Chapter One
LILY
The smell woke me before the light did.
Salt and sweat and too many bodies crammed into too small of a space. The thick, cloying musk of alphas who didn't bother bathing as often as they should. The sharper, more acidic scent of betas who worked themselves to exhaustion and collapsed into their hammocks without washing. All of it layered over the permanent stench of fish guts and brine that had soaked into the wood of this ship over decades of use.
I kept my eyes closed for one more moment, breathing through my mouth, pretending I was somewhere else. Anywhere else. My hammock swayed with the motion of the waves. Around me, the crew was starting to stir, grunts and groans, the creak of rope, someone hawking and spitting on the floor. Another day. Another endless, suffocating day.
I opened my eyes.
The sleeping quarters were dim, lit only by the grey light filtering through the cracks in the deck above. Bodies shifted in hammocks strung too close together. I'd claimed a corner spot,as far from the others as I could get, but it was never far enough. I could still smell them. Could still feel their presence pressing against my skin like a physical weight.
Move, I told myself.Before they wake up properly. Before they notice you.
I slipped out of my hammock with practiced silence, my bare feet finding the worn wood of the floor without a sound. My bag was tucked beneath my sleeping spot—I never let it out of arm's reach. I pulled it close and extracted the small glass vial I kept wrapped in cloth at the very bottom.
Scent blockers. My lifeline. My lie. The liquid inside was running low. I'd rationed it carefully, but three weeks at sea had taken its toll. I had another two weeks, maybe three weeks worth if I was careful. If I diluted it a little more. If I prayed to whatever gods watched over desperate omega girls who'd made the stupidest decision of their lives.
I dabbed the blocker behind my ears, along my throat, at the pulse points on my wrists. The chemical smell was sharp and unpleasant, nothing like my natural scent, which was the point. To the alphas and betas on this ship, I smelled like a beta with a hormone condition. Odd, maybe. Off-putting, certainly. But not what I really was.
Not omega.
The word sat in my chest like a stone. I'd spent my whole life being told what that word meant.Precious. Rare. Valuable.Words that sounded nice until you realized they were just prettier ways of sayingproperty.
I tucked the vial away and pulled on my work clothes—loose trousers, a shirt two sizes too big, a vest that hid whatever curves the shirt didn't. My hair was a problem. Long and thick, falling nearly to my hips when I let it loose, too pretty, too noticeable, tooomega. I'd thought about cutting it when I first ran, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. It was the one thing that wasstill mine. Instead I braided it every morning, winding the heavy rope of it around my head and stuffing it under a cap. It wasn't comfortable, but it made me look less like what I was. No one looked twice at a skinny, plain-faced worker who kept her head down and did her job.
At least, they hadn't used to.
I climbed the ladder to the deck, my muscles protesting after another night of restless sleep. The morning air hit my face, cold, briny, fresh, and I allowed myself one deep breath. The wind carried the smell of the open ocean, of nothing but water in every direction, and some of the tightness in my chest eased.
TheWindchaserwas a fishing vessel, forty feet of weathered wood and patched sails. She wasn't pretty, but she was sturdy, and her captain asked few questions as long as the work got done. I'd signed on at the last port, desperate for passage away from the coast, and I'd learned quickly that this crew operated on a simple hierarchy: do your job, don't cause trouble, don't show weakness.
I'd managed the first two. The third was getting harder.
"Oi, you're up." I turned to find Brennan watching me from near the main mast, his weathered face set in its usual expression of vague disapproval. He was one of the betas—older, experienced, responsible for keeping the newer workers in line. He didn't like me. Then again, he didn't seem to like anyone.
"Nets need mending," he said, jerking his chin toward the bow. "Get to it."
"Yes, sir."
He grunted and turned back to his work. I headed for the pile of tangled netting at the bow, grateful for the task. Mending nets was tedious, but it was solitary. It let me sit apart from the others, let me watch the water, let me breathe.
The morning passed in a rhythm of rope and thread. Other crew members moved around me, hauling lines, checkingcatches, scrubbing decks. Most of them ignored me. The betas especially seemed to have decided I wasn't worth their attention. Too quiet, too strange, too useless for anything but the jobs no one else wanted.
That was fine. I preferred their dismissal to the alternative.
Decker passed by around midmorning, a lean beta with a scar through his lip and a perpetual sneer. He "accidentally" kicked my water cup as he walked past, sending it rolling across the deck and spilling what little was left.
"Oops," he said flatly, not even bothering to look at me. "Clumsy me."
I didn't respond. Just retrieved the cup and went back to my nets. Responding only made things worse. Decker liked getting a reaction, liked seeing people squirm. The less I gave him, the faster he'd lose interest.
At least, that was the theory. In practice, my silence seemed to irritate him almost as much as fighting back would have. He muttered something under his breath as he walked away—something about "useless dead weight" and "should've left her at the port"—but I pretended not to hear.
The betas were cruel in their own way. Dismissive, mocking, always looking for weaknesses to exploit. They didn't see me as a threat or a prize—they saw me as an inconvenience. Something that didn't belong, that took up space better used for real workers.
The alphas were different.
