Chapter 2 Chapter 2: The Crack of the Whip

“Get up, you worthless whelp! You think the Alpha King’s pigs eat for free?”

The voice was a guttural snarl, thick with cruelty and the stench of stale ale. The second sensation was not the memory of a knife, but a sharp, stinging lash across my back that set my nerve endings on fire. I cried out, a raw, animalistic sound of pure agony that was torn from a throat I didn’t recognize.

My eyes flew open. I wasn’t in my gleaming kitchen. I was on a cold, damp stone floor, surrounded by filth and the overwhelming stench of rot, despair, and something acridly metallic blood. The air was thick with the smell of woodsmoke and unwashed bodies crammed into a tight, oppressive space.

My body wasn’t my own. It was weak, emaciated, a canvas of aches and bruises I couldn’t remember receiving. My hands were raw and caked with grime, the nails broken and ragged. I tried to push myself up, but my arms trembled, lacking the muscle memory and strength I’d taken for granted my entire life. I was a stranger in my own skin.

Another lash, this one cutting across my shoulders, right over the bone. Fire seared through my thin, rough tunic. I screamed again, scrabbling away on my hands and knees like a wounded animal, my bare knees scraping against the grimy stones.

I looked up. Towering over me was a mountain of a man, his face red and sweating, a greasy, food-stained apron stretched over a massive, quivering belly. In his hand, he held a leather whip, its tip stained with something dark and crusted. He was the Head Chef. I knew this not from memory, but from a wave of information that flooded my new, fractured mind, like data being downloaded into a defective hard drive. His name was Boris. And he was a monster who enjoyed his work.

“I said, UP!” he roared, raising the whip again, the muscles in his forearm bunching like ropes.

“I… I can’t,” I stammered, my voice a hoarse, pathetic whisper. It was the voice of a stranger, high and thin with terror.

Boris laughed, a sound like rocks grinding together. “Can’t? You’ll be in the cells if you can’t. The turnips for the Alpha’s hounds need peeling. Now. Or I’ll have you peeling your own skin off.”

He grabbed a handful of my matted, filthy hair and yanked me to my feet. The world swam in a dizzying, nauseating wave, and I caught a glimpse of my reflection in a stagnant puddle on the floor. It wasn’t my face. The woman staring back was a stranger—pale, gaunt, with wide, terrified eyes the color of a stormy sea and a tangled mess of mousy brown hair. Who was she? Where was I?

The Lunar Fang Pack. The imperial kitchens. An omega slave. Number 74.

The words echoed in my head, not as memories, but as facts imprinted on this body’s consciousness. An omega. The lowest of the low. A slave, given a number instead of a name. My death hadn’t been an end. It had been a doorway. I had been reborn. Reborn into a living hell.

Boris shoved me towards a massive wooden table piled high with muddy vegetables and rotting scraps. A group of other slaves, all as thin and dirty as I was, worked in a cowed silence, their eyes downcast, their movements mechanical. They were broken. Their spirits had been crushed long ago. They were the living dead.

But I wasn’t. Not yet. The fire of my vow still burned in my soul, a tiny, defiant ember in the suffocating darkness. I will take back everything. This was a second chance, as twisted and cruel as it was. I would survive. I had to. To die here, like this, would be to let Daniel and Chloe win. I would not give them that satisfaction. I would not let them erase me.

I picked up a small, dull, rusted knife and began to scrape the mud from a turnip, my hands shaking so badly I nearly sliced my own thumb open. Every movement was agony. My back screamed where the whip had torn through the thin fabric of my tunic and into my skin. But I worked. I focused on the simple, repetitive task, the one thing my chef’s mind could cling to in this sea of chaos. Peel the turnip. Don’t cut yourself. Stay alive. Remember their faces. Remember their names.

“You,” Boris’s voice boomed behind me, making me flinch so hard I dropped the turnip. It rolled across the filthy floor. “Too slow. Those are for the Alpha’s personal guard. They deserve better than the slop you’re producing. Pick it up!”

He reached for me again, his meaty hand raised to strike. I braced myself, squeezing my eyes shut, my whole body tensing for the impact. This was it. This was how my second life would end. Beaten to death over a dirty turnip. What a pathetic, meaningless end.

But the blow never came.

Instead, a shadow fell over me, blocking out the dim light from the grimy windows. A different presence. One that was colder, sharper, and infinitely more dangerous than Boris’s brutish rage. I felt a hand clamp down on my arm—not Boris’s fleshy, damp grip, but a grip like cold steel, strong and unyielding.

I slowly opened my eyes.