What Belongs to the Alpha

Chapter Two: Mate

Sandra’s POV

Four years.

That’s how long I’ve been living in this hell.

Four years of pain. Four years of suffering under Alpha Luca’s tyranny. Four years of existing more as a ghost than a human being. By this point, I should’ve been numb — should’ve been done feeling anything at all.

But today … things felt different.

A strange shivering vibe festered beneath my skin, making me fidgety. My body felt hot, and my heart was racing. It wasn’t fear. I was well acquainted with fear — knew it intimately. This was something else.

It was my twentieth birthday today.

It would have meant something. But here, under Luca’s rule, birthdays had become just another sign of survival. They weren’t celebrations — just cruel reminders that I was still alive, still stuck.

I was outside his door, my hands balled into fists at my sides.

Knock.

The sound echoed in my ears. It was too loud.

I heard footsteps. Slow. Calculated. Dominant.

Then, his voice.

"Come in."

I took a breath I didn’t quite have. And stepped inside.

The room was dark around the edges, but I could see him in his chair with a book in his hands. He didn’t look up right away. He didn’t need to.

He already knew I was here.

I averted my gaze by instinct. “Your ma—”

The words evaporated off my tongue the moment our eyes connected.

My entire world tilted.

Something broke, burned, shattered into pieces within me —

No. No, no, no.

My legs felt weak. A sudden, electric jolt coursed through my body, igniting every nerve. My lungs locked up.

I could see it in his face. The way his fingers twitched. The way his pupils flared. He felt it too.

For the longest time, we did not speak. The air between us was taut — taut with something dark, something suffocating.

And then, in a voice so near a whisper, the word escaped my lips.

"Mate."

Luca’s body stiffened. He gripped the book tighter, knuckles turning white.

Then, suddenly—he dropped it.

The thick book crashed to the floor with a resounding thud, and just like that, his eyes turned cold, relentless, unhuman.

He opened his mouth and I paused. A plea was rising in my throat, desperate, febrile. But before I had a chance to speak, before the words to beg for some sort of miracle from the Moon Goddess could leave my mouth, he snarled that command that broke me.

“Strip.”

And then a violent shudder passed through me. My stomach lurched.

The mate bond was meant to be sacred. A blessing. Not this. Not a punishment.

“Luca…” My voice was a mere whisper. “P-Please, don’t…”

His jaw clenched. “Did I ask for your opinion?”

I flinched. My heart beat so much in my chest I thought it would burst out of it.

Don’t fight. Don’t anger him.

My hands shook as I went for the hem of my dress. My mind screamed, my soul shriveled, but my body — my damned, treacherous body — obeyed.

The cloth slipped from my shoulders and I felt his gaze sear over me.

He was angry. No, furious.

Not because he desired me. But because I was his mate.

The bond repulsed him.

I watched it in his clenched fists, his breath hitching like he was fighting himself. Like he hated the way his body responded to mine.

He hated me.

“Come here.”

The demand sent a violent tremor through my body. My legs felt almost unwilling, but I made them move. I knew better than to defy him.

As soon as I was in range, he hooked me in and crushed me except I’m not the crushed one except I’m the crushed one and he cocooned me against him, his grip bruising. I couldn’t breathe.

The air hung heavy with his scent — dangerous, sharp, intoxicating. It ought to have been repulsive. But it wasn’t.

Something inside me awakened.

Something deeper than my will, older than time itself rose in my veins.

No. No, no, no.

Not this. Anything but this.

I tried to push him away. Set to resist how my body burned for him and my wolf howled in longing.

His breath brushed hot across my ear.

“Do you feel it, little lamb?” His voice was mocking. “The bond?”

I gritted my teeth, shaking my head aggressively. Lies. Lies.

He chuckled. A dark, knowing sound.

“Pathetic,” he murmured.

Then his lips connected with my neck—right over my mark.

I choked on a gasp. Every muscle in my body seized up, my hands curling into his arms. A searing jolt coursed through me and ignited my skin.

I sensed him smirk into my throat.

“See?” His fingers slid up my side. “You want me.”

No. I didn’t. I wouldn’t.

I had hated him for four years. Hating the bastard who took my life, that ruined my pack, that killed my parents."

And now the universe had the nerve to bind me to him.

Tears burned my eyes. I felt like screaming, of tearing this mark off my neck.” To sever the chain compellingly above my heart to pretend.

I prefer death to love this monster.

And I would sooner kill him than ever let him have me.

I was standing there frozen inside his hold when suddenly, the door to his chambers threw open.

My body was still raw from the intensity of what had just happened, I jerked.

Mia.

My only — best — friend stood in the doorway, her chest heaving, her wide brown eyes fixing on us.

I watched her take the view before her. My trembling body. Luca’s hands on me. The bruises he’d left in his wake.

Her face hardened.

Something was wrong.

I stepped toward her, but she stepped back a bit.

"Mia?" My voice wavered.

She shook her head. Her lips moved, but she was silent for a long moment.

Then she whispered — finally, finally — “You …”

I frowned. “What?”

Mia clenched her fists.

“You’re his mate,” she spat. Not a question. A statement.

My blood ran cold.

There was something in her eyes—* something dark, something of which I had never before seen the like—* that sent a shiver down my spine.

“I trusted you,” Mia said in a whisper.

What? No. No.

I reached toward her, but she withdrew again, her face contorting into something strange.

“You knew what he did to me,” she said in a whisper. “And still you chose him anyway.”

“Mia, I didn’t choose—”

I stopped. The way she was looking at me: like I had betrayed her.

Then she just turned around and ran, before I could even say anything.

My heart shattered.

I held, paralyzed by the gravity of reality crashing around me.

crushing down on me all over again.

That the universe hadn’t merely wrecked my life.

It had taken all there was to take.

Now, it had turned the only person I trusted against me.

I was truly alone.