CLAIMED BY HER COLDHEARTED ALPHA KING

SERAPHINE I looked at my father and could not believe what I was hearing. His words just sat there between us like something he had already decided before I even walked into the room. His eyes were calm but tight around the edges. I had just finished university. I was only twenty two years old. How could they have gone ahead and arranged a marriage for me without even breathing a word to me about it? I stood there staring at them, still trying to make sense of how they could sit there and act like this was reasonable, especially when they had already promised to pass the pack down to me and Adrian, my mate, the one who was supposed to be crowned Alpha. "You cannot be serious right now," I said, and the frustration in my voice was impossible to hide. My hands were trembling at my sides. I kept my eyes on them and I could tell that neither of them was fully comfortable either. They could not hold my gaze for more than a second before looking somewhere else. "I just graduated from the university and you are already trying to marry me off to some alpha I have never even met? You know Adrian is my mate, and yet you are sitting here telling me this?" I stopped myself before I said something I could not pull back. My legs felt unsteady beneath me and I pressed my fingers together hard, trying to keep myself from shaking visibly. "Sera, this is what is best for everyone, and it is also.." My mother stated, and I cut her off before she could finish. "What is best?" I repeated, and I heard my own disbelief sitting heavy in those three words. "You think handing me over to a man who wiped out his entire family line just to sit on that throne, every single one of them gone, and you want me to go and live with that man, you call that what is best for me?" I looked between them both and waited. "Seraphine, you will not speak like.." My father half yelled and I stopped him right there. "Father, please. There is nothing you can say that is going to make me agree to this." He went quiet and held my gaze for a long steady moment. "Mom, how are you going along with this? You know how much Adrian means to me." I walked over to her and sat close, lowering my voice, hoping something in her would soften enough to actually hear me. Her face shifted like she wanted to feel sorry for me but something else was keeping her locked in place. Her eyes were gentle but her jaw was set firm. "Sera, I know this is not easy, but.." "Not easy?" I cut in quietly. "Mom, you have no idea what you are doing to me right now." My father's face went still and when he spoke his voice was low and even. "Sera, we are doing this to keep you safe and to hold this pack together." The moment those words settled over me something desperate pressed hard on my chest. Safe? What did that even mean coming from him right now? "Alpha Daxton wiped out his entire family line just to sit on that throne. Every single one of them, Father. Gone. And you want me to go and live with that man." I said it slowly, one piece at a time, because I needed at least one of them to actually sit inside those words and feel them. None of this felt real to me yet. It still felt like something I was about to wake up from. "Mom, are you really going to let him do this? You are just going to agree to this?" I got to my feet. My mother pressed her lips together. She did not look settled in her decision, not really. So why was she still nodding along with it? "I just... I..." she started, her eyes moving over to my father briefly. Her voice came out quieter but she did not move from where she stood. "Sera, this was decided long before you were born. It is a promise that was made between our packs and it cannot simply be undone." "A promise that could get me killed!" The words came out louder than I intended. "You know exactly what kind of man he is, Mom. Please, I am begging you, do not do this to me." I turned to look at my father. His face hardened into something unreadable and his voice dropped to its lowest register. "Enough, Seraphine. This conversation is over. You will do what needs to be done." Those words went straight through me like something cold and sharp. I pressed my fingers together and fought to keep my thoughts from unraveling completely. The room felt unbearably thick. Its as if I was moving in slow circles, I am still not ready to accept any of what was sitting in front of me. Nobody spoke and the silence made everything heavier. Then my mother's voice came through it, quieter this time, carrying something worn and sad underneath the words. "Sera, I know how much this hurts, but this pack cannot survive without this alliance. This marriage is not only about you. You are the future alpha's mate and the Alpha of the ashwood Pack and that carries weight whether you are ready for it or not." A short quiet breath left me before I could stop it. "Your mother is right, sweetheart. Your responsibility is to stand for this pack and for the people depending on us." People? He was talking to me about people right now? My life was hanging over an edge and that was where his mind went? "You will be fine. Alpha Daxton is not who you have made him out to be in your head. He would not dare harm you." I looked at my father and shook my head slowly. "You want me to feel fine about walking into the home of a man who wiped out every single person in his family line just to make sure no one could ever take what he took? That is the man you are handing me to." I looked at them both and held the silence that came after. "You will listen to me, Seraphine." My father's voice came out harder this time. He only reached for my full name when he was completely done. His whole face shifted into something cold and final. "No, Father. I will not. I am not doing this." I turned toward the door and his voice followed right behind me, flat and firm. "Sera. That is enough. You will respect this decision." He raised his hand the way he always did when he wanted a conversation buried, especially when things had stopped going the way he planned. Tears were pushing at the backs of my eyes as I looked at them one last time. A slow breath left me carrying everything I could not say and then I walked out of the living room. How could they do this? I was their daughter. I was not a bargaining piece to be moved around a board and handed to the highest bidder. I went to my room and stood in the middle of it staring at nothing, completely swallowed by my own thoughts. I had never imagined my life going this way. Not when I already had my mate. My face was hot and my eyes were stinging and I did not know what to do with any of the feelings sitting inside me. I could not just stand here doing nothing. I needed to hear his voice. "I have to call him." I said it out loud to the empty room and reached into my bag for my phone. I pulled up Adrian's name and called. It rang. And rang. He did not pick up. Something cold moved through me and settled low. My parents were already pulling my future apart at the seams and now he was not answering. I grabbed my bag without thinking twice. I got to my car and drove. My chest was tight the entire way and I kept telling myself that everything would make sense again the moment I saw him. *** When I got to Adrian's place,I climb the stairs toward his room