The ghost mate:tearing the alpha's Shadow

chapter 4

– Sera pov

Getting off the floor was harder than I expected.

My ribs screamed. My face throbbed where my father's backhand had split my lip. Every place his boot had connected with my body was making itself known—my side, my shoulder, the back of my thigh where I'd twisted to protect myself.

I braced one hand against the wall and pulled myself up slowly. The room spun. My stomach lurched. For a moment I thought I was going to pass out, but I locked my knees and breathed through it the way I'd learned to do years ago.

The bathroom was three steps away. It felt like three miles.

I stood in front of the mirror and looked at what was left of me. Naked. Bruised. Mud still streaked across my ribs from the forest floor. The mark on my neck was darker now—the skin around it raised and angry and impossible to hide.

I touched it with trembling fingers. The stranger's mark. Still pulsing. Still hot.

Somewhere in the forest, he was probably awake by now. Finding the empty space where I'd been. Maybe confused. Maybe angry. Maybe relieved that the omega he'd spent the night with had disappeared before he had to look her in the face.

It didn't matter. I would never see him again.

I turned on the shower and stepped under the water. It stung. Everything stung. The cuts on my knees. The bruises spreading across my ribs. The raw skin on my neck where his teeth had been.

I stood there until the mud washed off and the blood ran pink down the drain and I could think clearly enough to face what was coming.

Three days.

Three days until the mating ball. Three days until I had to convince the Nightwolf Alpha to choose me as his bride.

I pressed my forehead against the cold tile and let the water run down my back. Alpha Kael. The butcher of the Northern Territories. The wolf who had wiped entire bloodlines from the map and never lost a single battle. They said he stood over the bodies of his enemies without a flicker of remorse. They said his gold eyes were the last thing a dozen Alphas ever saw.

And I had to make him choose me.

An omega. Wolfless. Marked by a stranger whose face I'd never seen.

I almost laughed. Almost. But laughing would have split my lip open again.

Zara's voice drifted up from downstairs. Laughing about something. Probably me. Probably the mark. Probably the way I'd curled up on the floor while our father's boot found my ribs.

She thought the mating ball was my death sentence. A wolfless omega thrown to a monster who would either kill me or reject me—and rejection from the Nightwolf Alpha was its own kind of death.

She didn't know what I knew.

She didn't know the monster in the forest had already claimed me first.

My hand drifted to the mark again. Still warm. Still beating under my skin like a second pulse.

The stranger had killed five rogues without breaking a sweat. He had crushed a man's throat with one hand and barely glanced at the body. And he had looked at me—an invisible omega, a wolfless nothing—like I was the only thing in the world worth seeing.

For one night, I had mattered.

If I could survive him, maybe I could survive the Nightwolf Alpha.

Or maybe I was fooling myself. Maybe the stranger was just a rogue—powerful, yes, but still an outcast. Still a wolf with no pack and no territory. The Nightwolf Alpha was something else entirely. An Alpha who commanded thousands. Who had never been defeated. Who could crush me with a single word and never think of me again.

I shut off the water. The silence rushed in.

I wrapped myself in a towel and stood in front of the mirror. The bruises were already darkening. The mark was already scarring. I looked like exactly what I was: a girl who had been beaten by her father and claimed by a stranger in the same night.

Three days.

Downstairs, I heard my father's voice. Still angry. Still rumbling. The words were muffled, but I caught enough.

"—Nightwolf Alpha will arrive in three days. Everything must be perfect. If any of you embarrass this pack—"

The threat hung in the air.

I pressed my palm against the mark. The stranger's mark. The rogue's mark. The unknown wolf who had no idea he'd left me with a death sentence and a countdown.

The Nightwolf Alpha was coming.

And I had three days to make him choose me.

Or die trying.