CLAIMED BY HER COLDHEARTED ALPHA KING

02

SERAPHINE

The noise inside the club was the kind that got under your skin and stayed there. Loud and relentless and everywhere at once. I had found my mate in bed with another woman, the same woman he had looked me in the eye and called his sister, and now I was here, sitting at a bar, trying to drown the whole evening in whatever they kept pouring into my glass.

I was ready to stand up to my father for Adrian. I was ready to fight that battle without blinking. And yet,he had been cheating on me, this entire time.

He did not even have the decency to end things cleanly. He just let me walk in and find out for myself, and then made it plain that I would never be anything more than something useful to him.

I tipped another glass back and let my eyes fall shut for a moment. The music thumped around me and somewhere in the noise I found something that almost matched the chaos sitting inside my chest.

I had thought coming here would help. I had thought the crowd and the lights and the drinks would push the image back far enough that I could breathe.

But even now, with the whole club pressing in around me, I could still see it. Camille. Adrian. The way he had not even flinched when I walked through that door.

"Get out of my head." I muttered to myself, pressing my fingers briefly to my temple. I had been fighting that image for hours and it was not going anywhere. It just sat there, sharp and clear, refusing to blur no matter how much I drank.

I could feel the alcohol settling heavier now. I looked at the people on the dance floor, moving freely, laughing, leaning into each other, and I ached for something that simple.

My life was not supposed to look like this. My mate was not supposed to be with someone else's. My father was not supposed to be the kind of man who handed his daughter over like a sealed agreement.

And Alpha Daxton. A man who had wiped out his entire family line just to make sure no one could ever challenge what he took. That was who my father had decided I belonged to now.

I would not survive a single day inside that world. I knew that with everything in me. I would rather face whatever came next on my own terms than walk willingly into that.

And yet, somewhere underneath all of it, underneath the rage and the grief and the alcohol sitting warm in my stomach, his name kept surfacing. Daxton. There was something about the way it sat in my mouth. Something I did not understand and did not want to examine too closely. A strange pull that made no sense given everything I knew about him.

I shook my head and reached for another drink.

Then something shifted.

A cold awareness moved across the back of my neck and I turned, slowly, and found him already looking at me.

He was sitting close, closer than I had registered before, and he had clearly been there for a while. Still. Completely composed.

Watching me the way someone watches something they have not decided what to do with yet. His eyes were a deep, dark shade that caught the light in a way that made it difficult to look away from them.

His jaw was set and his presence was the kind that did not need to announce itself.

"Who are you and why are you watching me like that?" I said, and I heard the slight whisper in my own voice as the words came out.

He did not answer. He just kept looking at me, steady and unhurried, like my question had not landed yet or like he was deciding whether it deserved a response.

Everything about him pulled at something I could not name. The way he held himself. The quiet authority sitting around him like a second skin. I had never felt a pull like this toward someone I had never met before and I could not explain it and I was too far into the evening to try.

"You are not Adrian." I said it quietly, more to myself than to him, and he still did not speak.

I could feel his eyes moving over me and it was not uncomfortable. It was something else entirely. Something that made the heat in the room feel like it had a direction.

I leaned closer before I had fully decided to and my hand found the fabric of his shirt. I looked straight at him. "Do you want to…"

"Little wolf." His voice came out low and quiet and carried something in it that made me go still. "Do not start something you are not in any state to finish. I did not come here for this and you need to.."

I kissed him before he could complete the sentence.

For a moment he did not move at all. I could feel his heartbeat shift beneath where my hand rested against his chest.

The pull I had been feeling since the moment I turned and found him watching me was the kind that did not leave room for thinking clearly, and I was not thinking clearly to begin with.

He pulled back. Not roughly. Just firmly. Enough to put distance between us and look at me properly. "You are drunk. Who let you in here in this state." It was not quite a question. He was already standing, already reaching for me with a steadying hand. "Come on. I am getting you out of here."

I did not know where he was taking me and I was not entirely sure my legs were reliable enough to resist even if I wanted to.

I watched him stop in front of a door somewhere along a quieter corridor, pull a key from his pocket and push it open. I hesitated at the frame.

"Where exactly are you taking me?" I asked, and his hand was firm and warm at my waist and the contact sent something electric moving straight through me. When his eyes came down to meet mine the look in them went through me completely and only made everything I was already feeling worse.

"Do you want to..to…" I strutted again, my hands finding its way to his waist.

"Stop." The word came out husky and controlled and I could barely hear it. "You are not in your right mind. I should walk you to the front desk and have someone call you a car." He stepped back from my hands.

"Your scent." I said it without planning to. "It does something to me. I want you to,f**k me"

"Stop talking like that." A breath came out of him, the moment I said these words "You do not want me to lose my patience entirely."

I could feel the tension in the room. He was controlling himself and the effort of it was visible and that visibility only made everything sharper and more impossible to ignore.

I had come here to forget one evening and somewhere along the way the evening had turned into something else.

I knew I was not steady. My eyes kept losing focus and finding it again. But I could see him clearly enough. The sharp lines of his face and the rigid set of his shoulders and the way he was very carefully not looking at me the way he wanted to.

"I want you to make me forget tonight." I said it plainly. "I will pay you whatever you want. Name it. Just make me forget that I watched my mate choose someone else. Make me forget that my father sold me off to a stranger. Just make me forget all of it, the way Adrian never could." The words came out cracked at the edges and I felt the image push forward again without permission.

Adrian and Camille. The sounds behind that door. The way he had not even had the grace to look ashamed.

My eyes were barely staying open now. I swayed slightly and his arm caught me and when his eyes came down to mine they were darker than before and no longer entirely composed.

"Please." I said it quietly. Just one word.

Something shifted in him.

"Damn it." He said it low and rough and then he was moving, guiding me fully into the room, the door closing behind us.

His hands found me and a sound came from somewhere in his chest. "You are going to have to own every bit of this in the morning."

"I know." I said. And I meant it.

Slowly, his lips touched mine and what came next burned through everything else.