Worthless Mate Chosen

Chapter 2

The Scent Down the Hall

Freya's POV

The banquet hall was finally done.

Every step was dry and clean. Every surface I could reach had been wiped down and set right. I gathered my bucket and rags, made my way to the kitchen, and began preparing Oliver's meal for the morning. The kitchen was already busy with other workers moving around me, but nobody spoke to me directly.

That was normal.

I plated the food carefully, covered it, and then collected the pressed clothes I had ironed before sunrise. I balanced everything in my arms and started down the long corridor that led to Oliver's room.

The hallway was quiet at this hour. Most of the senior pack members were already dressing and getting ready for the ceremony. The walls on either side of me were lined with dark wood panels, and the floor was cold stone beneath my thin shoes.

I walked steadily, watching where I stepped.

Then I noticed it.

A smell. Faint at first, like something caught on the edge of the air. I slowed down without meaning to. It was warm and sweet in a way that had no business being in a cold corridor like this one. Chocolate. Strawberries. Layered together into something that made absolutely no sense to me in that moment, yet my body responded to it immediately. My pulse picked up. My steps slowed even more.

The closer I got to the end of the corridor, the stronger it became.

I stopped in front of Oliver's door.

"Freya, your mate!"

Ivy's voice rang through my head with so much joy that it almost knocked me sideways. I stood completely still for a long moment. The tray in my hands felt suddenly very heavy.

My mate was Oliver Hayes.

The words sat in my mind like stones dropped into still water. I let them sink. I let them spread out in every direction. And I felt nothing good come back.

Oliver Hayes. The new Alpha. The boy this entire pack had spent months preparing to worship.

My mate.

I barely had time to process the thought when voices broke through the door in front of me. A woman's voice, high and breathless, floated through the wood clearly enough that I could not pretend I had not heard it.

"Oh, please. Be gentle. Not so hard."

A low, deep sound followed. Then the woman's voice came again, even more urgent than before.

"Faster. Come on. I am almost there."

There was movement on the other side of the door. More than one set of sounds. Thumping. The creak of furniture. More voices layered on top of each other.

I stood in the hallway holding a tray of food and a stack of freshly pressed clothes, listening to all of it.

The Moon Goddess truly had a wicked sense of humor.

Of all the wolves in the world, of all the possible directions fate could have pointed, it pointed here. To this door. To this man. The kind of man who filled his morning, his Alpha Ceremony morning of all mornings, with this.

I breathed in slowly through my nose and then out through my mouth.

"Freya." Ivy's voice was softer now, careful.

I did not answer her. I just stood there and breathed.

A part of me wanted to set the tray down on the floor, walk back down the corridor, and pretend the smell never existed. Pretend Ivy never spoke. Pretend the bond had not just snapped quietly into place inside my chest like something I had not asked for but could not return.

But I had lived through worse mornings than this one.

I steadied myself, reached out, and pushed the door open.

Oliver Hayes's POV

Today was the day everything changed.

He turned eighteen. He was taking the Alpha position. Everything his father had built and everything the pack had been waiting for now belonged to him. He had known this moment was coming his entire life.

He had decided to start the morning his own way.

Two she-wolves had come to his room before the sun was fully up. He had pulled them both close and let the morning take its course. He moved above one of them, focused entirely on the sensation, but something was off. No matter what he did, no matter how long he went on, the feeling never reached the place he was chasing.

He pulled back. Gestured for the other she-wolf to take her place.

That was when it hit him.

A scent. Light and layered, sharp in the best kind of way. Citrus cut with something floral underneath, like the first breath of an orchard at the edge of bloom. It moved through the air in the room and hit somewhere deep inside him.

His body responded immediately and powerfully in a way that nothing in the past hour had managed to produce.

"Shawn, stop. Your mate is here."

Theo's voice crashed through his thoughts. Urgent. Almost frantic with excitement.

Oliver did not stop. He kept moving, kept his focus split between the she-wolf beneath him and the scent now curling through the room like something alive. He told himself Theo was overreacting. He told himself it was the heat of the moment playing tricks.

"Oh, please. Be gentle. You are too rough."

"You are barely handling this and I have not even pushed yet."

"Faster. I am almost there."

He thrust harder, chasing the feeling that still refused to arrive, while his nose kept pulling toward that scent. Toward the door.

The door swung open.

He looked up.

Freya Ashford stood in the doorway.

The moment his eyes landed on her, everything in the room seemed to lose color by comparison. The she-wolves beside him, on him, under him, all of them seemed to blur at the edges. She was standing with her head down, holding a tray and a stack of folded clothes. Her coat was old and worn through in places. Her hair was not styled or decorated. She had clearly come straight from working.

And still, she made everything else in the room disappear.

He felt something hot move through his chest. Then it curdled immediately into something he did not want to look at directly.

Freya Ashford. The traitor's daughter. The lowest-ranked slave in the entire Black Moon Pack. The girl every wolf in this territory had been taught to look through rather than at.

His Luna was supposed to stand beside him at the ceremony tonight. His Luna was supposed to be someone this pack would bow to.

How could she be the one?

Even as that thought hardened inside him, he could not pull his eyes away from her. She had not looked up. She had not reacted to the scene in front of her beyond a single slow breath he watched her take through the slight rise and fall of her shoulders.

The she-wolf beneath him was still speaking. Something about hurrying. Something about finishing. Her voice felt very far away.

"It is time to prepare for the Alpha Ceremony," Freya said. Her voice was flat and even. She crossed to the sofa along the wall and set the folded clothes down in a neat stack without looking at anyone in the room.

"Wait. We are not done. You. Get out. Right now. Stop getting in the way."

The she-wolf's voice was breathless and sharp, aimed directly at Freya like a blade.

"I understand," Freya said simply. She turned toward the door.

"Wait."

He did not plan to say it. It came out before the thought finished forming.

"Freya. Stay."

He pulled away from the she-wolf beneath him and sat up. He looked around the room at the two of them.

"All of you. Get out."

The she-wolf who had been speaking made a sound of protest. She reached toward him, her fingers pressing against his arm.

"Please. Do not send us away like this."

"Leave the room."

His voice dropped to the kind of flat, final tone that left no room for discussion. The she-wolves looked at each other. Then they gathered their things without another word and slipped out through the door.

The room was quiet.

He looked at Freya.

She had not moved from her spot near the sofa. She was still not looking at him. Her hands were folded in front of her, and her face was completely still. Whatever she was feeling, she had locked it somewhere he could not see.

The scent was stronger now that the room was empty of everyone else. It came from her. He had already known that. But standing here with just the two of them and nothing else in between, it was almost unbearable in the best and most maddening way.

"Come here," he said.

She lifted her eyes then for the first time. They met his across the room, steady and unreadable.

"The ceremony begins soon. You should put on your clothes now."

He felt the anger move through him before he could stop it. It lit up somewhere behind his ribs and spread outward fast. She was a slave. She was supposed to lower her head and do what she was told. Every single she-wolf he had ever spoken to had done exactly that without being asked twice.

She was standing there looking at him like he was the one who had said something out of place.

She had not figured it out yet. She had not felt the bond snap into place the way he had. Or maybe she had felt it and simply did not care. He could not decide which of those two possibilities made him angrier.

All he knew was that the longer she stood there with that calm, unbothered expression on her face, the more something inside him twisted and tightened into a want he absolutely refused to name out loud.

He wanted her to break. He wanted to see past the stillness she wore like armor.

He wanted her to stop looking at him like that.

What would it take to finally c***k that expression open, and what would he find underneath it when she did?