BOUND TO THE WRONG ALPHA-Sera

The forest didn't care that she was bleeding. It swallowed her whole anyway, the darkness, the cold, the thorns that caught the hem of her wedding dress like hands trying to drag her back. Sera ran. She ran until her lungs burned and her bare feet stopped feeling the rocks beneath them, until the only thing left in her chest was the singular, desperate thought that had pulled her out of that bedroom window an hour ago. Not like this. Not me. The silk tore again. She didn't stop. Behind her, flashlight beams cut through the trees in wide, sweeping arcs. "Miss Sera!" She ducked behind an oak tree so wide it swallowed her entirely, pressing her back against the bark, hands flat against the rough surface. Her breathing was ragged and too loud. She pressed her lips together and forced herself to slow it down. Quiet. Be quiet. "Miss Sera, your marriage to the Cross Pack is set. Stop struggling!" She almost laughed. Stop struggling. As if this were a tantrum. As if twenty-two years of cooking and cleaning and bleeding and being told to be grateful for the roof over her head had simply built up to one unreasonable act of defiance, and all she needed was a firm voice to put her back in her place. A branch snapped under her foot. The flashlight beams swung toward her. Move… A hand closed around her arm. The scream died in her throat before it left her mouth, swallowed by a low voice that came out of the dark like a command. "Don't." One word. That was all. But something in the sound of it, rough and strained and barely controlled, stopped her cold. He pulled her deeper into the shadow of the trees, one arm wrapping around her shoulders, pressing them both flat against the trunk of a tree so large the guards' lights didn't reach the other side. Sera tried to push him off. His grip held, not cruel, not tight enough to bruise, but immovable. Like a wall that had decided to become a person. She could feel the heat coming off him. Could smell something underneath the night air, pine and something darker and older, something she had no name for that moved through her chest like a current. "Keep looking, she couldn't have gone far!" a guard called, somewhere to the left. The man at her back went very still. And then she saw it. A thread of red light, faint as a candle flame through fog, shimmering between her wrist and his. She blinked. It didn't disappear. It pulsed, slow and steady, like a heartbeat that belonged to both of them at once. She felt him see it too. Felt the exact moment his body changed, the stillness shifting into something else entirely, something coiled and urgent. She turned her head just enough to see his face in the dark. His eyes were wrong. Not dark. Not human. They burned gold at the edges, and he was looking at the thread the way a man looks at something he has been searching for without knowing he was searching. "You're…" His voice came out fractured, like he was fighting something inside himself for every word. "You're my mate." "What…" "I have to mark you." The words weren't a question. They weren't even quite a sentence. They were something more like a law. "Now. I have to…" "Don't you dare…" He moved before she could finish. Pain bloomed sharp and sudden at the curve of her shoulder, his teeth breaking skin with a precision that felt ancient, purposeful. like a key turning in a lock she hadn't known existed. She gasped. Grabbed his arm with both hands and shoved with every ounce of strength she had left. He stumbled. His back hit a tree and he slid down it slowly, one hand braced against the bark, eyes already glassing over. Whatever was burning through his system was dragging him under fast. He looked up at her from the ground, expression dazed, lips parting like he wanted to say something else. She didn't wait to hear it. Sera ran. Her shoulder was on fire. The mark throbbed with every heartbeat, not just pain, something else beneath the pain, some deep and terrible warmth that she refused to examine, and she pressed her palm flat against it and kept running. She didn't see the guards until their hands were already on her arms. "There she is." She didn't fight this time. Her legs were done. Her body was done. They marched her back through the trees with their flashlights and their firm grips, and she let them, because there was nothing left in her to spend on resistance. Not tonight. The lights of the Cole estate were all on. Cassian stood in the doorway in a pressed grey suit, one hand in his pocket, watching her being walked up the front steps the way a man watches a package being returned to his door. No relief on his face. No concern. Only the particular expression of a man reassessing whether his plan had been complicated