The Omega's Mischief: The Lost Lines Prequel

1. The Omega’s Mischief

It was a day to keep promises. A day to make plans. A day to wreak vengeance.

“Selene will pay for hurting you,” I vowed, staring deeply into my best friend’s uncomprehending eyes, knowing she couldn’t answer. “The streets will run with her blood.”

She blinked slowly, obviously doubtful that I could make the streets run with anything other than mop water.

She had a point. I was just a maid, not some warlord or assassin, and the only weapons I could wield with any competence were a mop, broom, and dust cloth. “I swear it. I’ll find a way.”

Ignoring my vow, she stretched out on my bed and began licking her gray and white, fur-covered stomach.

I supposed expecting a three-month-old kitten to listen was a bit much, even for one as gifted as Mischief. Maybe we could put a hairball in Selene’s slippers, as a down payment on true vengeance.

“Vali!” Selene’s bell-like voice shimmered in the air, her tone as sweet as her words were harsh. “Where are you, you lazy slut? Get up here and rub yourself on my sheets. The blacksmith’s son will be ‘round in ten minutes!” As usual, my nemesis wanted her bedclothes to smell like me, not her.

I made a rude gesture to the closed door but pulled on my shoes before Madam came in with her willow switch to hurry me up. Selene got what Selene wanted or we all suffered.

It wasn’t that Madam liked her that much. Nobody at The Rutting Sow did; she was rude and put on airs, as if her beauty made her special. A few weeks back, she’d gone so far as to threaten to leave for the cathouse down the street, The Dodgy Dancer, if she didn’t get better treatment.

Now Madam kept an eye on Selene whenever she wasn’t working, sometimes literally tying her up, so she wouldn’t run off before her contract ended. At least Selene had a contract; I just had a few coppers when Madam remembered, and a closet to sleep in.

“Vali!”

I checked Mischief’s poor tail again, where Selene had trod on it—on purpose, I was certain—and left her curled up in the basket by my cot. At the last minute, I bundled up my own bedsheet to throw into the laundry. I hadn’t had time to wash my bedding in a long while; Madam kept me busy cleaning or locked in my room when customers came around. The scent of peaches and honey on the fabric, a natural perfume that had inexplicably started to emanate from me two years before, just after I turned eighteen, was so strong as to be overpowering.

An idea began to form, a wicked one. My brain sent up sparks as I realized I had vengeance in my very hands.

I knew a secret. Harold, the blacksmith’s son, wasn’t sickly at all, but when the barn cats at the stables had slept on his saddle blankets a few years before, he’d gotten a rash on his arse from the cat hair. For a week, he’d thought he had the pox, before he figured it out. He would never suspect Selene’s sheets to be contaminated; Madam never allowed cats in the upstairs rooms.

Sorry, Harold. But vengeance must be served.

I found Selene in her bedroom pinching her cheeks in front of the mirror. She wore a form-fitting blue gown with a corset that laced up the front and a string of freshwater pearls. Why did she get pearls and I had to wear brown and gray rags?

Then I remembered what she’d done to earn the pearls, and decided brown wasn’t all that bad.

“Your cheeks are already pink.” She kept on pinching, making sexy faces at her reflection. She didn’t need to try; she was already the best-looking woman in Turino, maybe in the whole kingdom. I watched, fighting off a wave of what I was certain wasn’t jealousy. Probably indigestion. “Why are you still working here? Four of your customers already said they’d pay off your contract and marry you. Rich customers!”

I had been gently encouraging her to leave for a while. “Think how much time you’d have for...” I trailed off. Needlework? Baking? As far as I knew, her only hobbies were primping in the mirror and torturing me and my kitten. I gave up and tossed the dirty sheet down on her bed.

Selene sneered. “What is that?”

“My sheet. It’s pre-scented.”

“Dirty, you mean.” She whirled away from the mirror and I was struck as always by her otherworldly beauty. Golden hair flowed down her back and sapphire blue eyes sparkled like jewels over rosy, red lips and pink cheeks. A body that was every bit as perfect underneath her clothes moved with willowy, unconscious grace. Every bit my opposite.

