Vows of Ruin: The Alpha's Contract

I sold my soul to the devil on a Tuesday, staring at the shattered teeth of the man I thought I was going to marry. The blood on the shiny mahogany table in the boardroom was a shocking red. It was a slow, painful tap-tap-tap against the imported marble floor of Cross Defense Corp's penthouse office. Mark, my fiancé, was curled up in the corner of the room, whimpering through his broken jaw. An hour ago he had kissed my cheek and told me he loved me and that he wanted me to bring a confidential file up to the executive floor. I didn't know that the file had stolen military blueprints in it. I didn't know Mark framed me for corporate espionage to pay his gambling debts to a competitor pack. I didn't realize that I would find myself facing the scariest man in town. Alpha Kaelen Cross. He was standing by the windows, which were stretching from the floor to the ceiling, and was gazing out at the storm that was gathering over the city's skyline. A flash of lightning lit up his wide shoulders, casting sharp shadows. He was dressed in a custom-made charcoal suit, which somehow gave him the appearance of a predator rather than a CEO. His hair was black as night, as was the thick, heavy wave of Alpha dominance that rolled off his body, but there was nothing civilized about it. It filled the room. It grabbed my throat. It required that I put myself on my knees and bare my neck. I put my nails into my palms so that my skin would break and I would not fall; I had to stay standing. I couldn't allow my wolf to come out. I had been hiding all my life what I was. I had been taking suppressors to dull my scent. I had dyed my striking silver-blonde hair a mousy ash-brown, and I was wearing dark contacts over my violet eyes. I wouldn't be sent to prison if an Alpha like Kaelen felt the strange, dormant power sleeping in my blood. I would be a test animal the rest of my pathetic life. Kaelen's voice shook through the vast room, "You are very quiet for a woman who is about to be incarcerated in a maximum-security black site for fifty years. It had a dark, rich baritone sound, without any human warmth. Cold. Deadened. He didn't turn around. He didn't need to. He knew my pulse was racing and my breathing was short and shallow; he knew where I stood. I didn't steal the blueprints," I said, my voice still, though my shaking hands were beginning to quake. I am an office assistant, Mr. Cross. I didn't have the security clearance to get access to the sub-basement where those files are stored. "I know." Kaelen finally turned. The temperature in the room dropped 10 degrees. His amber eyes fixed on mine, and my breath caught. They were the eyes of a killer. Completely empty, ruthless, and calculating. He didn't look at me as a woman; he looked at me as a chess piece. "You know?" I choked out, watching Mark's wretched, bloodied figure. So why is he spilling on your floor, and why do I have to stand here with your security detail? Kaelen took a slow walk toward the large table in the board room. He walked in a deadly silent manner that made my whole body want to run. However, the heavily armed guards in front of the doors made that impossible. Kaelen said, in a monotone voice, "Mark confessed ten minutes before you walked through those doors. He sold it to the Bloodfang Pack; they were going to take him tonight. He offered you up as the sacrificial lamb to take the fall. There was a repulsive taste of treachery in my stomach. Mark. The guy who sold me cheap coffee and told me that I would have a quiet life in the suburbs. He had given me to the wolves without hesitation. Let me go," I lifted my chin, "then! If he confessed, it's not my place to be here. Kaelen came to a halt at the top of the table. He leaned over, his big, scarred hands resting on the shiny wood. He was so large. You'd have every business here, Miss Vance. Mark may have confessed, but the Bloodfangs have a bounty on the head of the courier who sent those files, and that's you, and as soon as you step out of this building, you're theirs. They'll tear you apart just to send me a message. My blood ran cold. The Bloodfangs were renowned for their ruthlessness. They were not concerned with innocence, but they were concerned with making spectacles. Why is it you are telling me this? I whispered, taking a cautious step back. You don't mind if I die. I don't," Kaelen agreed without hesitation, the harsh truth more of a slap in the face than anything else. But I do care about optics. And my military council, at the helm of which sits my esteemed uncle, believes I'm too crazy to lead Cross Defense Corp. They want me to take a Luna. A wife. Someone to ground my... aggressiveness. He retrieved a large, stout, leather-bound folder from the table and pushed it across the blood-stained wood. It came to a halt just an inch