or merely delayed. Bianca was leaning against the hallway wall with her arms folded and a smile that she hadn't even bothered to soften. "Look who came home," she said. "I was starting to think you'd actually done it." The guards released Sera's arms. She stood in the entrance hall in her ruined dress, mud on her feet, blood on the silk, hair loose and wild around her face. She looked exactly like what she was, a girl who had tried to run and failed, and she watched Bianca's smile widen with every detail it took in. "It's your wedding," Sera said. Her voice came out steadier than she felt. "This was always supposed to be you." "Mm." Bianca tilted her head, studying her nails. "And yet here we are." "Enough." Cassian's voice came from behind her. She turned. He had moved from the doorway into the hallway without making a sound, and he stood now with his hands clasped in front of him and his cold blue eyes moving over her the way they always had, not looking at her, exactly. Looking through her. Calculating. "The car leaves at eight," he said. "The Cross Pack elders are already at the estate. You will be ready." "You can't make me do this." He didn't raise his voice. He never raised his voice. He just let the silence sit there long enough to remind her that he had never needed to. "After twenty-two years," he said, "you will finally be of use." The words landed the way they always did, not like a blow, but like a door closing. Like the soft, final sound of a lock turning. Bianca stepped closer, a different kind of attention sharpening in her expression. Her eyes moved to Sera's shoulder. To the place where the dress had been pulled sideways by branches during the run. To the mark sitting just below the collar line, dark and unmistakable against pale skin. Bianca's smile went slow and particular. "What," she said softly, "is that?" Sera's hand moved to cover it. Too late. Bianca reached out and yanked the fabric aside. "Oh," she said, and laughed, light, delighted, utterly without mercy. "Oh, Sera. You couldn't even run without making things worse for yourself." She turned to address the room like she had an audience. "She's got a bite mark on her. She went running into the dark and came back with a bite mark." "Bianca…" "You'd better hope whoever's waiting for you at the Cross Pack doesn't find out." She leaned in, voice dropping to something quieter and sharper. "Or he'll tear you apart before the ink on the contract dries." She shoved Sera once, open palm, right shoulder, and Sera hit the floor hard. No one moved. The guards looked at the wall. Cassian turned and walked back toward his study. The door clicked shut behind him. Sera stayed on the floor. The marble was cold under her palms. The house was quiet. The mark on her shoulder pulsed in the silence like it was trying to tell her something she wasn't ready to hear. Mum, she thought. Dad. Wherever you are. She closed her eyes. I hope you're somewhere better than this. Across the territory, in the stone packhouse that sat at the edge of the Cross Pack's inner grounds, Beta Luca stood at the window watching the sun pull itself over the tree line. "Damien." The man at the desk didn't look up. His jaw was set. His hands were flat on the surface in front of him, not working, not resting, braced. "Your contracted bride arrives today," Luca said carefully. "The elders want you present for the formal…" "Something's wrong." Luca paused. Damien pushed back from the desk and stood. He was still in what he'd been wearing when Luca found him at the tree line three hours ago, dark clothes, leaves in his hair, a tension in his body that hadn't released once since they'd gotten back. "I marked her," he said. "I felt it. The bond started. And then she pushed me off before I could finish, and now it's…" He pressed a hand flat against his sternum. "There's nothing. Like reaching for something through glass." "You marked a girl," Luca said, "and didn't see her face." "I know what I did." "And today you're supposed to be receiving your contracted bride from the Cole family." "I know that too." Luca was quiet for a moment. Then, measured: "Find her first. Before the day gets away from you." Damien was already looking toward the door when it opened. One of the patrol warriors stepped in, out of breath, eyes bright with the particular energy of a man who believed he was delivering good news. "Alpha." He stepped back. "We found her. Your mate." Damien turned. A woman walked through the door. She carried herself like she had already rehearsed this moment, spine straight, smile soft, platinum hair falling clean over one shoulder. She moved across the room toward him with the ease of someone who knew where she was going. Damien went very still.