Mated To Three, Fated To Two

Olivia Hale

The omegas always got the scraps.

Scraps of food. Scraps of clothing. Scraps of respect, if there was any left to begin with. And me? I was the leftover of a leftover. The stain no one wanted to admit was still on the pack’s record.

Everyone in Bloodroot Hollow howled when Lucy Greene shifted for the first time.

She glowed silver under the full moon, her pristine white wolf coat glittering like she was dipped in starlight. The pack cheered. They called her “blessed.” The future Beta female. A perfect mate.

Meanwhile, I coughed up blood in the shadows.

“Keep walking, slave brat,” someone growled behind me as they shoved past. I didn’t bother looking back. I was used to it. The bruises, the cold glares, the whispered insults. That’s what being a freed omega orphan got you. You weren’t a person—you were a walking reminder of what the pack wanted to forget.

I didn’t shift. Not at thirteen. Not at fifteen. Not even at sixteen, when most girls felt the call of their wolf.

Eighteen tomorrow. And if the Moon Goddess had any mercy left, she’d kill me in my sleep before I had to face that humiliation all over again.

But fate doesn’t let girls like me die easy.

It makes us useful first.

I dragged myself through the crowd, careful to keep my head down, eyes low. One wrong look was all it took for someone to throw a punch or worse—tell the triplets I was being "disrespectful." And they always made it a game. One would hold me down, the other would laugh, and the third? He never touched me. Not once. But his silence hurt worse than any bruise.

“You are more than what they see,” Mama used to whisper when the moonlight filtered through the rotting roof of our shack. “But don’t let them see it. Not until you have claws of your own.”

She died two days after that. Torn apart by rogues. Or so they claimed.

I stopped believing the pack’s stories the same night I found claw marks that didn’t match rogue teeth.

“Hey, darling omega,” a low voice cut through the noise.

I froze. I knew that voice.

I turned slowly, heart in my throat.

Riven. The middle triplet. The rebel one. The dangerous one.

He leaned against a tree, moonlight catching on the metal cuff around his wrist—the Beta-in-waiting’s band. His dark eyes locked on mine, sharp and unreadable.

“You're shaking,” he said casually, like it wasn’t his brothers who'd shoved me into a freezing creek last week and laughed when I nearly drowned.

I bit back the urge to snarl. “Maybe it’s the cold.”

Or maybe it’s you.

His gaze dropped to the ripped hem of my shirt, the faded hand-me-downs clinging to my frame.

“You should eat something.”

I blinked. What?

Was this some new game? Concerned Riven? Savior Riven? I wasn’t buying it.

“I’ll eat when you stop pretending you care,” I muttered.

A