myself, just to hear the rushing of blood that my pounding heart pumped through my body.