I dreamt. Not good dreams or horrible ones; just memories. Ok, maybe they were a little bit horrible.

“Mousy Brown Mutt, that’s what you are!” The boys called to me on the playground at school.

Tristan, the Alpha’s son, joined in the fray.

“You’re just a plain useless orphan. You’re gonna be my servant, so you better learn to listen to me now!”

All the kids laughed.

I saw my eight-year-old self-huddled down there, too. Come to think of it, I spent a lot of my life huddled down, hugging my legs to my chest.

My mom died when I was born. Like me, she didn’t have a wolf. My dad had loved her, even if they weren’t true mates.

Dad was a good dad when I was small. He was a pack warrior who mostly worked border patrol. He wasn’t top of the pack nor the bottom - just a regular old wolf working his job, protecting the borders.

When Dad was out on shifts, the neighbor lady would come and sit in the house and watch TV to keep an eye on me. She kept me clean and safe and fed, but not much else.

Dad was thirty years old when I was five. That’s when the Alpha’s niece, Jessica, turned eighteen, and they learned they were true mates. We moved to the pack house where all the Alpha’s relatives lived.

My new stepmom didn’t like that dad had mated before and produced me. I know my dad loved me once - I remember it - but after finding his true mate, he seemed to love me a little less each day.

To stop Jessica from being jealous, before we moved to the pack house, he burned every single-family photo we had, including every image of my mother. All of her possessions were boxed up and donated to a charity in the village, even her jewelry.

We moved to the pack house with nothing more than our clothes and the one toy I was allowed to keep because Dad forgot that Mom had made it for me when she was pregnant. It was a stuffed baby doll she’d sewn and hand-stitched the face on. Even the little dress it wore, she’d sewn by hand.

After we moved to the pack house, Jessica and Dad spent most of their time in their room making love. When they weren’t in there, they were socializing with the pack or carrying out their duties.

It got to where I only saw Dad at breakfast. I was expected to get ready for school on my own and eat breakfast in a corner of the dining hall with Dad and Jessica. I wasn’t permitted to speak. I found out it was because my voice caused Jessica anxiety.

After breakfast, I’d get on the bus, complete the school day, and come straight home. After my homework was complete, I had to go to the kitchen to work until after everyone else finished dinner. Afterward, I helped with the dishes and cleaned the dining hall. Only after all the work was complete, was I allowed to eat some bread and cheese with water and be sent to bed.

That went on for three years.

No one in the pack house took much interest in me other than the housekeeper and the cook, and only when I did something wrong. As long as I completed my jobs well, they ignored me. If I did something poorly, they would slap me on the back of the head, correct me verbally, and move on.

A few weeks after my eighth birthday, there was a rogue attack at the border where my dad was patrolling. Everyone immediately knew he had been killed because Jessica fell to the floor and began to wail, clutching her chest right in the middle of dinner.

I knew what it meant as well. I was an orphan.

From eight years old until eighteen, I lived in the pack house like before, attending school and working in the kitchen. Only I wasn’t allowed in the dining hall anymore unless I was cleaning it.

I was told to stay away from Jessica. Every time she saw me enter a room - or in passing, she would fly into a rage and begin to throw objects at my head. I didn’t have a lot of talents, but my reflexes got pretty quick.

No one else paid me any attention.

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True to Tristan’s childhood taunting, they did make me his servant. He didn’t like to wake up in the mornings, and no one wanted to deal with his temper, so I was assigned the unwanted duty of taking him breakfast in bed every day to awaken him at seven o’clock. I had to wake him, endure his wrath, and then serve him food. I had to wait quietly while he ate and then take the tray away.

After school, I was told to do most of his homework with mine. Everyone knew I did it, and it was just for show.

“See?” The teachers would say, “Even the Alpha’s son could turn in his homework; why can’t you?”

No kid could excuse themselves in light of this shining example.

I also had to do Tristan’s laundry and clean his bathroom every night after he had gone to sleep. My teenage years were quite disgusting in more ways than one.

Eventually, Tristan turned eighteen, and the whole pack was waiting to see if he would recognize his mate, but nothing happened. It was only the day of my eighteenth birthday when the trouble began.

