Owned by the Exiled Alpha.

Mandy's POV Let me tell you something about hope. Hope is a pretty, lying thing. It sits on your shoulder and whispers sweet nonsense in your ear while the whole world is screaming the truth in your face. Hope will have you standing in front of a mirror at eight in the evening, zipping up a red dress, reapplying your lip gloss for the third time, and convincing yourself that tonight…. tonight… is the night everything you've been waiting four years for finally happens. That was me, Mandy. Omega of the Cleansilver pack and apparently, the biggest fool in it. ****** "You are not leaving this house tonight, child. What is wrong with you?" I heard my mother before I even got to the bottom of the stairs. She had a very loud voice that carried through walls, floors, and apparently, every last nerve in my body. I stepped into the sitting room and there she was, arms folded across her chest and house slippers on. I looked at her and she looked at me. I smiled my most patient smile. "Mom." "Don't 'mom' me in that voice like I'm being unreasonable." "I'm not…I didn't even say anything yet." "You didn't have to." She gestured at me, up and down, her hand sweeping over my red dress like it personally offended her. "You're dressed like a woman going to the clubhouse and I'm telling you right now, sit down." I laughed because honestly, what else do you do? I crossed the room, kissed her cheek, she smelled like shea butter and flower,it was so warm and then I moved toward the door. She stepped sideways and blocked it. This woman. "Mom, please. Stop it and calm down. I promise you, you are just overthinking this." "Overthinking." She repeated the word slowly, like she was tasting it and finding it bitter. "Overthinking, she says." She pulled her glasses off her forehead and pointed them at me. "Amanda. You are an omega. I am not saying that to bring you down. I am saying it because I love you and I need you to know your place in this world so you don't go out that door and come back broken." There it was. I had heard this speech so many times I could deliver it myself word for word. "You are an omega dating the son of Alpha Cleansilver," she continued, right on schedule. "How do you think this ends, Mandy? Tell me. How does that story end?" "With a wedding," I said simply. She closed her eyes like I had physically pained her. Outside, across our house, a car alarm went off briefly and then stopped. A dog barked twice in response and went quiet. That was my Markus car. "People like that," she said quietly, "do not end up with our kind. That is not cruelty, that is just the truth of this world, baby. I need you to hear me." And here is where I should have stopped. Here is where I should have sat down on that couch next to my mother, taken her hand, and listened to the woman who had never once in my twenty-two years on this earth steered me wrong. But hope was still sitting on my shoulder, whispering. "Oh mom, for God's sake." I moved around her toward the door. "Stop it. I'm getting so tired of this negativity. Markus loves me. We have been together for four years and he has promised to marry me. Four years, mom. Men don't stay four years for a woman they don't intend to marry." "Oh child…." "No. Mom, please listen to me." I turned around and I took her face in my hands because I needed her to see that I wasn't just being stubborn, I genuinely believed this. "Your fears are running so loud that you can't even see the reality right in front of you. Your daughter…. your only daughter…. is about to marry the alpha's son. Do you understand what that means for us? What that mean for this family? For once in our lives we won't have to scrape and bow and make ourselves small for people who don't see us." I smoothed her cheek with my thumb. "If nothing else, mom, be proud of me. Please." She looked at me for a long moment. Her eyes were doing that thing they do, holding words she'd decided not to say. Headlights swept briefly across the sitting room curtains, and then his car began to horn. "Markus is already here to pick me up," I said, softer now. "I'll see you later." I kissed her forehead, grabbed my clutch, and walked out the door. The night air hit me the moment I stepped outside,it was warm and heavy with that waiting rain, the smell of wet earth already rising from somewhere. I did not look back. I should have looked back. Except Markus wasn't at the door. His car was there, sleek and black and expensive but when the window rolled down it was Daniel, Markus's driver, who looked out at me with an expression I didn't know how to read. "Miss Mandy." "Daniel." I looked past him at the empty passenger seat. "Where is he?" A small, uncomfortable pause. "Mr. Markus had some business to attend to. He asked me to bring you to the venue." I stood there on the pavement in my red dress with my lip gloss freshly applied and I told myself it was fine. It was his birthday. He was probably already at the party, probably running around making sure everything was perfect, probably going to pull me close the moment I