The Princess Swap

Being a wolf came with its peculiarities. Being a wolf with no pack must suck. But being a wolf with no rank was a curse. I scrubbed the floors with aching arms. I was almost done but it didn’t make my arms tremble any less. I wiped sweat off my brows with my soaked sleeves, disallowing myself from taking a break at this point. “You missed a spot,” A deep baritone sounded from behind me. I turned and wished I had not. In a world where people breathed according to hierarchy, being me was the biggest curse. Alpha Xavier stood behind me, a s**t-eating grin pulling at his cheeks. His best mates flanked him on both sides, their boots tracking a line of mud on floors I had just polished clean. It would give me the greatest pleasure to smack the grins off their faces. I would like nothing more than to wipe the disgusting smug smiles from their faces with a hard slap but alas, they were alphas and I had no rank. I had just a small portion left to clean but the ground behind me that once glittered now had mud like dung on the floor. I felt my stomach clench. It had taken four hours and a skipped lunch to get to this point. The sky had turned grey as afternoon gave way to evening. Dinner would start soon. With the look of things, I would get no time to rest before I had to rush to help out in the kitchen. Alpha Xavier was an asshole and my tired arms ached to bash his head against a wall. He brought out the violence in me and I hated him for it. That and he always found a way to ruin my day. Every. Single. Time. Ryker, my best friend, said he had a crush on me but the thought alone made me sick for days. “Try smiling at him once and see if he would not spring a boner.” Maybe it was listening to my best friend say something as terrible as boner or maybe it was his next words, but I had retched my breakfast and caught a fever. “Smile at him and you would have to fight to stop him from dry humping your legs. The man wants his mark on you.” It made me sick to even think of Xavier putting a mark on me. My stomach churned, revolting at the unpleasant thought of being with someone like him. “What a piece of s**t,” I muttered under my breath, starting to rise. “What did you say?” He hissed, springing upon me. Ah, the curse of my existence. I had no rank, meaning I had not shifted. My senses were not as good as everyone else’s. I muttered things under my breath only to get smacked hard by people who heard them. I crumbled back to the ground before I fully straightened, the alpha’s slap powerful enough to send my frail body falling back down. I spluttered, curling into myself as his boot jabbed against my ribs. “Learn to respect your betters, loser,’ He spat. My bucket clattered to the ground with a loud noise in the silent room as he kicked it. Brown water spilt out and seeped into my dress. With a final kick, himself and his friends stomped out of the hall, dirtying the place some more. If I had learnt anything in my six months in the Capital, it was resilience. I picked myself off the ground, squeezed dirty water from the parts of my clothes I could reach, and then I went to the wells to draw more water. By the time Ryker found me, I had just thrown out the water I used in scrubbing the hall a second time. The moon was fully out now; fat and bright. I took a moment to admire and hate it. It called to me. The soft glare of its light soothing the pain in my body and seemed to rejuvenate me. The ache in my bones faded, replaced by a spring of energy. I lifted my face, closed my eyes and let the moon recharge me like I was used to. A moment later, I brought down my head, tears sliding down my cheek. Pain pierced my lower belly as my stomach growled and clenched. I had skipped lunch to be prepared for dinner and now, I missed dinner too. The moon was beautiful but useless to me. I used to think it glorious, a magnificent thing. I spent many nights of my childhood staring up at it and making silly wishes. None of them had come through. I was taught as a child that when a wolf asked things of the moon, they got it. How could I love a thing that had been so useless to me? “There you are.” Ryker's voice startled me from my melancholy. “Staring at the moon again like a creep?” He snorted, coming to sit beside me on a rotten log behind the hall I just scrubbed through. “I hate it here, Ry-Ry,” I said, laying my head against his shoulder. Ryker had sturdy shoulders. He was built like a knight thanks to all the ladies that liked to feed him and the hard tasks he had to do every day. “I know.” He sighed, putting his hands around my shoulder. “We should be back to our land by the end of the year.” He misunderstood. It was not the Capital I hated. My pack had moved to the Capital when a bad flood washed away our homes. We were a small pack, only thirteen of us with one alpha and two betas. The rest, including Ryker, were omegas, but then, there was me, a werewolf with no wolf and no rank. The king had been kind to give us a small piece of land to settle for a while. It was not the Capital I hated. It was the world in general. “Here, I brought you dinner.” Only one person in the world would think to bring me food. Only one person in the world noticed when I went days without eating. Ryker was the only one who looked at me and saw a person. No one else did. Not my alpha and not my Luna. Nobody saw me as a person. To my alpha, I existed as a weak link. If we weren’t so few already, he would kick me out of his pack. To Xavier, I was a thing of ridicule, a simpering fool for his amusement. To Ryker and Ryker alone, I was a person worthy of dinner. “Thank you.” I kissed his cheeks in appreciation. He watched as I ate, baby blue eyes giving me no choice but to take bite upon bite. Despite the hunger, the pinching in my stomach, the clenching, it felt like hell to swallow. I was hungry but for more things than food. I hungered for a change. For status. For a life where people looked at me and saw me. I hungered to be much more than the ‘rankless wolf of the Southern Moon.’ No one knew my name, not even my alpha. Sometimes, even I forgot what I was called. It was always, ‘you,’ ‘girl,’ and derogatory sounds that were used to address me. The food tasted bitter in my mouth, heavy and unsavoury. It calmed the hunger in my stomach as I forced it down, but with the fullness of my stomach, I became even more aware of the emptiness in my heart, the void in my life. We went back to the small house that served as the home of our pack. There were only four rooms for the thirteen of us. The alpha and his Luna got the best room, the two betas got another, the men got another while the rest of us girls, six of us in total, crammed into a room with one bed. Before sleeping, I joined Anika to clean the kitchen. She did not speak much, but she made a point of ignoring my greeting that night. I offered it twice to her rigid back but got nothing in reply. I understood her anger. It was our turn to make dinner that night. Instead of joining her, I chose to clean the old and dusty hall. Our alpha had been kind enough to volunteer me for such difficult labour to please the neighbouring alpha. Neglecting it would mean disobeying him and earning a whipping. My back still stung from the hiding I got the previous week. I would rather Anika's silent treatment than another harsh treatment. “I am sorry I bailed on you. I can do the dishes alone in compensation,” I muttered. She rinsed off her hands, wiped them on her apron and took the apron off. Without a word, she stalked out of the square kitchen, her shoulders still stiff with anger. So, despite the bruise forming on my sides, despite my aching arms and heavy heart, I found myself cleaning the kitchen, washing pots and pans, sweeping and finally mopping, well past midnight. I stumbled into the girl’s room, found a corner to curl up and sleep took me within a minute. My eyes snapped open at the crack of dawn. The birds could still be heard chirping as enough people had not awoken to drown them out with noise. The air was nice, a cool breeze blowing our thin curtains, the skies grey. In the distance, an orange glow started to rise. I hurried through personal activities. By the time my teeth were brushed and hair combed, the others had woken up. The men drew water from a well a short distance away, the betas assigned duties, some of the girls cleaned, Anika and I were still on cooking duties and the Alpha and his Luna did not emerge from their chambers until the tables were set and the house sparkled. “You, I have told Beta Moses of the Alpha Moon pack that you would lend a hand in his inn today. Be there before ten o'clock.” My alpha said to me, taking a sip of his coffee. “Yes, Al –“ He spat out his coffee, spraying it all over my face and dress. “Who made this coffee?” My pack had breakfast and dinner together. Missing it meant starvation. Missing it often was deemed an insult to the alpha. As he spat out his coffee and my heart stopped. I felt a twinge at my back, already imagining my scars reopening. “She did.” Anika pointed at me with shaky hands. I had put two spoons of sugar rather than one. His glare was fierce as he stood from the head of the table. I followed him out of the dining area without a word. The others continued to eat their breakfast, Ryker looked at me with pity as I was lead out, into the girl’s room where I stripped and accepted my punishment without a shed of emotion. I felt drained. Mentally. Emotionally. Physically. I was almost glad when the time came to go to Beta Moses' inn in the better parts of the capital, very close to the palace. The place swarm with alphas. That translated to hell for me but no alpha could be worse than mine. Xavier came closer but not quite. “Don’t go to the castle, Selene. It’s not worth it. I’m serious,” Ryker warned, stopping me as I ventured out of the house for my day’s job. “They have a beautiful garden,” I muttered, pulling my tired arms out of his. Ryker behaved like my elder brother sometimes and it grated on my nerves. “Cut the bullshit, Selene. You and I know you don’t sneak around the palace for their beautiful garden.” Beta Moses' inn was a short walk to the Palace. I got an hour break for lunch, a break I spent around the palace, pretending to tend the gardens just so I could behold one of the king’s guards. I hoped he would be on duty. “ I know you have a crush on him, but think! What if today is the day you get caught? What if you run into the king or worse, Prince Zion? How do you think the royals would react to a commoner sneaking around their home!” Ryker almost pulled at his hair but what did it matter? No matter how hard I tried to stay out of trouble, it always located me. I was punished for every small thing. Why not do something worthy of punishment? Why could I not seek a reprieve in the Alpha King’s castle where I could marvel at the beauty of his garden and head guard? Despite Ryker's warning, I made the short trek to the castle and I got caught.