Marked by the King Alpha

Emory Donahue turned twenty-one years old today. That was the headline, the trending tag, the noise the world made about me once again. Twenty-one, and somehow already a global singer, a model, an actress—a carefully manufactured icon polished so relentlessly that the shine had become a kind of armor. People adored me, worshipped me and consumed me as if I were a dream designed for their entertainment. And not a single one of them knew who I truly was. High above Paris, in a penthouse that felt more like a set piece than a home, I collapsed face-first onto the enormous white bed and screamed into the pillows. The cry dissolved instantly, smothered by silk and the suffocating quiet that wrapped itself around me like a second skin. “Why do I have to celebrate my twenty-first birthday at yet another event in yet another country?” I groaned, the words muffled and tired. Danny—my assistant, my handler, my closest friend, and the only witness to the cracks in my façade—stood beside the bed holding a cup of tea with the caution of someone offering a remedy they doubted would ever be enough. Her hair was already frizzing from stress, and the day had barely begun. “It is Lucien,” she replied with a sigh. “Your manager believes the world must be reminded of your existence, even though every human on the planet already knows your name.” I rolled onto my back and draped an arm across my forehead in dramatic resignation. “I simply want one birthday without cameras, without questions, and without pretending that I enjoy being watched.” Danny let out a snort—inelegant, fond, and honest. “You are a celebrity, Emory. Your job is to appear radiant while quietly unraveling on the inside.” I hurled a pillow at her. She caught it effortlessly, her smirk softening the moment. Through the towering windows, Paris shimmered with indifferent beauty. The city stretched outward in glittering strands of light, as if someone had pried open a jeweled music box and left it singing beneath the afternoon sun. Tonight I would walk yet another red carpet, smile until my cheeks ached, and perform normalcy with the fluency of someone who had never known anything else. It was routine, expected and exhausting. And beneath all of it, beneath the gowns and the gloss and the carefully curated persona, something in me remained hollow. I was empty, profoundly and bitterly alone. Lonely in a way that gnawed from the inside outward, leaving wounds no amount of spotlight could disguise. Because beneath every lie I lived, beneath every human illusion I wore, there existed a truth no one in this world could imagine. I was a she-wolf. A hunted one. A framed one. A creature who had been running for five years. I had been accused of an unforgivable crime—the murder of the Luna of the Alpha King and the murder of my own fated mate. Accusations forged in cruelty, sharpened by politics, and cemented by the silence forced upon me. I had committed none of it. Yet I bore the blame as if the accusation were a collar fastened tightly around my throat, a brand burned into skin that had never healed. At sixteen, I fled into the human world with only fear as my companion. My wolf hid deep inside me, silent and trembling, refusing to shift, refusing to reveal herself. That silence became my protection. No one in the human world knew my scent. No one saw the wolf beneath my skin. No one suspected the fugitive creature walking among them, pretending to be one of their own. My fame became my camouflage, my applause became a distraction that hid my terror and my success became the mask that obscured my very existence. For five years, I lived with the haunting awareness that the slightest mistake, the faintest slip, the wrong pair of eyes might reveal everything I struggled to bury. ******** Run, Emory… run. The first time I understood that fate despised me with a precision almost personal, I was eight years old, wandering too far from the cabin my father repaired each summer. The afternoon had been warm and deceptively peaceful, sunlight stretching in gentle beams across the forest floor, butterflies drifting lazily between patches of wildflowers. I had been instructed—repeatedly—to remain inside, to read quietly, to stay where he could see me. But children rarely obey, and I was no exception. Curiosity tugged at me like a thread, pulling my bare feet deeper between the trees until the scent in the air changed. The familiar smell of pine and earth twisted sharply, tainted by something metallic—heavy—wrong. Before I had time to understand it, a scream fractured the quiet. Not a human cry, but the unmistakable, heart-piercing sound of a wolf in agony. I should have run back. Instead, I crept toward it. Hiding behind a fallen log, fingers digging into the cold moss, I saw her: a woman collapsed on the forest floor, breath ragged, hands pressed desperately to the deep wound at her side. Her honey-dark hair clung to her sweat-slick face, and her eyes—shimmering silver—burned with a fierce, desperate will to survive even as her body trembled beneath her. Before I could process any of it, a rogue crashed into her again, snarling, claws descending toward her throat. My scream caught just behind my teeth. “Emory!” My father’s voice tore through the air as he sprinted toward