I woke up early, as usual. After brushing my teeth, dressing, and combing my tangle of curls, I went down to the kitchen to start my work.

I prepared Tristan’s tray, and as I came down the hallway to his room, I smelled something divine, and my stomach rumbled. It smelled like hickory smoke barbecue and brown sugar, and it made me feel hungry and satisfied all at once in a way that felt like home. Like a cozy home where I was loved and welcomed and free. I hadn’t been allowed meat in years - or sweets for that matter - so this was just about the most delicious scent I could have smelled. There was something else, too. There was cedar, pine, and warm, rich chocolate. So many lovely aromas stacked layer upon layer and released in an order that best complemented themselves.

As I neared the doorway to Tristan’s room, it flew open, startling me. Tristan stood there, breathing heavily in nothing but his boxers. He looked at me in surprise and then pulled me into his massive suite and shut the door. When he dragged me inside, the realization dawned that those tantalizing aromas were coming from Tristan himself. My adrenaline spiked.

I had a fight-or-flight moment when I gaped at him like never before. An awakening thwarted my anticipated flight. The realization hit me like a truck; Tristan had grown quite tall and handsome. Why hadn’t I noticed his defined abs and broad shoulders before? Those mesmerizing blue eyes and chestnut brown hair streaked with blonde highlights that always looked sexy, even when it was messy from sleep.

Oh shit, I thought. This couldn’t be happening. Why, goddess, why?!

How cruel. How hilarious. What a tragedy!

After staring at each other for what seemed like forever, but was probably only a minute, Tristan took the tray from my hands and set it aside on his bed.

When he stepped towards me, I took a quick step backward. A look of pain flashed in his eyes, and it made my heart ache a little.

“Please, Jane, just...stand still,” he rasped in his rugged morning voice.

As his hand came towards my face, I stepped back again, and he winced in pain.

“Please, I beg you,” his voice implored me with so much passion and sincerity.

He made no move to come closer. He was waiting for my reply.

“A-alright,” I finally stuttered my answer.

I fought my survival instincts the best I could and planted my feet firmly on the ground in an act of bravery so extraordinary to me that I almost thought myself a warrior. It turned out to be easier than I initially expected since I wasn’t eager to see that look of pain on his face again.

It was true he’d bulled me when we were kids, but since we’d been in high school - and for the past four years - he largely ignored me aside from a muttered “Thanks” after he finished his breakfast each day.

There wasn’t any reason for him to pay more attention to me than that. I wasn’t brilliant, talented, or pretty. I was invisible.

I stood an average height, around five feet and six inches. I wasn’t too skinny or too fat. I had plain cream-colored skin that was neither tan nor too pale.

My hair was a plain medium brown color that was completely uninteresting and had just enough curl to constantly be tangled but not enough to be beautiful. I kept it barely past shoulder length and no longer because I didn’t have time to detangle it incessantly every day.

Even my eyes were just a drab brown color. My appearance was average and unremarkable in every way.

But there, in Tristan’s bedroom, with the mate bond drawing us to one another, he looked at me like I was the most beautiful person he’d ever seen. It was as if I were his whole world. The longing in his eyes made my heartbeat way too rapidly.

He stepped towards me, and that longing made me determined to stand my ground and wait even though I wanted to flee the territory and never look back.

He reached out his hand. Lightly wrapping one of my curls around his finger, he moved even closer, placing his fingers gently but firmly beneath my chin and tilting my face up to make me look him in the eye.

“Jane, you are mine,” he whispered in awe.

“And you are mine,” I whispered back as I searched his eyes while feeling light-headed and overwhelmed with things I had never, ever felt before.

My declaration caused him to growl deep in his chest as he slid his arm around my waist and firmly pulled me against his muscular and shirtless body.

Our breaths warm on one another’s skin, we gazed into each other’s eyes, and there was nothing but us in that moment.

He bent his head down, coming ever closer. He was going to kiss me, and goddess help me, I was going to let him.

At that very unfortunate moment, his bedroom door was flung open, followed by a loud scream erupting from the new arrival.

We both turned towards the door to see the Luna, Tristan’s mother, screeching and yelling with a look of horror on her face.