Taming the Broken Playboy Alpha

Episode 2

Chapter Two

The instant I quaffed the wizard’s potion, the very shape of my world transformed, and I remain grappling with how to accept that new reality.

Mamá and Papá no longer meet me the way they formerly did. Although my siblings still unleash their withering glares and snarl their contempt the moment they believe I’m unobserving, their punishing fists stay far from me. Their words no longer slice me down before the whole pack.

It’s strange. At times it feels as though I’ve slipped into someone else’s life.

From passers-by’s vantage, I look as though I have at last found my spot.

But inside? Cast deep within the heart, I stride forward at measured strides, all the while buoyed by the fragile veneer of Alpha confidence.

Unending rehearsal has tempered each shaft of luminous joy, every assured step, and every syllable uttered with unshakeable confidence—each of them hammered into being. An unsteady game of make-believe. Given that finely wrought façade—so painstakingly laboured over—collapses and lays its shattered splinters exposed, I will be left entirely unmoored.

Dead.

The throb of each heartbeat further cinches the noose at my neck, yet even as my yearning to forge—any bond at all—flares with an ever-brightening intensity, the coils tighten still tighter. I will never once more be trod beneath their feet.

Seven days exactly after I swallowed that luminous poison, a letter of acceptance slid into my hands. An edict was handed down. Gasping for breath after the interview stripped the very air from my lungs, I read the letter that welcomed me to Laguna Blanca Academy.

It is the law. All children of Alphas are required to enrol at the school. That is where leaders are moulded and talents honed. To the privileged, the academy functions as a rung on the ladder to glory.

To me, it has come to serve as the road to my emancipation.

This morning, for the first time, the soles of my shoes glide across the glittering floors of that hallowed hall.

Perched rigidly in the administrator’s office, my fingers hum with nerves until they will no longer stay still, and I begin twisting them. Yet the edges of my mouth carry a smile—genuine and steadfast, gracious and almost imperceptibly serene.

That day, the inauguration day.

The door stands peeled open.

I leap to my feet far too abruptly. I knock the chair with my knee. Catching my foot and regaining balance in the next instant, I feel a scorching wave of humiliation scorch every square inch of my face.

Camila, keep your composure carefully in your control. Lift your chin. Alphas never stumble over pieces of furniture.

The administrator throws her head back in a wide, radiant smile.

It is my genuine pleasure to present to you Valeria Solari, the class’s foremost honour student. Valeria steps into the room as though a shaft of sunlight were streaming through the window. Waves of blonde curls undulate through her hair. Her smile casts an aura of gentleness, sincerity, and luminous warmth. For an instant that lasts no longer than a breath, I cannot recall how to breathe.

Alpha to her very essence, she radiates poise, assured confidence, and a vibrant luminous glow. Verging on absolute certainty, you must be Camila Duarte.

She offers no variations:Welcome to Laguna Blanca Academy. She outstretches her hand toward me.

In a sudden burst, I snatch her hand—palm slick—and hold on until I can at last convince myself to let go. She is the daughter of the school’s most generous benefactor and will someday assume the Luna role of the Crimson Fang pack.

A hushed shiver of profound awe slips into her tone as she continues, “She’ll likewise occupy your room for the rest of the year.” Pack. Titles and power settle upon her as effortlessly as a cloak she never has to lift.

Those exact predicates beat down upon me like unremitting hammers, blow after blow. Stunned nearly into muteness by the blow, I nonetheless steel my breathing long enough to say, “I could not be more delighted to share this moment with you, Valeria.”

Throat clearing again, I repeat, with greater emphasis, “It is genuinely my pleasure to meet you.”

That smile continues to remain rigidly fixed. Quietly gliding down the hallway, the administrator’s footsteps gently fade into the receding moments behind her. A tangible stillness, gently unspooling between us, settles over the air.

An Alpha never fidgets.

“Camila, right? Come on. My toes hammer insistently as I wait for the words that will keep me from looking like an i***t. Great—let’s go out and retrieve your schedule and locker?

She speaks; her voice glides over me and pulls me from my tangled thoughts.

A flood of relief sweeps from the depths of me. Linking arm in arm with her, we glide slowly through the grand hall. Murals trail up the walls, narrating wolves and the legends of times long past.

An intangible haze of opulence and reverence crackles round us—a hitherto unlived ambience.

I somehow cannot stop watching. A low hum of students glides by us, their stature and wide shoulders accentuated by eyes as sharply focused as razors. Neither the tiniest girls reach my height. A tension coils around my rib cage.

A single probing stare and the silent weight of a commanding word from Eris meant I could wrench the mortar of my deception from beneath my feet. Breathe.

Shove the thought aside. Valeria leads me into the secretary’s office and places my class schedule in my hand.

I roll it over in my hand. She places in my hand a dainty golden key, and the gentle heft curls a soothing warmth in my palm. My key. An actual key.

A solid emblem of my position in this world. Where were you educated prior to this school?

The words slam into me. Valeria puts the question to me with a relaxed tone.

She’s fishing. I feel my chest implode. Quite the opposite—she isn’t laying down a baited line; she is merely raising a question.

Think, Camila. Think.

Should I offer the wrong reply, the façade will tumble. After forsaking the immaculate equilibrium I had laboured so meticulously to keep, animated by those words, I respond, “I completed my studies from home.” My parents… generally act as very protective guardians. So I pushed. But that whispered a struggling beat inside my blood that drew me softly to the course of my destiny.

In the final analysis, they allowed me to stay. Gliding out with the polish of a perfected pool of honey, my lie slid effortlessly from my mouth.

