Until Tomorrow

Amelia

"The floors on the first floor need to be moped again Amelia. You did a shitty job. I can still see tracks." Bianca's cold, venom-laced demand is enough to make me want to go into a fit of rage and burn this whole damn pack house down. I have moped that floor twice today, yet it still is not up to her standards. The Alpha knew exactly what he was doing, giving his only daughter supervision rights over my workload this week.

Bianca is rude, but she has also trained to be a Luna her entire life and fills part of that role now that her mother is gone, so crossing her would be a mistake punishable by death and I think he would order it just to have something to do.

"I think you missed some weeds in father's garden yesterday so you should check it again today. Also, the walls of the dining hall need washed down again. If I need to appoint someone to follow you around all day, I will." She threatens and I shudder thinking about how much worse that would be. Especially since the person assigned to me will not want to be supervising me, which will make it worse.

Instead of boiling over with rage, I turned to her, "I am sorry. I will get right to it." because arguing will make the punishments worse, and I really don't want any dungeon time. It is cold, smells, and the food is slop when they remember to feed you and to this pack, I am easy to forget.

I am a nobody to the Feathermark Pack. An outsider found by a fellow pack member at the border 24 years ago at just 18 months old. I have no memory of how I got here and no memory of my real family.

I do not even know if Amelia is my real name.

I was taken in as an orphan. The elder she-wolves in the pack took turns raising me, none of them pleasant. Everyone treated me like a burden instead of a family or pack member. They do not like outsiders here, but they fear being cursed by the fates for refusing and orphan more, so I bounced around from member to member who really had no desire to raise me until my teens when I was enlisted as a slave for the pack.

I hate my life.

I keep quiet.

Keep my head down.

Nobody here knows me, truly.

I wear hand-me-down rags and sleep in a tiny home made for me or the dungeon. It really depends on how the Alpha feels for the day. At least the tiny home has a bathroom. The dungeon has a bucket. I prefer seclusion with a toilet over a bucket. If being quiet keeps my ass on the porcelain throne and my face from getting slapped around, I will do it, but I don't like it.

Years of this torment have piled up. Every day I fear that I am near my breaking point. On a good day I daydream of burning the pack down while I watch and smile at my tormentors getting burned.

On a difficult day, I envision ending it all.

On an in-between, more sane day, I daydream that I have escaped to some unknown pack, and they welcomed me as one of their own.

I haven't made any recent escape attempts. The last few ended in my being found by the border patrol and brought back fighting for my life. The whipping I received publicly was enough to stave off the urge to flee and the physical scars will stay with me forever.

The pack members laughing and making a mockery of my suffering is something I will never forget. I will forever carry a grudge against the entire pack and hope that one day they will get a harvest on the seeds they have sewn into my life.

I arrive at the first floor and just as I expected, the floor looks clean, but if there isn't a new shine to it and evidence it was recently moped, I will pay for it, so I re-do the floors. My back aches from being hunched over all day moping and from pulling the weeds yesterday. An ache for a shifter is a rarity, but I am a weak wolf because I am not allowed to shift to take part in runs, or train which means, I must endure it.

I am allowed to do nothing except work all day long, run errands within the pack and wait on whoever Alpha Randall demands that I wait on when he has guest. Usually, guests have no manners and are just as cold and disgusting as the Alpha here or they are visiting Alphas that enjoy the idea of having a slave the entire visit. Sometimes that get touchy, other times they get inappropriate.

The evil lurking in this pack is the Alpha. Alpha Randall Feathemark is old, calloused, and cruel. He leads by oppression. The pack members act like him towards me partly because of how he treats them. I have heard whispers from others of him only becoming cruel because his mate died, but I have only known his cruelty and hatred. I have never seen him find anything amusing unless it was the punishment of others. I have only seen him happy when discussing money or taking over territory.

I finish mopping the entire floor and then return the supplies to the utility room. It is supper time here and now I must wait until the entire pack has eaten before I can go and ask for whatever is left, and it is usually not much. The mess hall fills, and I stand in the corner and watch everyone eat their fill, gorging themselves in their indulgence while I suffer and wait to be beckoned.

I weave in and out of tables, playing the role as a waitress, barely tolerating the tones and the sneers of the shifters that see me as nothing but garbage. I refuse to show any emotion to them. They think they are better than everybody because they are a wealthy pack, but I see them as nothing more than a disease that needs eradication. Any pack that functions like this one needs to be wiped off the planet.

After I play waitress, I clean up the mess hall and then eat the half of a sandwich they offer me. I am expected to have the energy to work to the bone but not given the sustenance to withstand it.

Heading back to my tiny home I am thanking the fates that I was able to stay out of trouble tonight and not have to sleep in the dungeon. I throw off my too small boots and head for my cot. Dead on my feet, I shake out my long, wavy chocolate brown hair and put it back up in a bun on top of my head. I remove my ratty jeans and kick them off into the corner of the room. I am too tired to wash them tonight. Everything will have to wait until tomorrow.