walked in and say something that made every woman in that room understand exactly who I was to him. I told myself that and got in the car. The door closed behind me with that expensive, cushioned sound of a vehicle that sealed out the world. Daniel pulled away from the curb smoothly. I watched our street slide past the window, our house, the lights still on inside, my mom's silhouette briefly visible through the curtain as she watched us go. I did not look back long enough to see her expression. ****** We drove for twenty minutes through streets that grew wider and better lit the further we got from home. The city at night glittered and was very beautiful with streetlights. Music leaked from a bar we passed and some groups of young people laughed loudly at a corner and were gone. I watched it all and thought about what I would say when I saw him. The venue appeared at the end of a long, lit driveway, warm golden light spilling from tall windows, the sound of music reaching the car before we even stopped. Voices, laughter, the general expensive hum of a party that was already well underway. I had chosen this venue. I had chosen the music too. I planned that party with my own two hands. Every detail, from the venue, the deep navy and gold color scheme because those were his colors. The floral arrangements I'd spent three weekends researching. The cake was three tiers, dark chocolate, his favorite, with his name written across the top in gold script. The playlist that opened with the song that was playing the night we met. I had poured four years of love into that room and then I'd poured this night on top of it. I walked into the entrance of the party and immediately felt it. That shift, that subtle, horrible shift in the air when you walk into a room and too many people look at you at the same time and then quickly look away. Conversations dipping. Eyes sliding sideways. Someone near the bar leaned to whisper something to the person next to them. I kept walking. I told myself I was imagining it. I told myself that right up until I reached the center of the room and saw him. Markus Cleansilver. And the woman he was kissing. The world did not spin. That is what they tell you…. that the world spins, that your knees go weak, that everything blurs. None of that happened to me. Everything became very, very still and clear. Like my brain had switched into a mode where it wanted to make absolutely sure I didn't miss a single detail. His hand on her waist, her fingers curled into the lapel of the navy jacket I had suggested he wear tonight. The gold balloons I'd ordered swayed gently above their heads. I don't know how long I stood there. Long enough that when he finally opened his eyes and saw me, he didn't even have the decency to look startled. He looked at me like I was a toy. He stepped back from her and straightened his jacket. "Mandy." Something in my chest cracked clean in half but I walked toward him anyway because I needed to hear it. I needed him to say whatever he was about to say directly to my face so that some part of me couldn't argue with it later. "Markus," I said, and my voice was steady. I was proud of that, actually. "What is this?" He had the nerve to sigh. "Don't make a scene." "I'm not making anything. I'm asking you a question." He looked at me then and what I saw in his eyes was not guilt. It was something closer to irritation, like I was embarrassing him simply by existing in a room he was in. "Did you actually think," he said slowly, quietly, the words measured and deliberate, "that I was going to marry you?" The room had gone quiet. Not silent because the music still played, the low hum of conversation continued somewhere behind me, but the people nearest to us had stopped pretending they weren't listening. "You're an omega, Mandy." The word landed like a slap. "Did you genuinely believe I'd make you my luna? Stand up in front of my father's pack and put a collar on an omega?" He almost laughed. "And before you start," he added, his voice dropping lower, crueler, "don't think I don't know what that little game was about. Keeping me waiting. Saving yourself." He tilted his head slightly. "What exactly were you saving it for, Mandy? You really thought withholding yourself was going to make me wife you?" Now he was laughing, quiet and dismissive. "All you did was waste both our time." I felt heat crawl up my neck. The particular, scorching heat of humiliation witnessed by a crowd. "Let me introduce you to someone," he said pleasantly, turning to the woman beside him like we had simply been having a casual conversation. "This is Serena. Daughter of Beta Holt of the Ironridge pack." He smiled at her, a warm, genuine, a smile I recognized because I thought it had belonged to me. "My girlfriend and my intended mate." Serena looked at me with the particular expression of a woman who had already won and knew it. I looked at the cake I had ordered. His name was in gold script. Dark chocolate. His favorite. I don't remember deciding to leave. One minute I was planning my life around him and the next.....