The Feral Alpha King's Unwanted Guide

Chapter 2

Harper

Central Hall smelled like fear.

Not metaphorically. Hundreds of bodies crammed under fluorescent lights, and you could taste it in the recycled air. Sweat, adrenaline, the sour tang of sleeplessness. Guides stood in formation by rank, A-class at the front, E-class pressed against the back wall like afterthoughts.

"We will begin calling names," a voice announced over the speakers. "When yours is called, step forward."

Priya's fingers found my sleeve and clamped down. Her hand was ice cold.

"It's fine," I whispered. "Look at the A-class section. There's, what, sixty of them? Then B, then C, then D. They'll burn through the entire alphabet before they get anywhere near us."

"You don't know that."

"I know math," I said, with a confidence I absolutely did not feel. "Statistically speaking, we'll be standing here for hours doing absolutely nothing. Which, if you think about it, is kind of our specialty."

Priya managed a shaky almost-laugh. Her grip on my sleeve didn't loosen.

The first group went in.

They came out seven minutes later. Two on their feet, one on a stretcher.

The second group took four minutes. The stretcher count doubled. By the fifth round, they'd stopped calling individual names and started sending entire groups. A B-class woman stumbled out with three parallel claw marks across her forearm, face completely blank. A medic caught her before she hit the floor.

The formation thinned with every rotation. A-class, gutted. B-class, decimated. C-class went in crying and came back looking like they'd aged ten years. Then D-class ran out.

A cold silence settled over the hall. I looked left, looked right. Nothing but E-class badges as far as I could see.

So much for math.

"Harper Ellis."

My own name hit me like a bucket of ice water.

Priya's hands flew to her mouth. Of all the E-class in this room. Of all the names on that list. Mine came first.

My ears heard it. My brain rejected it. My legs stayed exactly where they were.

Priya grabbed my arm. "Don't go." Her voice cracked. "Tell them you're sick. Tell them anything—"

Somewhere ahead of us, a girl crumpled to the ground, grabbing at a guard's boots. "I don't want to go in. Please. Please."

The guard didn't flinch. "You have three seconds. Disobedience is grounds for exile. You know what happens after exile."

Her sobs cut short. We all knew what exile meant.

Two guards hauled her up and marched her toward the corridor. I watched her disappear around the corner.

Priya's hand fell away from my arm. She stared at me, eyes glassy.

I managed something closer to a grimace than a smile. "Save me some bread. I'll be right back."

I unclenched my jaw and stepped out of the row.

A guard fell into step beside me at the checkpoint. "Don't worry. We monitor everything from outside. If things get critical, we intervene."

I looked at the stretchers lining the corridor, sheets blotted through with red. "Super comforting. Thanks."

________

The door to Room 001 opened on hydraulic hinges, and the smell hit me like a wall.

Blood. Not the clean, metallic scent from the corridor yesterday. This was thick, animal, alive. Underneath it, something electric, like the air before a lightning strike, humming with a pressure that made the hair on my arms stand up.

I stepped inside. The door sealed behind me with a hiss that sounded way too final.

The cell was enormous. Reinforced concrete on every surface, claw marks gouged into the walls, ceiling lights caged behind steel mesh already bent inward. Biohazard. Extreme Risk. Authorized Personnel Only.

And in the center of the room, chained to the floor by links as thick as my wrist, was the reason for all of it.

He was mid-shift. Not fully wolf, not fully human, but something caught violently in between. Easily seven feet tall, muscles coiled under skin that rippled with dark fur along his arms and spine, claws out and black as obsidian. A thick collar circled his neck, its blood-red gem pulsing in slow rhythmic bursts.

His eyes burned molten red, pupils slit vertically like a predator who had already chosen his kill.

My knees almost buckled. I locked them, bit down on the inside of my cheek until I tasted copper, and kept moving.

Five of us in this rotation. The procedure was simple: approach, press your palm against the Werewolf Mark beneath the gem on his collar, and let your blood energy interface with his. If compatibility existed, the gem would turn green.

If it didn't, you walked away. If you were lucky.

The first Guide pressed her hand to the collar. The gem flickered orange, then went dark. She stumbled back, blisters forming across her skin. The second was hurled across the floor by a pulse of raw energy before she even made contact. Third. Fourth. Flicker and fail. Each time the growl in his chest deepened until I could feel it through my boots.

Four down. My turn.

"Next."

My legs carried me forward because my brain had officially clocked out.

Up close, I could hear him breathing. Low, heavy, each exhale rattling like a growl held back by willpower running on fumes. The chains pulled taut. His claws twitched.

I raised my hand toward the collar.

His eyes locked onto mine.

For one fraction of a heartbeat, everything went still. The growling stopped. The chains stopped rattling. Even the pulsing of the gem seemed to stutter, caught between one beat and the next, as if the room itself was holding its breath.

Then. CRASH.

The chains snapped. Every single one, simultaneously, like they were made of paper. Metal shrieked against concrete and he was lunging, a wall of muscle and fury and crimson light, his roar hitting me so hard I felt it in my ribcage, in my teeth, in the marrow of my bones.

I spun toward the door. Locked. Sealed. Red light above the frame.

Wolfsbane hissed from the ceiling vents. Thick purple-gray sedative clouds filled the room in seconds. I breathed it in before I could cover my mouth, and the world went soft, edges dissolving into watercolor.

His shadow fell over me. A claw swipe cut through the air beside my head, close enough to stir my hair.

Through the haze, his face filled my vision. The last coherent thought my brain produced was so unhelpful I almost laughed.

He's beautiful.

Sharp jaw. Aristocratic cheekbones beneath all that fury. Eyes that, this close, weren't just red. Rings of gold lay buried beneath the crimson, like embers glowing under ash.

Ten seconds, I thought with the strange calm of someone who'd already accepted the math. I hope I don't look too ugly when they find me.

But his claw didn't hurt me. It grazed my shoulder. Not a s***h. A touch. Barely there, as if he was afraid I'd break.

Something inside me, buried so deep I'd never felt it stir, answered.

Warmth flooded my chest, my fingertips, my spine. Like a key turning in a lock that had waited its whole life to open.

I felt pressure against my lips. Gentle. Impossibly, absurdly gentle for a creature whose hands could crush concrete to dust.

The gem on his collar blazed green.

Then the world went black.