The wood grain blurs under my rag.
I've been scrubbing the same spot for ten minutes. Not because it's dirty—it never was. Because if I stop, I have to look up. And if I look up, I'll see him
Damon.
He's standing across the great hall, shoulders loose, talking to his Beta about something that doesn't matter. Harvest numbers. Tithes. The usual. His voice is low, calm, the kind of calm that makes other wolves straighten their spines. He doesn't shout. He doesn't need to.
I know the exact distance between us. Twenty-three steps. I've counted. Not because I plan to cross it—I never will. Because my heart measures everything in distances I can't close.
He's wearing that dark leather coat, the one with the torn cuff on the left sleeve. I noticed the tear three weeks ago. He hasn't fixed it. Probably doesn't even know it's there. That's the thing about Damon. He sees packs, borders, threats, debts. He doesn't see small things.
He doesn't see me.
I dip the rag back into the bucket. The water is gray and cold. My knuckles are red, cracked from lye soap and winter air. No one told me to scrub the hall tonight. I just do it. Because if I'm useful, they let me stay. And if I stay, I get to breathe the same air as him.
Pathetic. I know.
My name is Raven Blackwood. I'm twenty years old, and I've been an orphan since I was three. Blackpine Pack took me in after my parents died in a border skirmish—or that's what they tell me. I don't remember their faces. I don't remember anything except the cold and the way the elders looked at me like I was a stray dog they couldn't quite turn away.
I never shifted. Not once. In a pack of wolves, that makes you less than nothing. Omega is a rank. I'm below that. I'm the girl who scrubs floors and carries firewood and keeps her mouth shut.
And I love him.
God help me, I love him.
I love the way he runs his hand through his hair when he's thinking. I love the scar on his jaw—got it when he was seventeen, fighting a rogue. I was there. I was the one who handed him the clean cloth afterward, and he looked at me for exactly one second and said, "Thanks," and walked away.
That second kept me warm for a year.
Now I press my palm flat against the floorboard and feel the cold seep into my bones. The great hall is empty except for him, his Beta, and me. The fire is dying in the hearth. Shadows stretch long and hungry across the stone.
"The harvest is down thirty percent," the Beta says. His name is Harlan. He's stout, gray-bearded, loyal to the point of blindness. "Marcus won't accept less. You know how he is."
Damon's jaw tightens. "I know."
Marcus Stone. High Alpha. The man who rules five packs, including ours. He's not cruel—not exactly. He's worse. He's practical. And practical men don't care about empty bellies. They care about tithes.
"We could sell timber," Harlan offers. "Or increase the hunting parties."
"Not enough." Damon paces now. Three steps one way, three steps back. I've memorized that pattern too. "We're short. Marcus will demand something else. He always does."
Something else.
My stomach clenches. I've heard those words before. Last year, a pack south of us couldn't pay. Marcus took three of their young wolves as bond servants. They came back six months later with hollow eyes and flinching shoulders.
I scrub harder. The rag tears. I don't care.
"There's another option," Harlan says quietly. His voice drops. I shouldn't be able to hear it, but the hall is empty and my ears are sharp—the only sharp thing about me.
Damon stops pacing. "Go on."
"The orphan girl."
My hand freezes.
"She's young. Healthy. No family, no wolf, no one who'd miss her." Harlan says it like he's discussing firewood. "Offer her to Marcus as a bond servant. A gesture of goodwill. It would cover the debt and buy us time."
Silence.
I don't breathe. I don't blink. I wait for Damon to say no. To say she's a person, not a payment. To say anything that proves I exist as more than a line item.
Seconds pass. Five. Ten.
"She's useful," Damon says.
Not no.
"She keeps the hall clean. She doesn't cause trouble." His voice is flat. Clinical. "But you're right. She's an orphan. No one would object."
Useful.
That's what I am.
Not Raven. Not the girl who memorized his footsteps. Not the girl who saved his clean cloth. Not the girl who loves him so much it feels like drowning.
Useful.
I press my knuckles against my mouth to stop the sound that wants to come out. It's not a sob. It's worse. It's the sound of something breaking that never should have been whole in the first place.
Damon turns. His copper eyes sweep the hall—and land on me.
For one heartbeat, I think he sees me. Really sees me. The girl on her knees with the torn rag and the gray water and the heart crumbling like old ash.
Then his gaze moves on. Like I'm furniture.
"We'll discuss it tomorrow," he says to Harlan. "I need to think."
They walk out. The door closes. The fire crackles once and dies.
I'm alone.
I sit back on my heels and stare at the spot I've been scrubbing. It's raw now. The wood is lighter there, stripped of its finish. Like me. Scrubbed clean of anything that matters.
I love him, I think. And he doesn't know my name.
But that's not the worst part.
The worst part is—he's right.
I am useful.
And nothing more.
I stand up. My knees ache. My hands are bleeding in two places. I dump the bucket in the slop sink and hang the rag to dry. Then I walk to the small closet where I sleep—not a room, just a space behind the kitchen, with a thin mattress and a blanket that smells of onions.
I don't cry. I haven't cried since I was seven, when the other pups threw stones at me and called me wolf-less.
But tonight, I lie on my back and stare at the ceiling and feel something new.
Not sadness.
Not even anger.
It's colder than that.
It's the moment you realize you've been invisible your whole life—and the one person you wanted to see you just confirmed that you were never there at all.
Tomorrow, they might sell me.
Tomorrow, I might become a bond servant to a man I've only seen from a distance.
Or—
I sit up.
The thought comes out of nowhere, sharp and bright as a blade.
Or I could run.
I've never run from anything. I've stayed. I've scrubbed. I've loved in silence. I've been useful.
But useful is not a life.
I don't know what's out there. Human towns. Roads. Places where no one knows I'm wolf-less. Places where I could start over as someone who isn't defined by what she lacks.
My heart pounds.
Dangerous. Stupid. If they catch me—
But what if they don't?
I swing my legs off the mattress. My bare feet touch the cold floor.
For the first time in twenty years, I don't reach for the rag.
I reach for the door.