Killed By My Alpha, Reborn As His Mate

"If you don't scrub the blood out of that hem by suppertime, Martha will use your own hide for grease rags."

I didn't look up from the gray slush in the basin. My fingers, waterlogged and split at the knuckles, kept working the coarse fibers of the tunic against the ribbed washboard.

"She's already circling the drying racks like a starved vulture, Bess," I muttered, wringing out a heavy sleeve. "Let her talk. If I die of exhaustion today, it saves me from doing it five years from now."

Bess paused her own paddle, her eyes narrowing as she leaned over the wooden tub. "You've been talking in riddles all week, Selena. Who dies in five years? What are you even talking about? You look like you've seen a ghost."

"I have," I whispered, the words catching on a throat that felt permanently coated in soot. "A very stubborn one."

The air in the outer packhouse always carried the thick, stale reek of boiled lye and damp earth. It was a heavy, suffocating smell that clung to the back of your throat long after you left the wash-tubs. I, Selena, used to think that stench was just the price of being a low-ranking omega in the Silver Moon Pack. 

I spent my days scrubbing timber floors until my knuckles bled and my knees throbbed with a dull, rhythmic ache.

 I didn't mind the labor. Back then, I believed that if you kept your head down, did your chores, and never looked an Alpha in the eye, the world would let you live out your quiet, insignificant life.

I was wrong.

You can scrub all you want, but you cannot wash away a destiny written in blood.

"A slave to the pack, a traitor to the crown."

Those were the words shouted at me as the heavy iron chains bit into my wrists. Those were the words spoken by the man I had given my youth, my loyalty, and my bleeding heart to. Alpha Ronan. I remember the cold steel of the executioner's blade, the smell of my own scorching flesh, and the crushing weight of betrayal as the life drained from my eyes.

"Selena? Hey, stop staring at the wall," Bess snapped, waving a sudsy hand right in front of my face. "You're spacing out again. If Martha catches you zoning out while the water's still hot, she'll dock your meager bread ration. You know how she is."

"Let her," I muttered, blinking the phantom images of ash and steel away. "Bread doesn't taste like much anyway."

"It tastes better than starvation," Bess shot back, shaking her head. "Seriously, what's got into you? It's like you're carrying the weight of a mountain on those skinny shoulders."

People say that when you die a violent death, your soul lingers to scream. But my soul didn't scream. It froze.

Sometimes, in the dead of night, I wake up gasping, clutching my throat where the invisible ghost of a noose still burns. I smell smoke. I taste copper. I hear Ronan's voice-cold, detached, and devoid of the fierce passion I once thought belonged to me ordering my execution for a treason I never committed.

I died once.

That is the secret I carry locked deep behind my ribs, a secret so heavy it threatens to crack my sternum. I am not just Selena, the quiet omega helper of the Willow Creek borderlands. I am a ghost walking in a borrowed skin.

"Selena! Are you deaf, girl?"

A sharp, calloused hand snapped me back to reality, slapping against the wooden washbasin and splashing soapy, ice-cold water all over my apron.

I blinked, the ghostly visions of my execution dissolving into the hazy morning light of the pack laundry shed. Standing over me was Martha, the head laundress, her face pinched into its permanent scowl.

"I asked you twice if the eastern batch was ready for the folding table," Martha barked, waving a bundle of coarse gray tunics in my face. "The Alpha's personal guards are arriving today. I want these linens scrubbed, dried, and folded before the sun hits the high ridge.

 Do you hear me, girl, or has wool completely filled your ears?"

"Yes, Martha. Right away," I whispered, keeping my eyes cast downward.

"Don't just stand there whispering like a dying sheep," Martha snapped, tossing the bundle onto the wet wood beside me. "Move it! If those uniforms aren't crisp when the delegation rides through the gates, you'll be spending your night cleaning out the latrines with a toothbrush."

"She won't have to," Bess chimed in smoothly, stepping between Martha and me with a placating smile. "We'll have them done, Martha. Selena's just feeling the chill this morning."

Martha sneered, casting one last disapproving glare my way before turning on her heel. "Keep your mouths shut and your hands moving. We don't need slackers today of all days."

Five years.

According to the calendar hanging by the door, today is October 14th. Five full years before the day Ronan would sentence me to death. Five years before I would foolishly believe that love could save an omega from an ambitious tyrant.

In this timeline, I am nineteen. I haven't met him yet. He doesn't know my name. To him, I am nothing more than dirt under his expensive riding boots.

And that is exactly how I plan to keep it.

I plunged my hands back into the freezing water, suppressing the shiver that crawled up my spine. My fingers trembled, not from the cold, but from a terrifying, electric realization.

"You're shaking like a leaf, Selena," Bess whispered, leaning close as she scrubbed a stubborn stain. "Are you getting sick? If you're coming down with the winter cough, you need to go to the healer before Martha notices."

"I'm not sick, Bess," I replied quietly, forcing my fingers to steady against the rough fabric. "Just... thinking about leaving."

Bess stopped scrubbing, her eyes widening in disbelief. "Leaving? Where could an omega go? The borderlands are crawling with rogues and human bounty hunters. You'd last two days outside the pack fence."

"Better two days on my own terms than a lifetime waiting for a executioner's block," I muttered under my breath, though I kept it low enough that she only caught the murmur of my discontent.

I have a second chance.

The universe, in its cruel or merciful wisdom, threw me backward through the gates of death. It gave me the chance to rewrite the tragedy. I will not cross paths with Ronan. I will not look into those mesmerizing, storm-gray eyes that hide a monster. 

When he takes over the neighboring territories, I will be miles away lost in the human towns, living as a common seamstress or a runaway.

I will tear out the old Selena by the roots.

A sharp breeze swept through the open doors of the shed, carrying a sudden, strange scent on the wind pine needles, frost, and the unmistakable, suffocating musk of high-ranking Alpha dominance.

My heart slammed against my ribs like a trapped bird.

No. It couldn't be. He wasn't supposed to be here today. Not yet.

I dropped the tunic, my breath catching in my throat as my eyes darted toward the courtyard.