Sleep. That rare, beautiful gift. Something I was rarely blessed with ever since becoming his omega. But that night? That one, pitiful, exhausted night? I finally got it. After twelve solid hours of servitude, polishing swords used in actual executions, sewing decorative wolf pelts onto curtains that didn't need wolf pelts, wiping down a throne that probably still had rogue blood under the cushions I collapsed into my hay bed in the omega quarters like a corpse tossed into a cart.
My arms ached. My legs screamed. My spirit whispered, "Goodbye, cruel world."
The snoring of fellow omegas around me felt like a lullaby. I wrapped myself in my ragged blanket, curled like a dead insect, and let the blissful dark take me Until it happened. Until he happened. Until the voice slithered into my mind, soft and eerie, and very much uninvited.
"Look at her. Sleeping like prey. So innocent. So breakable."
I flinched in my sleep. Was I dreaming?