me, grabbing me with such force I nearly fell forward. His chest rose and fell in frantic shock as he dragged me behind him—then his eyes lifted, and he saw the injured woman and the rogue hovering over her. He didn’t hesitate. He wasn’t a warrior—not even close. My father was a gentle carpenter with strong hands meant for building, not battling. But the instant he saw the woman in danger, something inside him snapped into action, and he hurled himself at the rogue without a second thought. The struggle was brutal. Claws slashed. Bones cracked. The rogue snarled with a vicious hunger, and the woman tried desperately to push herself upright, but her body refused her. I watched, helpless, trembling so hard my teeth chattered. And then the rogue’s attention shifted—its gaze sliding toward me with a hunger that froze my blood. A sound built in my throat but never escaped. My father shouted something I couldn’t understand and tried to intercept, but the rogue knocked him aside with a single swipe, sending him crashing into the dirt. The woman was next. She tried to roll away, but the rogue leapt onto her again, jaws widening for the killing bite. Something inside me broke. My tiny hand closed around the nearest thing I could grab—a rock the size of my palm—and I threw it with every ounce of terror coursing through me. It struck the rogue’s skull with a dull thud. Barely enough to register. But enough to make it turn. Enough to give the woman a chance to scramble backward, dragging herself onto her elbow with a strength I didn’t understand then. Enough to save her life. And enough to destroy mine. Because the warriors arrived a second later—too late to witness the truth, too early to understand what had happened. They saw the rogue’s corpse. They saw the bleeding woman. They saw my father and me standing near her. And they filled in the rest with lies. No one listened when he tried to explain. No one cared when the Luna—because only later would I learn she was the Alpha King’s mate—attempted weakly to speak on our behalf before collapsing into unconsciousness. Then Alpha Gregor arrived. Powerful. Cold. Terrifying. His gaze landed on me like a judgment written in stone. He asked what I witnessed. I told the truth. And because the truth endangered the lies he and others needed—because a single child telling what she’d seen could unravel everything—they silenced my father forever, cutting him down before my eyes, leaving his blood soaking into the soil while my voice broke into a soundless scream. They left me alive only because killing a child would damage their honor. Honor. How ironic. ******** People like to pretend fate strikes only once, but its cruelty can be patient. It waited eight years before coming for me again, this time with the soft eyes and smile of Killian Gregor, heir to the pack that had destroyed my life. We were sixteen when the mate bond snapped between us beside the training grounds. I felt my wolf stir—fragile, hesitant—while his breath faltered as though the world shifted beneath him. For a brief, fragile moment, I believed the Moon Goddess was giving me something good. A chance. A gift. But gifts from fate always have claws. That evening, Killian asked me to walk with him in the woods, his voice uncertain but gentle. I followed with my heart pounding, wondering what he would say about the bond, wondering if he felt even a fraction of what I did. We had barely made it ten minutes beneath the shadows of the trees when the scent returned. That scent. Iron. Rot. Blood. The scent of my nightmares. The rogues came silently this time—three, maybe four—gliding out of the darkness like shadows with teeth. Killian didn’t have time to scream. I didn't have time to shift. I didn't have time to live. They tore into my mate while I stood frozen, powerless, consumed by terror so total it swallowed my voice. When it returned, I screamed until the forest shook with it. Warriors arrived too late, again. They saw Killian’s body. They saw me beside him. And again, the truth didn’t matter. “She killed him,” someone spat. “She rejected him first,” another muttered. “She’s cursed.” “She’s dangerous.” “She’s just like her father.” They dragged me to the dungeon andI spent days in darkness when they planned my execution for the next full moon. Then when the moon rose, every wolf shifted and ran. Every guard left their post. And my wolf—silent for sixteen years—finally whispered the single word that saved me: ‘Run.’ I shifted, small and silver and scentless, a ghost wolf impossible to track, and fled into the human world where I rebuilt myself with trembling hands. Where I became Emory Donahue, an actress, a singer, a star—someone untouchable, untouchably human. A lie wrapped in fame and lights. A wolf who learned to hide among mortals. For five years, I believed I escaped fate. ******** “Let’s go,” Danny said softly, her voice tugging me back into the present. The room blurred into focus again—the bed, the city, the carefully scripted life I pretended was enough. I exhaled slowly. I have lived five years in a lie, pretending to be human and praying no wolf would find me. But today—my twenty-first birthday—I could only hope that no one would discover me, and that my hiding place would remain safe. —-----------------------------