I nearly trip over the words. She evaluates me, her eyes tightening only the slightest amount.

A tight knot knots in my stomach.

Does she accept what I’m telling her?

She gives a succinct, curt nod.

A flood of relief sweeps over me so suddenly I come close to passing out. My glimm Weighted down by my textbooks, a fountain pen rests at precisely the spot my hand will grasp it. I glided my hand over the polished wood and, with boundless fluidity, glided its length across the immaculate pages. Mine.

She says, “The school provides everything,” letting a modest pride flare in her tone. My father supervises most of the board. So long as I keep you at my side, you are utterly safe. Nobody will touch you.

Her words weigh as inexorable as stone.

Before I can rein it in, a smile breaks across my face.

I so desperately wish I could believe in her. Could I only have a friend?

Still, I press my lips together, careful to give no hint of undue eagerness. All the tugging currents of light leap back to me—curving from beneath our feet to alight on an unpretentious country relative whose eyes cling steadfastly to the dazzling baubles before her.

And the noise begins.

Screams. Shouts. Laughter. Chaos breaks out before us in the corridor.

Arching my toes, I lean backward and throw my neck back to peer over the sea of heads in front of me. For me, nothing but the most distinguished figures emerges into view.

What is unfolding? I dig my toes into the floor, leaning in and craning my neck toward the mass of people.

For a handful of seconds, Valeria stays silent. She simply seizes my hand. The throng parts for her as water slips around a stone. They scarcely even hesitate to wonder about it. They know she is royalty.

She jerks me by the hand, dragging me to her side as my head spins and my breath snags.

Then silence.

The hallway comes to a dead hush.

Three boys step out of the doors.

The air changes.

I draw in a ragged breath.

On the right, the first boy lifts his spine, every muscle bunched into rigid knots, a tangle of curly brown hair tumbling over his brow. His amber eyes shine with a nearly golden glow in the light. From afar, the scene radiates in subdued brilliant light: light blonde hair slipping over sparkling emerald eyes alive with mischief.

Yet the one in the centre takes it all.

A fluttering pulse leaps in my chest.

Him.

He who only just lingered at the gates.

Thiago Acosta.

Even as the murmurs murmur his name, I know who he is—without anyone having to tell me. His gigantic gravitas compresses the air around us into obeisance.

Tucked without reproach against his ears, a razor-sharp parting glides over the contours of his chiselled features. The corners of his mouth tighten into a rigid line. His grey eyes drift languidly down the hall, outwardly dismissive, yet they cut into me as if my skin were nothing more than a single pane of glazed glass.

Within my innermost being, Alma’s limitless, unfettered restlessness races outward, flinging itself wide.

He glides as though the floor were his own. Every look—it seemed—was obliged to bend in deference.

A hush-covered tide of reverence slips through the hall.

Head by head, they lower their gazes. Knees bend. Each vertebra in my spine hardens to iron.

Except me.

I will never slap my knee in deference.

No. It glides beneath my skin and coaxes my capitulation.

Not to him. To no one.

He stops.

His grey eyes tighten the moment they settle on me.

For the span of a heartbeat, the world stands motionless.

“You.”

The word cuts the silence cleanly in two.

I throw my head back, praying he’d turned that scowl on someone else. Nothing. Only a wall.

“Me?” I gesture feebly.

His eyes stare on unflinching.

You are the new girl.

It isn’t a question. In his voice, nothing except command resonates. In my capacity as a senior, my chief responsibility is to make sure you never cede your place.

I wrench a shaky smile onto my face. What has exposed you?

His eyes stay implacably steady. Your lack of awareness leaps out as conspicuously as a sore thumb. New girl—Rule one: bow each time we cross.

A licking heat flares across my cheeks. A tremor courses through my knees.

An iron vise presses in on my chest. How seductive it is to fold—to submit.

His aura’s weight crashes down on me. His partner—the blonde with the green eyes—slips a crafty smile and studies me as though I’ve gone mad. I steel my steadfast resolve not to bow, and in a voice as steadfast as stone, I bark out the point-blank command. Rather, a blaze springs to life inside me.

Before you dare to lecture anyone else, you ought to perfect the manners you lack. I hiss, hand on my hip, my glare burrowing into his perfectly smooth skin.

I press my feet more firmly into the floor.

A momentary flare of surprise flits across his features, and then his mask falls back into place.

His eyes flare a fraction wider. This instant—and no instant thereafter. A quiet ripple of inhalations ripples through the hall.

The thrum of my heartbeat keeps time to a cadence. By what right of the heavens have I just done what I did?

The peal rings forth. The hush of a hundred wolves holding their breath.

Fate has taken hold of the reins to my destiny.

Not yet halfway through his first syllable, I pivot and vanish.

With every pound my feet strike the floor, I rocket into the closest hallway. I hurl the door wide and stagger into the shadowed storage room, my lungs caught in a spasm.

I lean my spine into the wall and rest my palm against my thudding heart. In the interests of decency, how could I ever have spoken those words? Why, for the life of me, could I not bend as they all did?

A lightning bolt coursed through me the instant I refused to yield.

Why was I so unable to simply bow, like everyone else? Yet the instant my eyes shut, his face leaps into my thoughts unsummoned.

That arctic scowl. At the instant that I refused to yield, a lightning shock coursed through me, crashing over my body. A stirring wells up inside me.

There is one thing I know for certain.

Not fear. Not regret.

Something else.

In order to stay alive here, I must keep Thiago Acosta at a safe, safe distance.

To stay alive in this place, Thiago Acosta is the one person I must keep at a safe, safe distance.