CLAIMED BY HER COLDHEARTED ALPHA KING

03

SERAPHINE

The sunlight came through the window and hit me directly in the face before I was ready for it. I groaned and pressed my hand against my forehead, trying to push through the thick heaviness sitting behind my eyes. Whatever I had poured into myself last night had left a serious mark.

"I really went too far with that." I muttered, sitting up slowly and blinking at the room around me.

Nothing was familiar.

The walls, the furniture, the ceiling above me, none of it was anything I recognised. That realization moved through me fast and cold and I was upright before I had fully decided to move, my hands gripping the edge of the bed as my heart kicked hard against my ribs.

"Where am I?" My voice came out rough and small and the panic underneath it was not small at all. I tried to get to my feet and my legs had other ideas, shaking beneath me like they had forgotten their purpose. I looked down and the shame arrived before anything else did.

I was not wearing anything.

Had I actually done that? Had I genuinely let a stranger take me to bed?

The possibility sat in my chest like something I swallowed wrong and I pressed both hands to my face and held them there.

"What did I do?" It did not even come out as a question. It came out flat and horrified and entirely directed at myself.

My phone was going off somewhere nearby. I found it and stared at the screen. Ten missed calls already, and the morning had barely started. I dropped it without calling anybody and reached for my bag with my hands that were not entirely steady.

The memories came back in pieces. The club. The drinks. The man sitting beside me, watching me with those dark composed eyes. The way I had leaned into him like gravity was pulling me in that direction. The things I had said to him. The way I had begged.

I clenched my hand tight and felt my nails press into my palm and welcomed the small sharp sting of it because it was easier to focus on than the rest.

"What was I thinking?" I whispered, and the anger in my voice was aimed squarely at myself. I had gone there to forget Adrian. I had gone there because I needed somewhere loud enough to drown the image of him and Camille out of my head, and instead I had made the evening into something I was now going to have to live with indefinitely.

"Why did you let that happen?" I said inwardly to my wolf, my voice going quiet and sharp. "You were not drunk. I was the one who could barely stand and you just let me walk right into that."

My inner wolf, Sera, responded without any trace of guilt whatsoever. Her voice came through warm and unhurried. "Because he was worth it. You felt it too and you know it. That man's touch was not something I was going to let us walk away from. I would do it again."

"I cannot believe I am standing here having this conversation with you." I said back to her, pressing a hand to my temple. "And if my mother ever finds out about this she will not recover."

"Then do not tell her." Sera said simply. "And stop fighting what you feel. I would very much like to feel it again."

"Absolutely not." I said out loud, to no one in particular, and grabbed my bag from the floor.

I did not stop to look at myself in the mirror. I did not stop for anything. I pushed through the door and moved quickly down the corridor and out into the sharp morning air of the car park, my keys already in my hand as the metal cold against my fingers. I could feel different eyes on me as I crossed the lot and I did not slow down for any of them.

I got into the car, dropped my bag onto the passenger seat, and drove. The tyres made a sound against the ground that felt appropriate for the way I felt, and I put as much distance between myself and that hotel as I possibly could while the morning light sat uncomfortably bright all around me.

***

My father was standing in the entrance hall when I pushed the front door open. He did not need to say a word. The look on his face said it before he opened his mouth.

"Where have you been, Seraphine?"

"I... Dad, I just.."

"You went to that club." He cut through whatever I was about to say. "I told you. I made it perfectly clear to you that Alpha Daxton is coming here today with his people. You should have been here preparing, not out all night doing whatever this was." His voice was tight with controlled anger and he pointed at me in a way that made me feel considerably smaller than I was.

"Dad, please." I walked past him into the house, though my legs were not entirely reliable. "Please just reconsider this. Give me to anyone else. Any other arrangement. Just not him. Not a man who did what he did to his own family."

This was not what I had the capacity for right now. Last night, already took everything I had. I found out my mate had been using me for years, I had done something I could not undo with a stranger, and now I was walking back into a house where my father was still pushing me toward a man I was terrified of.

"You will not do anything foolish, Seraphine. Go upstairs, get yourself cleaned up, and put on something appropriate. Alpha Daxton will be here to take you with him. Do not keep him waiting and do not forget the veil."