from my fingers. I need a political shield," Kaelen said with his amber eyes boring into mine. You get my protection, absolute protection; no one touches you, no one threatens you, and you live under my roof, under my rules—and I need a woman who is 100% dependent on me. I looked at the folder. The term "CONTRACT" was embossed in silver lettering. You want me to marry you," I said, ash tasting in my mouth. "A fake marriage." He corrected himself with smoothness: a legal marriage. “In law and in the pack, I am your husband. But don't think of it as affection; don't think of it as warmth. You're my wife; you're my choice. Do you understand?" I glanced at the contract and then over at Mark, who was groaning in a pool of his own blood. This is the world that I lived in. The weak were devoured, and the strong constructed cages. Kaelen Cross was presenting me with a cage of gold and titanium. If I were to exit that door, I would be dead. When I signed it, I was a member of a monster. "Why me?" I asked, peering up through his cold amber eyes. You are a billionaire, an alpha; you can have any high-ranking female in the city. Why fake-colored hair and cheap shoes for the office assistant? A flicker of something bad came into Kaelen's eyes for a mere split second. A nugget of pure, unadulterated possessiveness that had my suppressed wolf whining in the back of my mind. The air thickened and took on a distinct aroma of rain, ozone, and crushed cedar, his scent. “As a high-ranking female comes with political demands,” Kaelen growled against my skin, lowering his voice an octave. You have nothing to lose, Miss Vance. You're a ghost, and ghosts are easily controlled. He was wrong. He didn't know what I was concealing. He didn't know that my blood contained the First Luna bloodline. Not to mention, I was not going to tell him. I stretched out my arm and opened the folder. The pages were thick, and there were clauses on every page that would dictate every aspect of my life. What I would wear, where I would sleep, who I would be able to talk to. There was a total loss of my independence. From the inside pocket of his suit jacket, Kaelen pulled out a sleek silver pen and held it out to me. I gripped it tightly, and my hand shook. Our fingers brushed. When his skin touched mine, a violent, electric shock went through my whole arm. I sucked my hand back, as if I'd been burned. There was a sudden, frightening warmth in my chest. My vision was blurred, and the edges were a hyper-focused gold. The smell of the cedar and ozone was overpowering, smothering the blood smell in the room. After twenty-two years, my wolf broke free from her cage and started to howl—howl in desperate, frantic recognition. Mate. It was an absolute and deafening word that reverberated in my head. I looked at Kaelen and was in pure horror. He had felt it too. I knew he had. His eyes were now dull and lifeless and filled with a storm of violent, terrible rage. His pupils had been dilated, and the gold had gone down to his throat. His chest puffed, and a low growl came from the back of his throat. He stared at my hand, then up at my face. His Alpha presence knocked me to my knees like a punch in the face. All I felt was the blistering heat of the mate bond that bound my soul to a man who hated the very idea of love, as the marble floor was freezing against my bare legs. Kaelen hated it. The disgust, the panic, the sheer furor emanated from him. I was supposed to be nothing, and that's why he picked me. A pawn. And the universe had just shackled him to me. He snarled, his voice no longer smooth but ragged and desperate, "Sign it! He came at me with a threatening step, standing high above my prone body. Sign the hell out of the paper, Elara. I could not hold the silver pen in my hands; they shook so much. I inked my signature on the dotted line on the thick parchment. Elara Vance. As I was about to pick up the pen, the doors of the boardroom burst open, and shattered glass and wood fell all over the marble floor. One of the guards raised his assault rifle and shouted, "Alpha! One of the guards raised his assault rifle and shouted, “Alpha!” Out of the smoke and the wreckage, three huge, moving shapes came into the room. They had eyes that glowed a sickly crimson. The Bloodfang assassins hadn't waited for me to leave the building. They had arrived straight at the penthouse. Kaelen didn't hesitate. He jumped over my body, which knelt on the ground, his muscles bulging and his bones cracking, and the billionaire CEO had disappeared, leaving in its place a monstrous, towering black wolf of nightmares. His voice rang in my mind, a command that was terrifying and possessive and made me press my chest to the bloody ground: "Stay down! I was trapped. Bound to a monster by law and bound to him by fate as the first bodies began to hit the floor.