CHAPTER 3 — THE ALPHA’S REGRET
1120 Words
James woke with his cheek pressed against cold soil, damp earth clinging to his skin. For a moment he didn’t know where he was. The forest was silent except for the distant rustle of leaves, and the fading moon peeked out behind a drifting cloud, as if hiding from him in shame.
He tried to sit up,
Pain sliced across his temples.
His vision blurred.
His heartbeat felt too loud.
And beneath it all… his wolf purred.
A slow, satisfied, possessive rumble.
Mine.
The word echoed through his bones, curling around his heart in a way that made him freeze.
“No…” he whispered, pressing a hand to his chest as if that would quiet the bond burning there.
He pushed himself upright, breath shaky, and forced his eyes open. His surroundings came into focus, the trees he’d crashed through, the torn ground where his paws had dug in, the lingering scent of her.
Her.
The girl in white.
The girl whose terrified eyes haunted the edges of his memory.
His pulse spiked. He inhaled sharply, pulling in the remains of her scent, fear, salt, innocence, and desperation. But it wasn’t just the scent that hit him.
It was the bond.
It pulsed through him like a heartbeat not his own. A thread of energy, invisible but unmistakable, tugging somewhere deep inside his chest.
Alive.
Scared.
Far away.
He could feel her.
The realization hit him so hard he staggered back.
“What did I do?” he rasped.
Images flashed in broken pieces, her running, her bare feet slicing across the ground…the moon highlighting her tear‑stained face…the sound of her scream…
And then the moment he’d sunk his fangs into her, claiming her as his own.
James squeezed his eyes shut. “No. No, no…”
His breath hitched as the truth clawed its way to the surface.
He didn’t just bite her.
He marked her.
An Alpha’s Mark.
On a human.
That was impossible. That was forbidden. That was lethal, deadly, to the human and the wolf.
“Why?” he whispered, voice cracking through the thick guilt clogging his throat. “Why her?”
The moon hadn’t given him a choice.
But that didn’t matter. As Alpha, he was supposed to control his wolf, control the night, control himself. But one scent, one girl, and everything collapsed.
His wolf stretched lazily inside him, satisfied and possessive, as if proud of what it had done.
Mate, it growled.
“Don’t say that.” James shoved the thought away. “You don’t even know who she is.”
But the bond pulsed again, stronger this time, shooting a sharp ache through his ribs. He sucked in a breath, dropping to one knee. The pain wasn’t physical, it was emotional. A pulling. A call.
A need.
She was hurting.
She’s afraid, the wolf murmured.
“I know,” James whispered.
He could feel it. The trembling in her limbs. The way her fear thickened the air around her. His chest constricted, guilt twisting deeper.
“Moon, what have I done?”
He dragged his hand through his hair, trying to force the foggy pieces of memory into clarity. But he couldn’t even fully remember her face. Just fragments.
The tears in her eyes.
The shiver in her breath.
The way she looked small and breakable beneath him.
He felt sick.
He had marked a girl whose name he didn’t even know.
His wolf growled, but this time it wasn’t satisfaction, it was a warning.
She’s getting farther.
You’re losing her.
James inhaled sharply.
The bond throbbed like a heartbeat being tugged away from him. His instincts screamed. His wolf snarled. The earth beneath his palms vibrated with urgency.
“No,” he breathed, rising to his feet. “Where are you?”
He looked around the forest, scanning for footprints, broken branches, anything but, the moonlight was fading, and her scent was already growing weaker.
But the bond?
That he could feel.
He closed his eyes and focused.
Fear.
Movement.
Men.
Voices.
Cold hands are grabbing her.
“Guards,” James whispered, snapping his eyes open. “She’s been taken.”
His heart slammed against his chest.
Taken.
Not by wolves,
not by rogues,
but by humans.
Humans who had no idea what they were dealing with. Humans who might hurt her intentionally or not.
And the bond wouldn’t allow that.
James cursed, pacing like a trapped beast. “Think. Think.”
He didn’t know her.
Didn’t know where she lived.
Didn’t know why she’d been in a wedding dress or why she was running.
But he knew something else.
The mark would change her.
Humans weren’t meant to carry a wolf bond. It would twist inside her, burn through her blood, tug her toward him while tearing her away from her old life.
She wouldn’t understand.
She would be terrified.
She might even think she was dying.
His stomach twisted painfully.
He had to find her.
Now.
He took a deep breath and let the Alpha power seep through his veins. His senses sharpened, and the world focused around him. He pushed his wolf forward just enough to catch the fading traces of her scent.
There,
faint footsteps heading east.
Different scents mingled with hers,
sweat, leather, steel.
Men.
Multiple.
His jaw clenched.
“They’re taking her somewhere,” he murmured. “But why? Who is she to them?”
His wolf snarled.
She’s ours. That’s what matters.
“No,” James growled. “What matters is her safety.”
Another tug jerked at his chest, sharper this time, making him wince.
She was crying.
He didn’t hear it with his ears—
He felt it.
A vibration through the bond, shaking him to the core. The kind of fear that made her limbs weak. The kind that hollowed out a person’s chest.
James’s eyes darkened, fury streaking through him like lightning.
“No one makes my mate cry.”
The word slipped out before he could stop it,
Mate.
He swallowed hard.
He didn’t deserve her. He didn’t even know her. And yet the bond pulsed again, declaring the truth he couldn’t run from:
He belonged to her now.
And she belonged to him,
even if she didn’t want to.
James lifted his head, inhaled one last sharp breath, and let his wolf rise just beneath his skin.
“Hold on,” he whispered to the girl he’d marked in a moment of madness. “I’m coming for you.”
Then he ran.
Not as a man.
Not as a beast.
But as an Alpha driven by regret, instinct, and something far more dangerous,
A bond that would either save them both…
or destroy them.
- Writer