He walked away before I could respond and I stood in the hall with tears sitting just behind my eyes and nowhere to put them.

I climbed the stairs slowly. My room felt both familiar and completely wrong, like it already knew I was not going to be in it much longer. I sat on the edge of my bed for a moment and looked at the wall and tried to remember who I had been a week ago, before any of this had started pulling at the threads of my life.

I did not recognise that version of myself anymore.

"You do not need to cry, Sera." The voice came from the other side of the room and I turned. Mira was sitting on the chair beside the window, watching me with that particular expression she always wore when she was trying to hold herself steady for my sake. My cousin sister. The only person in any of this who had not yet done something unforgivable to me. "Your dad cares about you. He must have a reason."

"It is not okay, Mira." The tears came before I could catch them. "None of this is okay."

She did not push back on that. She just let me have it.

"Camille is Adrian's fiancée." I said it out loud for the first time and hearing it in my own voice made it land differently than it had in my head. "They were together the whole time. He introduced her to me as his sister and I believed him for three years. Three years, Mira. And my father is still standing downstairs telling me I have to walk out of this house and go with a man who has blood on his hands. And I..." I stopped.

"And you what?" she asked quietly.

"Nothing." I shook my head. "I just need someone to help me get out of this. Please. I am asking you."

Mira's face shifted into something that looked like it cost her something. "I cannot, Sera. I wish I could. Alpha Daxton and his council will be here in ten minutes and your father asked me to make sure you were dressed." She stood up slowly. "I am so sorry."

"A wedding dress." I said it flatly. "He wants me in a wedding dress."

"I know."

"For an arrangement." A short humourless sound left me. "I have already been handed over and now I have to dress the part as well."

Mira did not have an answer for that. She just moved toward the dress hanging on the wardrobe door and waited.

"Your scent is different." She said it carefully, not quite looking at me.

"I need a shower." I said, and walked into the bathroom before she could follow that thread any further.

The cold water hit me and I stood under it and let it come. The memories from last night moved through me again and this time I did not fight them quite as hard. The stranger's hands. The low quiet certainty in his voice. The way I pulled toward him felt like something outside of my own control.

"You want to feel that again." Sera said, her voice drifting through.

"Stop." I said.

"He is not what you are afraid of. You just do not know him yet."

"I know enough." I said, though I was not entirely sure which man I was talking about anymore. "I am not getting married. This is not a real marriage. This is a transaction and I am the currency."

"Is it worse than what Adrian did to you?" Sera asked, and the question landed quietly.

I did not answer her. I stood under the water until it started to go cold and then I stood there a little longer.

Adrian's words surfaced without warning. The things he had said to me in that room with Camille watching and smiling. The way he had reduced three years down to something I could not even repeat to myself without flinching.

"Seraphine." Mira's voice came through the door,and I sigh bitterly."Your father says you need to come down. He is here."

"One moment." I said.

"He is already here, Sera."

I turned the water off and stood very still for a breath.

I walked back into my room. The dress was laid out across the bed, pale and carefully arranged, and looking at it sent a specific kind of pain moving through my chest. Mira helped me into it without speaking, her hands gentle on the buttons, her movements slow and careful like she understood that I needed the extra seconds.

She settled the veil over my face and smoothed it down and then she pulled me into a brief hug that she held for just a moment longer than usual.

"You are beautiful." she said, and her voice caught slightly on the last word.

Tears slipped down my face and I let them go because there was no point stopping them.

The stairs felt longer than they ever had. Every step down was a step toward something I could not come back from and my chest was tight with that knowledge. Mira held my arm at the bottom and steadied me when my feet hesitated and whispered something encouraging that I did not fully hear.

I stepped into the living room.

The air changed the moment I crossed the threshold. There was a scent in the room, something deep and grounding and unfamiliar, and it moved through me before I could prepare for it. My wolf surged forward with a force I had not felt from her before, suddenly wide awake and pulling hard toward something I had not yet let myself look at directly.

“Mate!”

Sera's voice rang through me like a struck bell and my heart dropped.

And then it started again, faster than before.