THE ALPHA'S CURSED MATE

Forced on him

SELENE’S POV

Dante was a fantasy for most women in every pack but he wasn’t that for me. Before I met him I just thought that he was an overrated alpha wolf. I thought that he wasn’t much of a big deal and I couldn’t understand why all these female wolves acted lie they had a loose screw whenever they spoke about him. However, now that I had met him I could understand why everyone acted the way they did when it came to him. I could understand why everyone wanted him. All these didn’t make him more desirable to me but it did make me see him in a different light. I still wished that I hadn't met him and that he wasn’t my mate because now I felt like he just saw me as something else that belonged to him.

I would have preferred it if he had taken another female wolf to keep him company because then he wouldn’t be paying much attention to me. I may have been even more comfortable in the cell if he wasn’t coming to check on me at all. However, he had come and he brought with him confusion. He didn’t seem sure of himself or what h wanted to do with e either but that was the part that frustrated me the most was that I was now also unsure of what I wanted when it came to him.

I was a prideful female wolf despite the fact that I had nothing and had no one on my side, but one thing that I always told myself was that I would never want any wolf to think they had rescued me from a difficult life. However even that had started cracking.

The moment Dante’s footsteps faded, the air around me collapsed into a heavy, suffocating silence.

I didn’t move. I didn’t breathe. I just stood there staring at the empty space where he’d been, my heart beating hard enough to bruise my ribs. He didn’t know, he didn’t know if he regretted saving me. He didn’t know if he wanted me dead or alive. He didn’t know what to do with me, or with the bond, or with the fact that I was suddenly the one flaw in his perfect, heartless world. And somehow, that stung more than if he’d said he regretted everything.

I slid down the wall slowly until I hit the cold stone floor. My legs trembled, not from fear this time, but from everything else — confusion, exhaustion, anger, hurt, things I wasn’t ready to name. I wrapped my arms around myself, trying to steady my breathing. Dante’s scent still lingered in the air — wild, smoky, dangerous. It clung to the iron bars like he had left part of himself behind without meaning to. Reminding me that the feelings that I was developing were nothing I could easily escape.

He had made it clear I wasn’t wanted, he had told me I was “forced onto him.”He had said he would “decide what to do with me.” I should have been furious, I should have been terrified. Instead all I could think about was the look in his eyes when I asked him if he regretted saving me and bringing me here. To be honest I don’t even know why I asked him that question, its not like I had been sent here because I wanted to. I was selected because I was disposable and being here was the worst thing that could have ever happened and the last thing that my own alpha would have expected to happen.

Dante didn’t strike me as a man who hesitated often. But he had been hesitating a lot with me, what I wasn’t certain of was what was causing his hesitation. Was it the fact that he wasn’t sure if he wanted to keep me around as his mate or he just wanted me gone?

I pressed my forehead against my knees and shut my eyes. I expected tears — I braced for them — but none came. I was too tired, too numb, too overwhelmed to cry. The last thing I ever wanted to cry for was a male wolf worst of all Dante.

My wolf was restless inside me, curling tight in my chest, muttering things I didn’t want to hear.

He didn’t leave because he hates us, he left because he’s afraid.

“Shut up,” I whispered, but a part of me hoped that she wasn’t wrong, and that terrified me.

Minutes passed, maybe hours — time felt strange in the cold emptiness of the dungeon. Eventually the guard brought me a thin blanket and a cup of water. He didn’t speak, didn’t look at me, just shoved it inside the cell and walked away quickly, like my presence was something dangerous. I pulled the blanket around my shoulders. It smelled of dust and age, but it was warm enough to stop the shaking. I wasn’t even sure if the shaking was caused by the cold cell or the fact that my wolf longed for a mate that would never accept her.

I hated how deeply tonight had carved itself into me, and how his voice kept echoing into my head as if he had said some great things to me. I hated that my heart and my wolf were clinging onto the hope that one day he would accept me and finally talk me up to his room. As a matter of fact, I caught myself fantasizing about this event a coupled of times after Dante left me here. I hated myself for it and it made me feel cheap and weak.

I curled onto the stone bed, blanket pulled tight, the dungeon lantern flickering weakly in the corner. I tried hard to get myself to sleep, maybe I would stop thinking about him if I had drifted off into sleep. But then I would probably dream about him because he was the only thing filling my head. It was like he had taken over my head.

All I could hear was his voice, quiet and painful:

“…I don’t know.”

These words kept playing over and over in my head, I kept trying to decipher what else he could have meant by that despite the fact that it seemed to be a straight forward statement. It was all the things that I wished it could mean, I wished it could mean that he wanted me here and that he as just struggling to adjust to me being in this place but deep down I knew that was not what it meant.

But all I felt was a strange, unwelcome ache in my chest — as if part of me wished he had said something else. Something impossible, something that could make me feel better about being here.