Rejected Wolf by Rae Foxx

1

The first thingI smelled when I was so roughly pulled out of my blissful slumber was beer, candy, and sex. I always smelled like that, lately, and not for the reason you would think. It sure as shit wasn’t for a fun reason, anyway.

Well, fun for me, I was sure the participants of the orgy I had cleaned up last night would tell you otherwise. If there was one thing the teenage pups of my pack could do, it was party.

I tried to roll over and go back to sleep, but Ruth was gently pushing against my shoulder. I was fully prepared to ignore her until she sat on the side of my cot and sent the whole thing rocking like I had been magically transported to a ship in a hurricane.

“Morning, Lizzy!” She beamed with way too much perk for this hour in the morning. Not that I knew what time it was, but the sun wasn’t up, which officially made it ‘too early’.

“Go away,” I mumbled into my pillow, but she chuckled with just as much energy as she had before and stood, sending the pirate ship in the other direction.

“Get up, Liz,” she patted my back like the gentle mother she was. “Time’s a-wastin'.”

She was right, but I hated it all the same.

I groaned but complied anyway, the world shifting and swirling as I pushed myself to sit.

I glanced at the clock. Five am. Which meant I had gotten roughly four hours of sleep after cleaning up after the orgy last night.

“I fucking hate Monday mornings. It’s like endless punishment for something I didn’t do.” I rubbed the sleep from my eyes. Stifling a yawn as I pulled myself to standing.

The swish of Ruth’s dress was nearly muted by the crackling of the flames in the fireplace. No matter how much she was worked to the bone, I’d never woken up without a fire going and the kettle brewing. You would think that after all these years of working under Ruth, of practically being trained by Ruth, I would have inherited some of her work ethic.

Raising my fists over my head, I yawned and stretched. My body protested in creaks and snaps that did little more than to remind me of my place in this life. Forever a laborer, bowing to the demands of a regime that gave zero fucks about decency or respect for anyone that wasn’t an Alpha or one of his cronies.

Or his son, especially.

“Cream and sugar, oh, and a little coffee,” Ruth said, shoving a paper cup into my hands. “Just like you like it. Get up now, you need your strength.”

“Getting up is not going to give me strength. Going back to sleep is.” I may complain, but I knew it was pointless.

No matter how hard I complained about it all, it wasn’t going to change anything. I had done enough fit throwing and attempting to run away in my past to know that for sure. I was stuck here, in the pup house of my pack, where they put all the wolves too young to shift after their parents died in the wars. And with this pack, there were a lot of wars. Seemed like anyone looked at our alpha the wrong way and we were going into another one.

Everyone here was seen as the children of the glorious fallen. Well, everyone but me. I was more the spit-on forgotten, forced to clean up after everyone as I atone for my parents ‘sins’.

Wasn’t my fault my parents tried to overthrow the Alpha. They had been executed for that, but somehow, I still needed to ‘prove my worth’.

I reluctantly stood up. My calves and biceps barked back at me. Every movement was a zing of burning sensations that fingered through my body like tiny rods of burning iron.

“This is going to be fun.”

“Glad to see your sarcasm still works, now get out of here!”

My room in the pup house only had one tiny window, and considering what people thought of me it was lucky I had that. Other rooms in the huge cabin had massive windows and expensive furniture. I had a cot.

“If you don’t move, the Alpha will have your hide,” Ruth said as she opened my door. That woke me up.

Today was Alpha day, of course, it was Alpha day. Last night was an orgy pool party at the Beta’s, this morning was cleaning up the remainder of said party after they had moved there last night. As if Mondays weren’t a lump of hippo shit all by themselves. The Alpha’s son was a son of a bitch and partied like a frat boy whose Daddy owned the library and the administration building. He had no cares, no responsibilities, but his future was carved into infallible stone.

He was like a celebrity let loose in a hotel room in Dubai.

“You just ruined my appetite,” I sighed and slipped behind my curtain that served as the privacy for my bedroom and slipped into a lilac t-shirt that had seen more vomit than an emergency room along with some cut-offs.

It was basically my uniform. At the door, I slipped into my thrift store walking shoes and headed down the hall and toward the inevitable doom that was the Alpha’s house. I rubbed my arm, knowing that if I didn’t, the damned thing would sting and protest every move I made. Don’t get me wrong, it still stung, and the pain was sometimes nearly unbearable but I dealt with it the best I could.

I had been told I deserved the punishment I got. The thing was, I didn’t see anyone else with fucking welts and ruler-long scars on their arm telling the world their depth of sin.

Especially Hutch. In my eyes, he was the biggest fuck up of them all.

“Hey, you.” You. Didn’t even get called by my name. I wouldn’t have stopped, I knew who was sassing at me after all, but I also knew what would happen if I didn’t. “Come clean out my fireplace and light a fire. I’m cold.”

Giana was leaning out of her door in a pink silk nightgown like she was some kind of princess. She probably thought herself a princess with how she was bossing me around like she owned me. They all acted like they fucking owned me.

“The sun is coming up and it’s going to be hot today. You don’t need it.” I knew I shouldn’t have questioned her, but damn it all, the words were out before I could stop them.

I tried to keep walking, but she screamed at me again. “Come light my fucking fire, you bitch, before I tell Hutch you refused to follow orders. Looks like that arm of yours is out of room for more scars. You know what that means.”

Yeah, I knew what it fucking meant. It meant they would start whipping me on another part of my body, probably a more painful place if there was one.

“Okay. Fire for the princess,” I mumbled to myself and stomped into her room without giving her more than a cursory glance. Best not to give her more ammo.

I whirled around to walk back to her house while

“Now that’s more like it. Run along, pup.” She tossed her long blonde hair over her shoulder and smoothed the front of her satin cotton candy-pink pajamas.

Stomping into her room with no finesse or grace whatsoever, the place was immaculate. It had a real bed and a living room with a couch. A couch would be a luxury to me. I bet this bitch didn’t value it half as much as I would.

Picking up the small shovel at the side of the fireplace, I began to dig out the ashes that were almost a foot thick in the bottom of her fireplace. Gods, she couldn’t even do this for herself.

Leaning in to get the ashes in the back, I felt the ball of her foot against my ass and before I knew it, my face was in the ashes. I coughed and sputtered for air while she cackled like the pack whore that she was.

“You--!” My voice was a roar, the rumble of an animal that I had been waiting all my life to unleash rattling my chest.

What I wouldn’t give to turn around and put this girl in her place. To make all of them pay for what they had done to me.

But I couldn’t.

Not yet.

I still had one week until my first shift. One week and then my wolf would be released, and then I was getting out of here… and I was never looking back.