The Alpha’s Fated Touch

Bond

The steel elevator doors slid shut, slicing off the blinding flashes of the paparazzi and the chaotic roar of the lobby.

The silence that followed was heavy enough to crush bone.

My knees instantly threatened to buckle as the adrenaline of the press conference evaporated. I didn't fall. Matteo’s arm snaked around my waist, his large hand splayed flat against my spine, grounding me. He was breathing hard, the scent of his agitated wolf filling the confined space.

"You just painted a target on your back," Matteo rasped, his silver eyes fixed on the illuminated floor numbers ticking upward. "A public war with your father. Embezzlement charges. You didn’t just poke the bear, Lucia. You climb into its jaws."

"The Morettis don't fight in the open," I said, forcing my spine straight. "They fight in ledgers and whispers. By making it public, I stripped them of their shadows. They claimed I stole three million dollars. Now, I have to prove where that money actually went."

"And how do you plan to do that?" Dante demanded from the corner of the elevator. The Beta was glaring at me, his arms crossed over his chest, radiating hostility. "Our financial analysts need a week to decrypt Moretti shell accounts. The Wolf Council will have an arrest warrant for you in three days."

"I don't need a week," I replied smoothly. "And I don't use analysts. I use a specialist."

The elevator dinged at the eightieth floor—the executive suite.

The doors opened, and Dante immediately stepped out to secure the perimeter. He took exactly two steps down the plush carpet of the hallway before he froze. A low, dangerous growl rumbled in his chest as his hand flew to the holster at his hip.

"Alpha," Dante snarled, drawing his weapon. "We have a breach."

Matteo instantly shoved me behind his broad back, stepping into the doorway. I peered around his shoulder.

Sitting behind Dante’s pristine, perfectly organized security desk was a girl. She had her combat boots kicked up onto the surface, an oversized leather jacket drowning her small frame, and hair the color of pink bubblegum. She was typing furiously on Dante’s personal terminal.

She blew a massive pink bubblegum bubble. It popped loudly in the tense silence.

"Your firewall uses a predictive algorithm based on standard Pack logic, Beta," she said without looking up from the screen. "I don't use logic. Also, your master password was Security1. Honestly, I'm insulted I even had to type."

Dante looked like he was vibrating with the effort it took not to pull the trigger. His amber wolf eyes flared. "I am going to throw you out the window."

"Is that a promise?" the girl purred, finally looking up. She offered Dante a wicked, entirely unrepentant grin, utterly unfazed by the gun pointed at her chest. "Because you'll have to catch me first, big guy. And I bite."

"Stand down, Dante," I said, stepping out from behind Matteo.

Dante’s head whipped toward me. "She hacked the mainframe!"

"She’s my new hire," I corrected, walking over to the desk. "Matteo, Dante, meet Elena. She's an independent data broker. I sent her a secure ping from the car while you were having your... episode in the garage."

Matteo lowered his stance, though his eyes remained sharp. "A Rogue hacker."

"The best on the dark web," Elena corrected cheerfully, swinging her boots off the desk. She tapped the Enter key. "And I just found your missing three million, boss lady. Mr. Moretti didn't embezzle it; he routed it into a Cayman shell corporation under Celeste's name. I've already forwarded the decrypted ledger to the Wolf Council's financial auditors. Your father's fake charges are officially void."

Dante stared at the screen, his jaw tight. He looked at the data, then down at Elena. "You bypassed a military-grade encryption in twenty minutes?"

Elena winked at him. "Aesthetic, Beta. It’s all about the aesthetic."

"Get her out of my chair, or I will staple her to the ceiling," Dante growled, holstering his weapon, though he didn't take his eyes off her.

"Elena, set up a dummy terminal in the server room," I instructed, hiding a smirk at the Beta's rising blood pressure. "Keep digging into Celeste's accounts. I want to know everything she bought in the last year."

"Aye aye, Captain," Elena saluted, slipping past Dante. She deliberately brushed her shoulder against his chest as she walked by. Dante flinched like he'd been burned, a muscle ticking violently in his jaw as he watched her walk down the hall.