and stopped as I reached the top. A sound. Coming from behind his door,make me stopped abruptly. I stood completely still with my hand resting on the handle and something sharp and heavy settled at the back of my mind. I told myself I was reading it wrong. I told myself there was another explanation. "Adrian, don't you dare stop." A moan drifted through the door and something inside my chest dropped without warning. I did not move. Had I actually just heard that? I kept my hand flat against the door and stood there. There had to be something else going on. There had to be a reason that made sense. My heart was moving fast as I stood there quietly telling myself that the man I had built my whole world around, my own mate, was not doing what every part of me already knew he was doing on the other side of that door. "Right there, Adrian, do not stop." The voice came again and my back found the wall beside the door on its own. "I swear I could stay here with you forever." Adrian's voice came through next and everything in me went completely cold. I still could not make myself push the door open. I reached for the handle again and then their voices rose once more and my hand went still. "I cannot get enough of you. Do you have any idea how long a month feels when I am sitting waiting for you? All because you needed Seraphine to feel settled?" the voice of the woman,that Adrian had introduced to me as to his sister , came through with a sharpness to it. "I could not risk her becoming suspicious. You already know what this was always about. It was never about her. It was about the pack and everything that comes with her." Adrian's voice followed, and I pressed close to the door and looked through the narrow gap. My vision become blurred. My hands were shaking without my permission. I pushed the door the rest of the way open and stepped inside, still fighting against what my eyes were now confirming directly in front of me. He had pulled her closer to himself,with their both arms wrapped entirely in each other. He did not notice me standing there at all. He was completely somewhere else. The man I had trusted to stand beside me and lead my pack was in his bed with another woman. Not a stranger. Camille. The same woman he had introduced to me as his sister. I still could not make it feel real. I had been with Adrian for years. He had spent all that time making me feel chosen and wanted, and yet the person standing in front of me now was someone I had never actually known. While eatching him hold her, tears stream down my eyes. My bag slipped from my fingers and it hit the floor and that small sound was the only thing that finally pulled them back into the room. Adrian scrambled upright and stared at me. "Seraphine? What are you doing here?" He looked startled but what sat beneath it was irritation more than anything else. My legs felt unreliable beneath me. Tears were already moving down my face. "You really should have knocked before walking in," Camille said flatly, not flinching, not moving from where she was comfortable and settled. "You? Her? Camille, she is your fiancée?" I could barely push the words out as I looked at her. She smiled slowly and nodded her head once. "Yes. And not his sister." She reached for him and kissed him and he kissed her back without a single hesitation. I could not make my legs carry me anywhere. I just stood there with tears falling down my eyes and nothing to hold onto. What had happened to my life? Had any of it ever been real? How had I not seen any of this? "Why would you do this? You told me she was your family. Why?" I finally managed, my voice barely holding its shape. "Do not act like this is a surprise," Adrian said, drawing Camille into his side. "I wanted to be alpha. Your father had other plans." He paused for a moment. "He was holding onto some promise made to a man who has been in the ground for years." He said it like it was the most sensible thing in the world and Camille nodded beside him, a slow satisfied look spreading across her face. I could not understand how this man was standing here without a single trace of guilt. He had been caught completely and his response was to explain himself like I was the one causing the inconvenience. Tears sat in my eyes as I looked at Camille still holding onto everything I had believed was mine. Adrian pulled her close and kissed her slowly and the pain of watching it was something I felt in places I did not have words for. I pushed everything I had into not breaking apart completely while they stood right there watching me. "Did you honestly think any of this was real? That I ever truly wanted you? Seraphine, you were twenty-two years old and you were useful. That is the beginning and the end of it." The man I had trusted above every other person in my life said,without blinking. "So I was never your mate. I was just something you needed." I said,quietly, with almost nothing left in my voice. He did not answer. He had already turned back to Camille as though I had already left the room. Breathe. Seraphine, breathe. So this was the second time today that everything I thought I was standing on had been pulled from under me. I tried to tell myself I was still misreading it somehow, that if I stood here long enough it would shift into something that made sense. I watched Adrian pull her closer without once looking in my direction. "No," I whispered, because I was not ready to let it be true. He was my mate. He was supposed to protect me. “This is not real,”I told myself. I am not ready to accept this,not after everything my parents had already done to me today and not when I just discovered that Adrian had been cheating on me,all these time. "Baby, just tell her to leave. I have been waiting long enough, unless you want her to stay and watch the whole thing? Seraphine, you are more than welcome if you want to stay." Camille said it brightly, her eyes sitting on me like I was something mildly amusing. They both looked at me then, fully and at the same time, for the first time since I had walked through that door. "She makes a fair point. If you want to stay, Seraphine, I promise I would not leave you feeling left out." Adrian said it easily, pressing a slow kiss to the side of Camille's face, and something inside me went very still and very quiet. My heart was pounding steadily against my ribs. Watching him be that unbothered, that comfortable, holding her the way he used to hold me, it was a different kind of pain from anything I had carried before. Tears kept coming and I had stopped trying to hold them back several minutes ago. This was the worst day of my life. My father had placed me in the hands of a dangerous and deadly man, and the one person I had believed was firmly on my side had never been standing there at all. How. Tears ran down my face as the full weight of it settled. Everything I thought I had built was already gone and I had stood here and watched every piece of it fall. "Looks like she is not interested. See yourself out whenever you are done standing there, Seraphine." Adrian muttered, already finished with me, pulling Camille back into him without a second glance. She moved down slowly in front of him. I could not stay in that room for a single second more. My heart was still hammering when I turned around and walked out.