Cursed to Marry the Alpha

Chapter 2: Paper Doesn't Have a Pulse

Damon's grip on her wrist tightened.

Not painful. Just impossible to escape.

"Say something," he said, voice low and rough. "Anything."

Elira's mind was a blank white wall. The pulse in her chest hadn't faded — if anything, it was getting louder, a second heartbeat syncing itself to her own like it had been waiting years for permission.

"I don't know what that was," she lied.

"You're lying again."

"Maybe I'm just good at it."

Something flickered across his face — not quite amusement, not quite anger. He released her wrist like it had burned him.

"Mates don't lie to each other," he said. "Not about this."

The word landed in her stomach like a stone dropped in still water.

Mates.

He'd said it. Out loud. Like it was already decided, already real, already something neither of them could take back.

"We're not mates," Elira said, forcing steel into her voice. "We're two people signing a treaty."

"Tell that to whatever just happened in your chest."

"Nothing happened."

"Elira." Her name in his mouth did something she refused to examine. "I felt it too."

She should have walked away. Every instinct told her to walk away, to put a door and a hallway and preferably an entire county between herself and Damon Voss.

Instead, she stayed rooted to the spot, staring up at him like he held the answer to a question she was too afraid to ask.

"Even if it's real," she said carefully, "it doesn't matter."

"Doesn't matter?" His eyebrows lifted. "The mate bond is the rarest thing in our world, and you're telling me it doesn't matter?"

"I'm telling you this marriage is a treaty. Nothing more. That's what we agreed to."

"That was before I felt your pulse trying to match mine from six feet away."

Elira's cheeks burned. "That's not — "

"It is exactly what it sounds like." He stepped closer again, and this time she didn't back away, though every muscle in her body screamed at her to. "I don't know what you're hiding, little wolf. But I know fear when I smell it. And you reek of it."

Her breath caught.

He can smell it. He can smell the fear. How long until he smells the rest — the guilt, the secret, the thing that's going to get him killed?

"I'm not hiding anything," she said, too fast.

Damon's eyes narrowed. For a long moment, he said nothing, just studied her the way a predator studies something that's decided, foolishly, to hold its ground.

"Fine," he said finally. "Keep your secrets. For now."

"There's nothing to keep."

"There's always something." He turned to leave, then paused, glancing back at her over his shoulder. "This marriage was supposed to be paper and ink, Elira Vane. Nothing more."

"That's what I said."

"Yes." His jaw tightened. "But paper doesn't have a pulse."

He was gone before she could answer, disappearing down the corridor with the kind of controlled, furious grace that made every wolf in the vicinity instinctively lower their eyes.

Elira didn't move for a long time.

She pressed her palm flat against her sternum, right over the place where the pulse still throbbed, faint now but unmistakably present. Like a second heart had taken up residence beneath her ribs and had no intention of leaving.

This wasn't supposed to happen.

The plan had been simple. Marry the Alpha. Keep the bond dormant. Never let it complete. A marriage that existed only on paper, exactly like she'd told him, exactly like her mother had begged her to make sure of before she died.

Never let the bond finish, Elira. Promise me. Whatever it takes.

She'd promised. She'd meant it.

But promises were easy to make in a hospital room with her mother's hand growing cold in hers. They were much harder to keep standing three feet away from a man whose eyes had gone gold when the bond woke up.

"You look like you've seen a ghost."

Elira startled. Her cousin Wren leaned against the corridor wall, arms crossed, dark eyes sharp with concern.

"I'm fine."

"You're the color of spoiled milk. That's not fine." Wren pushed off the wall, falling into step beside her. "What happened in there? Everyone's saying the meeting ran long."

"The terms were finalized. That's all."

"That's not all." Wren's voice dropped. "I saw Damon Voss storm out of here two minutes ago looking like someone lit his favorite jacket on fire. What did you do?"

Nothing. Everything. I don't know.

"We felt something," Elira admitted quietly. "During the meeting. A pulse."

Wren went very still.

"A pulse," she repeated slowly. "Elira. Please tell me you don't mean what I think you mean."

Elira didn't answer. She didn't have to. Her silence said enough.

"Oh, Goddess." Wren grabbed her arm, pulling her into an empty alcove, voice dropping to a fierce whisper. "You can't let that bond complete. You know what happens if it does. You know what your mother always said would happen."

"I know."

"Then you need to stay away from him. Starting now. No private conversations, no eye contact, nothing that gives that bond room to grow."

"I have to marry him in three weeks, Wren. There's not exactly a version of this where I avoid eye contact."

"Then find a version," Wren snapped, fear sharpening her voice into something almost cruel. "Because if that bond completes and the curse wakes up—"

"I know what happens," Elira said, sharper than she meant to. "I was there when Mom explained it. I remember every word."

Wren's expression softened, just slightly. "Then you remember what she said about hesitation, too."

Elira's stomach twisted.

The bond does not wait for the willing. It does not care about promises. Once it starts, Elira, there is no stopping it. There is only surviving what comes after.

"I'll be careful," Elira said.

"Careful isn't enough. You need him to hate you. You need him to want nothing to do with you, bond or not."

Elira thought of the way Damon had looked at her in that corridor — furious, confused, and undeniably, dangerously interested.

"That," she said quietly, "might already be a problem."

Wren's face paled. "What do you mean?"

Before Elira could answer, footsteps echoed down the hall. Fast. Purposeful.

Both women turned.

Damon stood at the end of the corridor, staring directly at Elira like he'd tracked her scent through solid stone.

"We need to talk," he said. "Now."

Elira's heart slammed against her ribs — and this time, she couldn't tell if it was her own pulse racing, or his.