The Alpha’s Secret Mark

Chapter 3: Find a Husband or a Grave

(Sloane's POV)

My father's footsteps hit every stair like a verdict.

He came through the bathroom door with Diane right behind him, both of them filling the small space fast. Jade grabbed my arm and spun me toward the window light before I could pull away, making sure the mark on my neck was fully visible.

Warren stared at it for a long moment. His expression shifted from shock to something harder.

"That mark," he said slowly, almost to himself. "That's from a strong wolf." He looked up at me. "Who put that on you?"

Diane and Jade both went quiet when they heard the word strong. Their eyes moved to me with something that wasn't quite curiosity — more like calculation. Like they were recalibrating.

I swallowed. "I don't know who he was."

"What do you mean you don't know?" Warren's voice cracked upward.

"He was at the pond. In Harlow Woods. I don't — I didn't get his name, I was just—"

"He ran off," Jade cut in, her voice sweet and poisonous. "Obviously. I mean, who's actually going to stay for her?"

The first kick came before I finished flinching from her words.

Warren was a Gamma — the pack's military coordinator — and he hit like one. I went down hard, catching the edge of the dresser on my way to the floor, and lay there while the room spun.

"You have the nerve," he said, breathing fast, "to come into my house, with that on your neck, and tell me you don't

even know the man's name?" Another blow landed across my back. I curled in on myself, pressing my face to the floor.

"I should have left you with your mother. You are exactly what she was — a disgrace."

My mother.

I thought about her every time he said her name like a slur. She was a servant in Silverridge — a quiet, kind woman

who'd made one mistake on a night my father had come to her drunk and wanting. He'd blamed her publicly, called it seduction, stripped her rank down to omega slave. The old Alpha had at least insisted he take me in. My father had

never forgiven either of us for that arrangement.

"Make her an omega too," Jade said, watching from across the room with her arms crossed. "If she's going to act like

her mother—"

"No daughter of mine," Warren snapped at her, "gets demoted in front of this pack." He wasn't defending me. He was

protecting his own title. I understood the difference. "Wolf-less her whole life, and now this." He grabbed my jaw and forced my face up toward his.

I didn't look away. I'd learned early that looking away made it worse.

He studied the mark for a moment, and then something shifted in his expression. The rage didn't leave, but something

colder moved underneath it — strategy replacing heat.

"The Mating Ball," he said.

He let go of my face and straightened up.

"Listen to me carefully." His voice had gone flat and quiet, which was somehow worse than the shouting. "Silverridge

and Ironwood have a tradition. Every three generations, the Ironwood Alpha takes a wife from our pack. This cycle, it's our turn to offer. Ironwood's Alpha — Caden — needs a Luna." He paused. "The rest of both packs will mingle.

Unmated wolves, all of them."

I waited.

"You will go to that ball," he said. "And you will leave it with a husband. Someone willing to accept a marked, wolf-less girl, if you can find one stupid enough." He reached down and gripped my face one last time, fingers pressing hard into my jaw. "And if you walk out of that ball alone — you will not walk back into this house. You understand me?"

He'd threatened me before. Empty words, usually — control tactics, pressure. But the look in his eyes this time was

different. Still and certain.

"You will leave this house for a husband," he said, "or you will leave it on a slab."

Then he hit me one more time, open-handed across the cheek, and walked out.

* * * * * * * *

I knew about Caden.

Everyone in Silverridge knew about Caden.

Ironwood's Alpha had wiped out twelve packs in the last four years. Not defeated them — erased them. Their survivors

were scattered and packless, wandering the outskirts of territories that no longer recognized them. He was young, apparently. Cold. Efficient.

Our own Alpha was aging. The power balance between Silverridge and Ironwood had been tilting for years, and the

Mating Ball tradition was less of a celebration now and more of a diplomatic necessity — Silverridge offering something

Ironwood wanted in exchange for continued peace.

I lay on my bedroom floor after Warren left, staring at the ceiling, pressing two fingers against the mark on my neck.

No wolf. Marked by a stranger. Father's ultimatum sitting over me like a guillotine.

Nobody at that ball was going to want me.

(Caden's POV)

I woke up knowing she was gone before I even opened my eyes.

The warmth behind me — the weight of her — had disappeared, and in its place was just cold grass and the sound of

early birds in the trees above Harlow Woods.

I reached for the bond.

Nothing. A muted, dead-end silence where there should have been a living thread.

I sat up.

That wasn't possible. A mating mark — my mark — didn't just go quiet. It should have been a signal I could track for

miles, a compass needle pointing straight to her no matter where she went.

My wolf was already restless, pacing hard, pushing at the edges of my control.

Find her, he kept saying. She's ours. Find her.

I remembered everything about the night before with perfect clarity. I'd caught her scent on the wind miles out —

something sweet and warm and mine, every instinct I had snapping into immediate certainty. I'd run. I'd found her surrounded by rogues, and the rage that hit me when I saw that was something I hadn't felt in years. Focused and cold and absolutely lethal.

I'd sent them running. That had been the easy part.

The rest of the night had been anything but easy — in the best possible way.

She had fit against me like something carved specifically for that purpose. I'd marked her when my wolf released

enough to make sure she didn't feel pain, only the pleasure already moving through her. The mark had taken cleanly.

I'd felt it settle.

And now it was silent.

The only explanation I could come up with was that her wolf was somehow suppressed — dormant, maybe, or blocked

in a way I'd never encountered. A dormant wolf wouldn't carry a bond signal the way an active one would.

I'd mated her in the dark. I didn't even know what she looked like.

My wolf found that particular detail deeply unacceptable.

I went back to my territory and called Rhett — my Beta — to my office before the morning was half over.

Rhett listened to the whole thing without interrupting, which was why I kept him around. When I finished, he was quiet

for a moment.

"You marked someone." He said it carefully, the way you'd confirm something unlikely.

"Last night. In the woods outside Silverridge territory."

He exhaled. "And the Mating Ball with Silverridge is in two weeks."

"I'm aware."

"Caden." He leaned forward. "That's a three-generation tradition. You can't exactly show up and say never mind."

"I know what it is." I stood and moved to the window. The tree line stretched out in the distance — Harlow Woods,

somewhere in there, where I'd left a mark on a woman I couldn't find. "I'll choose someone nominally. Someone who understands what the arrangement actually is. I'll be honest with them before they agree." I turned back to him. "But I will not build anything real with another woman while my fated mate is out there unmarked on my bond."

Rhett nodded slowly. "And if we can't find her before the ball?"

I didn't answer right away, because the answer was something my wolf refused to accept.

"Find her, Rhett." I said finally. "That's all. Just find her."