Chapter 1

Chapter One

Goldie

Sixteen Years Later

I take a deep breath, as my body shakes from anxiety and adrenaline, while my mind spins.

Blood drips from my nose, but I don’t bother cleaning it off. Instead, I lift my chin and prepare to take my first step toward freedom. Nothing will ever change unless I make it. My life will remain the same. Pathetic…sad…broken and beaten.

My stepmother backhanded me for daring to talk back to her, so I ran. I kept running until I hit the treeline, and now I’m frozen here. Like I always am when I get too close to the forest. The fear that grips my heart takes hold of my feet and stops me dead in my tracks every time.

I look over my shoulder, waiting to see if my stepmother follows me. She never does, though. She knows I have nowhere to go. No escape from the hell she and my father put me through.

But this time, I’m done. I won’t stand for the abuse any longer. I won’t allow them to break me ever again! So I turn back to the forest and take my first step toward a better future.

Every step further into the forest brings me closer to a new fate. One where I’m not forced to endure my parents’ abuse or to marry someone I despise.

That's why my stepmother and I got into an argument to begin with. She insisted I show my gratitude to my fiancé , and I refused.

Marriage might not be so bad if the man I was promised to at sixteen was anyone other than Donald. With his rancid scent and a mouth filled with rotting teeth, I would rather marry a pile of horseshit. He’s an inch or two shorter than I am. He’s balding, the top of his head red from hours spent in the sun, with thin gray hairs clinging to his skull for dear life. He’s wrinkled, and disheveled, but holds more power than anyone else in our small village because of his wealth.

The more I think about my fate, the faster I move, until I’m running. I’m picking up speed now, afraid of my future, but also of the trees all around me. They seem to close in. The darkness growing thicker. Panic consumes me as I trip over the root of a tree and fall to my knees. I can't breathe! I gasp for air, my eyes closing, as the sounds of the forest grow louder.

“No…” I whisper, as the growls reach me. Snarling monsters with razor-sharp teeth and glowing eyes search for me. “Please don’t kill me…” I cry, and when a branch snaps beside me, I scream.

Scrambling to my feet, I run again, but this time, I run back the way I came. I run and run until the sun reappears, and the trees no longer rip at me.

When I fall to my knees this time, it’s with relief, as my small village comes back into view.

A village filled with people who have ignored my pain and suffering since my mother’s death. People who look at me with suspicion, the same way they once did my Aunt. I was the last Omega to be born in our village, nearly twenty-one years ago. Since my birth, fewer Omegas have been able to conceive, and the children they produce are Betas, Deltas, or Alphas.

My mother was an Omega too, my stepmother is a Beta, and my father is an Alpha. They both resent me for what I am, what my mother was, and for what my stepmother can never be. Despite being married for over sixteen years, they could never conceive.

They hate me, maybe even blame me, and they never let me forget it. Some days I wish I had died with my mother and Aunt. Days like today, when I feel helpless and alone.

Slowly, I make my way back to the house I grew up in. What was once my home, my safe place, became a prison when Talia married my father, just three days after my mother’s death. She kicked me out of the bedroom that had been mine for the first four years of my life and made me sleep in a small closet space. After that, I often found better rest in the hay of my horse’s stall than in those crumbling walls.

It wasn’t long before she started hitting me, punishing me for silly little things that didn’t even make sense. Now I know she was just looking for any excuse to hurt me. My father never tried to stop her or protect me, and soon festering pain leaked out into every word he said to me and, eventually, the blows that landed on my skin.

I’m just as weak as he is. Shame fills my heart as I walk. I should be stronger than this. Strong enough to save myself, but I’m not.

It’s time to accept my fate.

At least once I’m married to Donald, I’ll move out of my parents’ house and into his. A shiver of fear travels down my spine at the thought, but I ignore it. It can’t be worse with him than it is with Stepmother and Father, can it?

The house comes into view up ahead, and I let out a tired sigh. I consider heading to the barn to visit Bear, my only friend and the best horse in the world, when I hear the source of my fear yelling my name.

“Goldie! Goldie! Where the fuck is she!” I hear his angry bark before I see him. Unfortunately, the wind carries his scent, and I regret my last inhale.

Rancid. His Alpha scent is like sulfur. It’s this rotten egg, spoiled milk combination, and there is nothing I hate more at this moment than breathing. I enter the house, head down, as more of his scent assaults me.

“Goldie, you tease! You fucking tramp!” My soon-to-be husband snarls when he spots me. The hairs on the back of my neck rise. My Omega senses scramble into overdrive. Submit! They scream at me, and for the first time since I can remember, that's exactly what I do.

Father isn’t home, and Talia simply smirks at me when I see her in my mother's favorite rocking chair.

My heart twists seeing her sitting there. I hate it. I hate her.

The psychotic, aggressive, and unhinged Alpha stomps over and practically spits all over me as he snarls in my face. He grips my chin, forcing me to look directly at him. Something that upsets my Omega instincts. We don’t look Alphas in the eye when they’re angry…

The pungent decay on his breath is somehow worse than his Alpha scent, as he breathes heavily, his mouth hanging open. Slowly, he leans in close, putting his face just inches from mine. I have the thought that if he tries to get any closer, he’ll need to get up on his tiptoes, but I quickly shove it down. Submit, behave… Thoughts like that will get me in trouble.

“I saw you last night, dancing at the pub! I should rip every strand of hair out of your head…perhaps then you won't think yourself too good for me.” His wet hiss sends spittle flying into my face once again, and even though I try, I can’t hold in my gag or repulsion. I grip my stomach, attempting to act sick, so my behavior doesn’t send him into a blind rage.

Submit, Goldie. Give him what he wants, and he’ll be kinder…

“I’m sorry, Alpha…” I whisper, knowing what he wants. The words are like shards of glass cutting my throat as I speak them…but I speak them anyway. “I won’t let it happen again…”

“No, you won’t!” I don’t hear the rest of his words because he slams his palm across my face so hard that the world goes dark for a moment. Oh fuck me, that hurt…

I’m used to pain. Both my stepmother and father have hit me more times than I can ever count.

Using their hands, weapons, shoes, belts, whatever they could to inflict the most damage. They’ve made me bleed, and even broken bones, but no matter how many times I’m beaten, I will never get used to having my brain scrambled.

The headache is instantaneous, and I taste blood in the back of my throat. I whimper, despising the sound, but it slips free against my will.

“I want her prepared, washed, and to the church by sunset. I will teach this Omega to obey me.” I hear him snarl, but it’s like an echo. A distant sound. Every molecule of my soul urges me to run. To escape. But what would be the point? He’d only drag me back.

The thing that set him off, that made him storm over here screaming about last night? The supposed dancing… I was at the pub last night, that much is true, but I was delivering empty barrels from my father's workshop for the mead. I wasn’t dancing. I haven’t danced in sixteen years.

My father works with wood and creates barrels for the pub. I didn’t dance, because who the fuck would I dance with? The mated or cruel Alphas, the smelly Betas who hate Omegas, or the Omegas that all believe you’re their competition?

I didn’t speak to anyone. Barely even looked at anyone. We aren’t even married yet, and my stepmother allowed him to barge in here and attack me for a perceived slight, that definitely didn’t happen.

But I have no more options. I must marry him. I have nowhere else to go, no one to turn to for help.

My fate is sealed.