Dear Goddess, I hated her.

“I want a fresh sheet, lazy girl. Nice try.”

I tossed my sweaty, dark ringlets over my shoulder and shrugged. “Go ahead, sniff. I bet Harold pays you triple today.” She narrowed her eyes, looking for the trick. I picked up the sheet again. “Have it your way. I’ll let Teresa use it. She’s got those two guards from the castle in an hour—” She yanked it out of my hands just as Madam’s voice came up from below. “Selene, sweetness? Your very favorite Harold is here!”

Selene boosted up her breasts—making sure the stuffing that padded her bodice was in place—and stormed to the door. “You’d better have this bed made up before I get back or I’ll take it out on your skin.”

I hissed after she left and made sure the odd lumps of rags I’d pinned into my clothes were still there. Selene wasn’t allowed to beat me, not since the first time when she had used a stout branch and I’d ended up in bed for days, unable to work. But Madam hadn’t forbidden her from scratching or pinching, and Selene had taken to sharpening her vicious nails.

To counter that, I’d salvaged rags from the dustbin and the kitchen and pinned the foul-smelling bunches into my clothing. Not only did it keep Selene’s nails from striking their targets, it kept any nearby Alpha men from scenting me directly.

Alphas were dangerous. I’d learned my lessons the hard way.

The normal-sized, run-of-the-mill Beta men who made up most of the males in Turino didn’t notice my scent all that much, besides liking the sweetness of it. But Alphas, those menacing, looming creatures, seemed to know on an instinctual level that I was near on the rare occasions I ran errands in the neighborhood. They even came around the Sow late at night, sniffing at the locked kitchen doorway like wild beasts.

I shivered again, and pressed the dirty rags against my skin, releasing a whiff of pungent odor. I hated smelling like rotten meat and kitchen grease, but it was better than what might happen if an Alpha got his hands on me. Not even the punches and kicks Nell had been teaching me since I turned twelve would help then.

I made up the bed quickly. No need for tight corners; they’d have it all a mess in minutes. I slipped out the door, intent on getting back to Mischief when Madam’s voice sounded again. “Vali? Selene needs you to go down to the apothecary and get her some more vinegar, sweet herbs, and sponges.”

“We have plenty in the kitchen,” I protested, but I scrambled down the stairs anyway, careful not to make eye contact with any of the Beta men who were there this early.

“Madam?” I held out a hand, and she placed two coppers in it. I blinked. The apothecary had the best supplies in Turino and charged for them accordingly. “This isn’t enough for—” I began, but she grabbed my ear and twisted it. I thought better of complaining.

“The apothecary and straight back. Selene sent in an order special this morning. He’ll be waiting.”

I was out the kitchen door in a flash, blowing a kiss to Mischief on my way past my closet-room. I pelted through the streets, ignoring the shopgirls who called out their usual greetings.

The store wasn’t close, and I knew I was supposed to get back to the Sow before dark, so Madam could lock me in. But the apothecary was a crusty old fart and would laugh me out of his shop if I came in with so little money. And something about the way Madam had said he was waiting for me reminded me of the things she’d done after I’d come of age. The times when she’d tried to sell me like one of her girls, but to Alphas.

Was I meant to be part of his payment?

The apothecary wasn’t an Alpha, so I wasn’t on my guard around him, not in that way, but he would do anything for a coin. I knew for a fact he’d prized the teeth out of bodies between the wake and the burying to use as ingredients in his potions. And quite a few of the younger servant girls had been going missing in the city recently.

People gossiped that it was spies from Verdan, sneaking into our city and taking them, but that seemed unlikely. Verdan had been on the verge of invading Rimholt for months, according to the gossip in the market square. Why would a Verdanian want girls from our country? They had to have plenty of their own. No, someone local was taking these girls, I was sure of it.

It might be the apothecary; it might not. I’d learned not to take chances when my instincts shrieked at me.

Thank the Goddess, I had a friend who might be able to help. She had worked at the Sow when I was little, before I could do the heavy cleaning. She kept the kitchen at a different brothel now, a much nicer one the fancy lords and ladies frequented called The Frisky Kitten.