Claimed by the Ruthless Alpha

Chapter 2

"I... I didn't choose this," I sobbed, the cold air biting at my skin.

He reached down, grabbing my chin with fingers that felt like iron. He forced me to look up into his terrifying eyes. There was no love there. There was no warmth. There was only cold, hard rage.

"Listen to me, little wolf," he growled, his voice vibrating in my chest. "I have no room for weakness in my pack. I have no room for a mate who smells of the kitchens and floor wax. You are a mistake of fate."

The bond screamed in protest at his words. My heart felt like it was being ripped in half. The rejection was a physical pain, worse than the bone-breaking shift I had just endured.

"Please," I breathed.

"Do not beg. It makes you look even more disgusting," Kael said, dropping my chin as if my skin burned him. He turned his back on me, looking out the small window at the moon. "I should kill you right now. A weak mate is a liability. If the other packs find out the Great Kael Blackthorn is mated to a slave, they will laugh."

"I am not a slave," I said, a tiny spark of something—anger, perhaps—flickering in my gut.

He turned his head slightly, giving me a lethal side-glance. "You are whatever I say you are. You will stay in this attic. You will not tell a soul about the bond. If you speak a word of this to anyone, I will pull your tongue from your throat."

"Are you... are you rejecting me?" I asked, the breath catching in my throat.

Kael let out a dark, bitter laugh. "Reject you? No. If I reject you, the bond will weaken me for weeks, and I have a war to plan. I will keep you. I will use the bond to stay strong, but you will stay in the shadows where you belong."

He walked toward the door, but stopped before leaving.

"And Elara?"

I looked up, hope foolishly rising again.

"Clean yourself up. You smell of blood and failure. Tomorrow, you start your work in the laundry. If I see you outside of your working hours, I will make sure you regret being born."

He slammed the door—or what was left of it—and his heavy footsteps faded down the stairs.

I stayed on the cold floor for a long time, crying until I had no tears left. My wolf was mourning, howling in the silence of my mind. We had found our mate, the other half of our soul, and he hated us. He was the most powerful man in the world, and he wanted me to disappear.

But as I lay there, I felt something strange. Deep within my blood, a heat was starting to grow. It wasn't the heat of the shift. It was something older. Something royal.

Kael Blackthorn thought I was just a weak Omega. He thought I was a girl with no name and no future.

He was wrong.

I looked at my hands. They were shaking, but they were also changing. My skin seemed to glow with a faint, silver light for a split second before fading. My wolf wasn't just a wolf. She was something more.

"You want to break me, Alpha?" I whispered into the darkness.

I stood up, wrapping a tattered blanket around my shoulders. My body hurt, and my heart was broken, but for the first time in eighteen years, I didn't feel like a victim.

"You think I'm a mistake? I'm going to be your greatest nightmare."

The war between fate and desire had just begun. Kael Blackthorn was a king, but he forgot one thing.

Every king needs a queen. And I was going to make him crawl for his.

I walked to the window and looked out at the dark forest. Somewhere out there, there were secrets about my bloodline. Secrets about why my parents were killed. Secrets about why I was the last of a royal line that the Northern Packs had tried to wipe out years ago.

Kael wanted a war? He was going to get one. But it wouldn't be fought with swords and claws alone. It would be fought in the heat of the night, in the whispers of the halls, and in the blood that ran through our veins.

I was Elara, the last Royal Omega. And I would not go down without a fight.