The Alpha’s Secret Mark

(Sloane's POV) I'd worn the lingerie and everything. Not that anyone would ever know. Midnight-blue lace, the kind I'd saved up two paychecks for, hidden under my coat like a secret I'd been keeping for months. Tonight was supposed to be the night Cole and I finally made it official — chose each other, marked each other, before any fated mate nonsense could pull him away from me. I'd had it all planned out in my head. The look on his face when I walked in. The way he'd smile, slow and sure, like I was the only thing in the room. We'd talked about this. Promised each other this. I pushed open the door to his room. Cole was there, all right. So was my half-sister Jade. I stood in the doorway, completely frozen, my hand still on the knob. My brain refused to process what my eyes were showing me. Jade was straddling Cole, facing me, her dark hair loose around her shoulders. The second she spotted me, she didn't stop. She smiled — that slow, deliberate smirk she'd been perfecting since we were kids — and dipped her head to bite at Cole's neck. "Yes," she breathed, loud enough for me to hear every syllable. "Right there." My stomach dropped straight through the floor. Cole stiffened. He turned his head and saw me. "Sloane—" His hands were still on her hips. "Jade and I just found out we're fated mates." His voice came out hoarse, guilty. But his hands didn't move. Fated mates. On Mating Day, wolves over nineteen can recognize their fated ones — the pull is chemical, bone-deep, impossible to fight once it kicks in. It can throw you into heat from across a room. The bond, once formed, lasts a lifetime. The only way around it is to mark a chosen mate beforeyou ever meet your fated one. That was the whole point of tonight. I'd known since I was fourteen that I'd never get a fated mate. My wolf was dormant — had been my whole life. I could feel her, faintly, a presence at the back of my mind like a candle behind frosted glass. But she'd never shifted, never spoken, never surfaced the way everyone else's did. Which meant my pack had written me off years ago. Cole's inner circle. The girls at school. Jade's whole crew, especially Jade herself. Wolfless freak. That one had been her personal favorite. Pathetic human liar. That one came from her friends. They said it to my face because they figured I couldn't do anything about it. No wolf, no fight. And for a long time, they were right. But I had Cole. And Cole — the Alpha heir, the most protected man in Ashford Creek — had chosen me. Not because of status or bloodline or pack politics. Because he loved me, or at least that's what I'd believed. Now he was looking at me like he was sorry, and his hands were still on my sister's hips. "You're choosing Jade?" My voice came out smaller than I wanted. "Knowing everything she's done to me?" A flash of something — guilt, grief, I couldn't tell — crossed his face. He started to shift away from her. Jade's arm hooked around his neck before he could move an inch. She pulled him back down, her eyes locked on mine, her smile never wavering. "A fated bond makes the Alpha line stronger," she said to him, soft and sweet, like I wasn't standing five feet away. "You know that, Cole." And just like that, his jaw set. The softness left his eyes, replaced by something flat and golden — his wolf surfacing, burning through the man I thought I knew. "Get out, Sloane." His voice came out low, rough. Not Cole's voice. His wolf's. "Go home." I didn't let the sob out. I refused. I just turned around and ran. * * * * * * * * I ended up at Millpond, the way I always did when everything fell apart. It's tucked deep inside Harlow Woods, maybe a mile off the main trail — a small, still stretch of water that catches moonlight like a mirror. I'd found it when I was nine, running from one of Jade's ambushes, and it had been mine ever since. I sat at the edge with my knees pulled to my chest, breathing through the tightness in my throat. The moss was cool and damp underneath me. The trees were quiet except for wind moving through the upper branches. I kept seeing his hands on her hips. I kept hearing get out in that voice. I'd worn the lingerie and everything. Then, somewhere in the dark beyond the tree line, a wolf howled. I sat up straighter. Full Mating Moon. Right. Of course. The rogue packs that drifted through unincorporated land outside Ashford Creek got agitated on nights like this — unmated, unbound, looking for something to claim. I needed to get back to town. I pushed to my feet — and then stopped. There was a smell. I don't have words for it, not really. Warm and dark and somehow sharp at the same time, like cedar smoke and something sweeter underneath. It hit me at the base of my spine first, then rolled upward through my whole body until my fingers were tingling and my breath came short. What— I pulled in another breath, chasing it, before I even realized what I was doing. Mating heat. The thought surfaced through the haze slowly, like something rising from deep water. I'd read about it. I'd heard girls describe it. But I was supposed to be wolfless. I was supposed to be immune to this. The smell was getting stronger. It was moving — coming toward me through the trees. Someone is coming. That snapped me back. I shook my head, hard, and started walking fast toward the trail home. But the scent followed me, thickening the air, and my body was pulling toward it in a way I could not entirely override. "Well, look at that." A voice came from my left. I spun. A man stepped out of the tree line. Tall, stubble-jawed, wearing beat-up denim and a leather vest. A hunting knife hung from his belt. Behind him, three more men materialized from the shadows — same rough look, same slow predatory spread as they fanned out in a loose arc around me. Rogues. The smell of them was sour and close, cutting through that warm, addictive scent that had slowed my thinking down. Fear sharpened me fast. "Looks like somebody wandered out on Mating Night," the first man said, taking a long, deliberate sniff of the air. "And she's in heat." "I'm leaving," I said. My voice was steadier than I felt. "Step back." "Why the rush?" He grinned, showing teeth. "We've got a few unmated guys right here who'd be happy to—" "I said back off." I tried to step around him. His hand shot out and grabbed the hem of my coat, yanking me hard toward him. And then— "GET YOUR HANDS OFF HER." The voice hit like a c***k of thunder, so loud and absolute it silenced every sound in the woods. And that scent — the warm, dark, cedar-and-sweetness scent that had been pulling at me all night — wrapped around me like a wall. My wolf, dormant and silent my entire life, slammed awake.