Matteo grabbed my wrist, pulling my attention back to him. The heat of his skin instantly quieted the frantic buzzing in my own veins.

"You work fast," he murmured, pulling me toward his private office at the end of the hall.

"We are on a clock. The Morettis won't stop at fake bank statements. They will try to prove our engagement is a sham. If the Council believes I'm just your hostage, my protection is revoked."

Matteo opened the doors to his office. "Let them try."

He led me straight through the massive room and pushed open the glass doors leading out to the executive terrace. The cold, damp wind of the city hit my face, a stark contrast to the burning heat of Matteo's hand locked around mine. We stepped out onto the balcony, hundreds of feet above the sprawling metropolis.

"They won't just try, Matteo. They'll send spies. They'll wiretap this building—"

A high-pitched, mechanical whirring sound cut through my sentence.

Matteo’s head snapped to the left. His predatory instincts flared instantly.

Hovering twenty feet away, completely silent except for the spinning of its quad-blades, was a matte-black drone. A red recording light blinked steadily in the center of its high-definition lens.

Paparazzi. Or worse—a Moretti surveillance drone, sent to capture proof that the Silver-Touch Alpha and his new fiancée couldn't actually stand to be near each other.

"They're watching," I breathed, my body stiffening.

Matteo didn't hesitate. He didn't look at the drone. He looked at me.

"Then let's give them a show."

He let go of my wrist. Before my panic could even register the loss of contact, his massive hands framed my face. He stepped into my space, backing me up until my spine hit the glass railing of the terrace.

"Matteo—"

His mouth crashed down on mine.

It was supposed to be a performance. A calculated, strategic move to sell a lie to a floating camera.

But the moment his lips parted mine, strategy evaporated.

The heat of him was consuming. He tasted like rain, dark coffee, and raw, suppressed power. His thumbs dragged across my cheekbones, his grip almost desperate, holding me like I was the only solid thing in a crumbling world. I gasped, my hands instinctively flying up to grip the lapels of his suit jacket.

The electric current that usually passed between us when we touched ignited.

Deep within the chambers of Matteo’s chest, a sound tore loose—a low, guttural, earth-shaking rumble.

I felt the shudder rip through his massive frame. His heart hammered wildly against my chest. His kiss deepened, turning from a staged display into something starving and possessive. He swept his tongue past my lips, tasting, claiming, his hands sliding down to grip my hips and pull me flush against his hard body.

My dormant wolf stirred—a faint, confusing flutter of warmth in the back of my mind—but it remained asleep.

He wrenched his mouth away from mine, gasping for air as if he’d been held underwater.

He stumbled backward, breaking the physical contact.

"Alpha?" I whispered, my lips bruised and tingling, my hands reaching out to steady him.

"Don't." He held up a shaking hand, his chest heaving.

He stared at me, his silver eyes wide, blown out, and completely stripped of their usual cold armor. He looked utterly terrified.

He looked over his shoulder at the drone, which was still hovering, recording every second. With a violent, lightning-fast flick of his wrist, Matteo hurled a heavy silver paperweight he’d swiped from his desk straight through the air.

It collided with the drone, shattering the plastic casing and sending the machine plummeting out of the sky.

Matteo turned back to me, his breathing ragged. He stared at my mouth, then down at his own trembling hands.

"The static," he rasped, his voice barely a whisper against the wind. "It didn't come back when I touched your lips."

"Because I'm your cure," I said gently, stepping forward.

"No." He backed away, his spine hitting the stone pillar of the terrace.

I knew he recognized the sensation. It was a legend among the packs, a myth he had long ago accepted he would never experience because of his curse.

The Silver-Touch Alpha had just felt the Mate Bond snap into place. And he knew, with horrifying certainty, that the woman he had just contracted for fake marriage was the only woman the universe had explicitly designed for him. Fate had a twisted sense of humor.

"I need to leave," Matteo choked out.

He turned and bolted back into the office, leaving me standing alone on the terrace, staring at the empty sky, completely unaware that the rules of our game had just fundamentally changed.