Mated To The Supreme Alpha King

The Supreme Alpha's Mark

Celine

Stones gouge my arms, and thorns rake across my ribs. Roots and jagged rocks slam into my back, my sides, my face. Pain explodes everywhere at once.

I try to dig my fingers into the earth, to stop the fall, but the ground slips away beneath me, slick with frost and fallen leaves.

I roll and roll, each impact stealing the breath I barely have. My skin splits open in new places, warm blood mixing with cold dirt. A branch cracks against my temple, and stars burst behind my eyes.

Finally, mercifully, the ground levels. I skid to a stop on my stomach, my face pressed into the freezing mud, every inch of me throbbing.

For a long moment, I can’t move. I can’t even breathe properly. The night spins above me, the moon staring down like a cold, indifferent witness.

I push up on trembling arms. My palms are shredded, my knees are bleeding and my vision is swimming. Still I force myself to my feet.

The first thing that hits me is the scent: thick, wild honey laced with cinnamon and dark musk, wrapping around me like warm smoke. It floods my senses, chasing away the metallic tang of my own blood for one dizzying second.

I turn slowly, every bruised muscle screaming. And I gasp.

A massive towering figure looms right behind me, cloaked in a white fur coat that gleams silver under the moonlight. Whoever he is, he has broad shoulders, towering height, and a presence so commanding the forest itself seems to bow.

My knees buckle, and I catch myself against a tree, the bark biting into my palm.

I'm such an i***t. The Alpha King is standing right here before me, Kaine Blackthorne. Supreme Alpha of all twenty packs in the Nightshade region. The living legend whose name is whispered with fear and reverence around every fire.

The wolf who bends Alphas to his will with a single glance. He’s not supposed to be here. Not in these border woods. And especially not now.

His eyes, molten gold ringed in black and silver lock onto mine. His gaze is unblinking and unreadable. If Greek gods ever became shifters, they would look like Supreme Alpha Kaine.

Power rolls off him in waves, pressing against my skin even without my wolf to feel its full weight.

My breath stutters, my heart slamming against cracked ribs. He takes one slow step forward, the frost crunching beneath his boots.

“Celine of the ArrowFang Pack,” he says in a voice deep and smooth as midnight, carrying the weight of command that could drop me to my knees if he wished for it.

He knows my name. Run, my mind screams. But my body won’t move.

I’m staring up at the most dangerous wolf alive…

A magnetic pull snaps into existence, sudden and unbreakable, like an invisible thread yanked taut between our souls.

My breath catches in my chest, and my feet begin to move before my mind catches up, drawing me toward him one helpless step at a time.

The bond ignites. It rips through me like fire along every nerve, lightning in my blood. My spine arches involuntarily, my head tilting back as a raw, electric awareness floods my body, rewriting every empty place inside me.

Something long forgotten inside me screams: Mate.

I'd buried my hopes of ever finding a mate, of the day the man I truly wanted would look me in the eyes and claim every inch of my body.

In fact, while I was running, it was with the hopes of never torturing myself with the twisted hope that I would ever be lucky enough to be mated to anyone.

But now, an awareness shoots down my spine. Supreme Alpha Kaine Blackthorne is my mate. The realization crashes over me, stealing what little strength I have left.

My knees wobble, but I don’t fall. The bond holds me upright, thrumming with his power, his claim.

“Mine,” he growls, the single word rolling out in a deep baritone that vibrates through the bond and straight into my core.

And in that instant, deep in the hollow where my wolf had vanished, something stirs.

I feel it, a small spark. I also hear a soft whimper.

Then a surge, fierce, wild, and alive, coursing through my whole body.

She floods back into me, her claws scraping joyfully against my ribs, tail thrashing, howling one ecstatic word inside my head: Mate. Mate. Mate.

My vision sharpens, and the night brightens right in front of my eyes. His scent, honey, cinnamon, and dark musk wraps around me like arms I never knew I needed.

I stare up at him, trembling, my tears cutting clean tracks through the blood and dirt on my face.

Kaine’s golden eyes flare brighter, possessive and stunned all at once.

His hand moves like a striking viper, one moment there’s cold air between us, the next his fingers are locked around my wrist, yanking me forward.

I slam against the solid wall of his chest, the living breath knocked out of me in a ragged gasp.

His scent floods my senses, sinking into my lungs and setting my blood on fire. My palms land against bare, heated skin beneath the open white fur coat, his hard muscles flexing under my touch.

I clench my fingers to keep from tracing every sculpted ridge, every lethal line of him. He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t need to.

One large hand slides to the frantic pulse at my throat, his thumb pressing once against it. His touch is possessive, claiming.

A low growl rumbles from his chest, vibrating through me. Then he strikes. His head dips, his full lips brushing the curve where my neck meets my shoulder for a single heartbeat, almost tender, before his teeth sink deep into my skin.

Pain explodes first. White-hot and blinding. A scream tears from my throat as fangs pierce skin and bond. But the pain twists instantly into molten pleasure, flooding every vein, arching my spine as the mating mark brands me as forever his.

My wolf howls in ecstasy inside me, wild and triumphant.

The world tilts, and colors bleed in front of me. Unable to stand the intensity of it all, and coupled with my fatigue, my legs give out.

The last thing I hear before darkness claims me is his voice, that deep, primal baritone rumbling against my skin like thunder rolling through my bones.

I try to hold on, I try to stay conscious, but the mating bite sings through my veins, dragging me under.

The world fades to the rhythm of his voice. And as I slip away into the dark, cradled against the most powerful wolf alive, a single, trembling thought claws its way through the haze of the bond: I might have just leaped from the frying pan straight into an inferno.

Kaine Blackthorne doesn’t just rule packs; he breaks them. He’s the supreme blade that severs bloodlines, the shadow that makes Alphas kneel, the name mothers whisper to silence unruly pups.

Mercy is a foreign word in his kingdom, and mates… they say he’s never taken one. He has never wanted one, never weakened himself to the vulnerability of the bond.

Yet he marked me without hesitation. Sank his fangs into my flesh like I was already his to claim, his to keep, his to ruin if he chooses.

The mating bond sings through my blood, warm and golden, trying to drown the fear. My wolf rolls in bliss, blind to danger, drunk on him.

But I’m still me, still the girl accused of matricide, still bleeding from betrayal, still terrified of cages, no matter how gilded.

What does the Alpha King want with a broken, banished Omega carrying the stain of murder?

Protection… or possession? Salvation… or a prettier prison?

The thought twists like a knife beneath the bliss. I’ve escaped Kael’s cruelty only to be claimed by a male whose fire could consume me whole.

And this time, there’s no running. The bond won’t let me. He won’t let me. I’m his now.

And I have no idea if that makes me the safest wolf alive… or the most doomed.