The Alpha’s Fated Touch

The Alpha’s Cure

The Morettis and the Romanos had been in a cold war for decades. If the Morettis were the old aristocracy, the Romanos were the new gods—media, tech, ruthlessness. And their Alpha…

Matteo Romano.

The stories about him were whispered in fear. He was known as the Silver-Touch Alpha. The Mad King. They said he killed anyone who touched him. They also said he was losing his mind, consumed by a feral aggression that no medicine could suppress.

The car stopped right in front of me.

The valet was paralyzed, pale-faced. He knew better than to approach a Romano vehicle.

The back door clicked. It didn’t open, but the lock disengaged.

A sudden, desperate idea sparked in my brain. It was insanity. It was suicide. But I was already dead to my world so it didn’t matter.

If I walked out that gate, the paparazzi would be waiting. The rogues would be waiting, and I would be torn apart before morning.

I needed a monster to fight the monsters.

I didn't think, I moved. I lunged for the handle, wrenching the heavy door open.

“Hey!” the valet shouted, finally finding his voice.

I threw myself into the backseat of the Maybach, slamming the door shut against the rain and the ruin of my former life.

The interior was silent as a tomb. The air was frigid, smelling of expensive leather, ozone, and something darker—forest pine and blood.

“Drive,” a voice commanded from the shadows.

It was a voice like crushed velvet wrapped around a jagged rock. Deep, resonant, and terrifying.

I gasped, pushing wet hair out of my face, turning to look at the man sitting in the opposite corner.

Matteo Romano.

He was larger than he looked in the magazines. Even sitting, he radiated a terrifying amount of power. His suit was immaculately tailored, charcoal grey, but he wore it like armor. His face was all sharp angles and shadows, illuminated only by the dashboard lights.

But it was his eyes that froze the breath in my lungs. They were silver. Molten, glowing, predator silver.

And they were staring right at me with the intensity of a wolf about to snap a rabbit’s neck.

“Get out,” he said.

He didn't yell. He didn't have to. The command vibrated in the chassis of the car.

“No,” I said. My voice shook, but I held his gaze. “I need a ride.”

He looked at me—really looked at me—for the first time. His gaze dropped to the torn strap of my dress, the blood smearing my skin, the water dripping onto his pristine leather seats.

“You are Lucia Moretti,” he stated, and it wasn’t a question . “The fraud.”

“I am Lucia,” I corrected, my chin lifting. “Just Lucia. And if you throw me out there, your enemies will think you’re working with my father. Why else would you be at his gala?”

His lip curled. “I am here to buy his debt, not save his stray dogs.”

He reached for the door handle on his side, presumably to shove me out himself.

The car swerved as the driver navigated a turn. I lost my balance, and fell forward.

Everything happened in slow motion. I saw his eyes widen. I saw the panic—raw, primal panic—flash across his stoic face. I saw him recoil, pressing himself into the corner of the seat as if I were made of acid.

Touching him was writing a literal death sentence, everyone knew that. I had tried to stop myself from touching him, but momentum was a cruel mistress.

My hand slapped onto his forearm to steady myself, my palm landing squarely on his wrist, right where his shirt cuff had ridden up. The contact was skin on skin.

I braced for a hit, for him to break my arm in rage, and for the scream that everyone said happened when Matteo Romano was touched—the agony of the 'silver burn.'

I froze.

He froze.

Seconds passed, but there was no scream. There was no burning smell of searing flesh. Instead, a jolt of electricity, cool and soothing like a mountain stream, shot up my arm. It wasn't painful. It was… right. It felt like a key sliding into a lock that had been rusted shut for a thousand years.

The silence in the car stretched, thick and suffocating.

Matteo stared at my hand on his wrist. His pupils blew wide, swallowing the silver iris until his eyes were black pits. The feral growl that had been vibrating in his chest abruptly cut off.

What was shocking was that he didn't pull away, and he wasn't breathing either.

I looked up at his face. The cold, ruthless mask had cracked. He looked stunned. Shattered.

“You,” he whispered, the word strangled, as if he had forgotten how to speak.

I realized what I was doing. I yanked my hand back as if I’d been burned, scrambling to the other side of the seat.

“I’m sorry,” I gasped, pressing my back against the door. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“Do it again.”

The command was a low snarl.

I blinked, rain dripping from my eyelashes. “What?”

Matteo leaned forward. The predator was back, but the aggression had shifted. It wasn't anger anymore. It looked like hunger. Desperate, starving hunger.

He extended his arm toward me, palm up. His hand was trembling.

“Touch me,” he ordered, his voice rough. “Do it again.”

I stared at his hand. Then at his face.

The most powerful man in the city, the Alpha who crushed corporations for sport, looked like a man drowning, and I was the only piece of driftwood in the ocean.

I hesitated. Then, slowly, terrified, I reached out.

My fingertips grazed his palm.

He didn't flinch. He shuddered, a long, ragged exhale leaving his lungs, and his head falling back against the seat as if he had just been injected with pure morphine.

“Drive,” Matteo rasped to the driver, his eyes slipping shut, his hand closing around mine in a grip that bruised. “Don’t stop for anything.”

As the Maybach accelerated into the night, leaving the Moretti estate behind, I looked down at our joined hands.

I had lost my family. I had lost my name. I had lost my future.

But as Matteo Romano’s thumb brushed the pulse point of my wrist, anchoring me to the earth, I realized I had just found something much more dangerous.

I wasn't a substitute anymore.

I was the cure to a disease that has lasted decades.