The Feral Alpha King's Unwanted Guide

Chapter 3

Harper

I was lying on soft earth.

Not cold concrete. Not the med-bay cot I expected after passing out in a room with a seven-foot killing machine. Actual earth, warm and damp, like a forest floor after summer rain. The air smelled like pine and woodsmoke and something else, something that made my chest ache in a way I couldn't name.

A man was kissing me.

His mouth was hot, almost feverish, pressing against mine with this raw, shaking urgency, like I was the last breath of air in a drowning world. I should've panicked. Should've shoved him off, screamed, done literally anything a sane person would do when a stranger's lips were on theirs.

Instead, I melted into it.

My fingers moved on their own, sliding up to graze through his hair. It was thick, dark, impossibly soft. The second I touched him, a sound rumbled through his chest. Not a growl. A whimper. Low and desperate, vibrating against my palm as he leaned into me, pressing his face into my hand like a giant, devoted hound who'd been starving for contact his whole life.

My heart cracked open in a place I didn't know existed.

Then the earth split beneath me and swallowed everything whole.

________

I shot upright so fast my vision whited out.

Fluorescent lights. Crisp sheets. A heart-rate monitor beeping somewhere to my left. My hands flew to my face, my neck, my arms. All intact. No claw marks. No blood.

It was a dream. I'm not dead.

Both of these facts felt equally unbelievable.

Before I could process either one, a swarm of white coats descended. Three medics, two administrators, and a woman with a tablet who looked like she hadn't slept since the virus broke out.

"Ms. Ellis. How are you feeling?"

"Like I got hit by a truck that was also on fire." I blinked at them. "How long was I out?"

"Fourteen hours." The lead administrator, a middle-aged man with a practiced smile, stepped forward. "Congratulations. You've successfully matched with the Sentinel in Room 001."

The room went very quiet inside my head.

Matched. Successfully. Me. The E-class girl whose greatest achievement this month was catching a rolling bottle of antiseptic.

"However," he continued, his smile dimming just a notch, "the bond is still in its early stages. Extremely fragile. You'll need to spend significant time in proximity to stabilize the connection. If the bond weakens or breaks, his condition will deteriorate rapidly, and we'd be back to square one."

"Square one being the part where he throws people across rooms," I said flatly.

The administrator's smile didn't waver. Impressive. "We've prepared shared quarters for the two of you. You'll find everything you need there. A guard will escort you shortly."

They filed out one by one, clipboards and tablets tucked under arms, leaving me alone with a heart monitor and the fading ghost of a dream I was absolutely not going to think about ever again.

________

The "shared quarters" turned out to be a penthouse.

Okay, not literally. But compared to my four-person bunk with its mystery-stain ceiling and communal shower that only ran hot for ninety seconds, this place might as well have been a five-star hotel.

Floor-to-ceiling reinforced glass windows stretched across the far wall, overlooking the eastern perimeter of the camp and the treeline beyond. Actual trees. Actual sky. I'd been staring at concrete for six months, and suddenly here was a horizon.

The living area was clean, spacious, outfitted with furniture that didn't look like it had been salvaged from a military surplus sale. I opened the fridge and nearly sat down on the floor. Grilled chicken. Fresh fruit. Labeled containers with meal plans designed by an actual nutritionist.

This was what the upper ranks lived like. This was the gap between E-class and the top. Not a step. A canyon.

I opened a container of strawberries and ate three in a row, standing in front of the fridge like a raccoon who'd broken into a Whole Foods. Then I explored the bathroom. Hot water. Unlimited hot water. I almost cried.

For thirty glorious minutes, I wandered the suite in a daze, touching surfaces, opening cabinets, letting the silence wrap around me like a blanket. No snoring roommates. No 5 AM alarm blasts. No mop.

I could get used to this. Maybe matching with an insanely dangerous Alpha werewolf was, in some twisted way, the career move of a lifetime.

Then the front door's magnetic lock disengaged with a clank that rattled my teeth.

Six armed guards marched in first, fanning out in formation. Behind them, flanked on both sides and wearing a collar that still pulsed faintly red, was him.

He looked different from the cell. Still massive, still radiating the kind of physical presence that made the air feel thicker, but the shift had receded. Fully human now, or close to it. Dark hair fell across his forehead, damp from what I guessed was a wash-down. Sharp jaw. High cheekbones. The kind of face that belonged on the cover of something expensive.

His eyes had cooled from molten crimson to a deep, burning amber, and right now, every degree of that burn was pointed directly at me.

I froze with a strawberry halfway to my mouth.

He scanned me from head to toe. Slowly. The kind of slow that made you feel like you were being read, catalogued, and dismissed in a single sweep. His lip curled. Just barely. Just enough.

"This is my match?"

His voice was low, rough, scraped raw like he hadn't spoken in weeks. And every syllable dripped with the exact kind of disdain you'd expect from an Alpha-blood werewolf looking at an E-class human holding a strawberry like a squirrel.

I put the strawberry down.

One of the guards cleared his throat, breaking the silence before it could crush me entirely. "You two have been assigned your first joint mission tomorrow. 6 AM. Briefing details will be sent to your tablets tonight."

The guards filed out. The magnetic lock re-engaged.

And then it was just us.

Him, standing in the center of the room like he owned it. Me, standing by the fridge like I'd been caught stealing.

His gaze flicked to the open container of strawberries, then back to me. The disdain hadn't moved an inch.

"Don't touch my food," he said.

The door to the bedroom slammed shut behind him.

I stood there for a full ten seconds, alone in the most luxurious room I'd ever seen, heart hammering, pride stinging, holding a strawberry I apparently no longer had clearance to eat.

Welcome to your new life, Harper.