The Alpha Captain Hates Me

Welcome to Hell

MAYA

Ethan stepped right up to me, towering over me, his chest practically brushing mine. The waves of his furious Alpha aura tried to force my knees to buckle, but I forced myself to look directly into his stormy eyes, baring my teeth in a silent refusal to submit.

“Get out of my academy,” he whispered, his voice dripping with venom.

The Headmaster calmly stood up from his chair, adjusting his suit jacket. He looked at Ethan, then at me, his smile broadening into something deeply unsettling.

“You don't get to choose, Captain,” the words rolled out so smoothly, it almost felt like mockery. “From tomorrow morning... she is your new teammate. Deal with it.”

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If I thought the internet comments were bad, reality was a living nightmare.

The varsity Wolfball locker room smelled of Alpha aggression. When I pushed the door open the next morning, the noise dropped instantly to zero.

A dozen massive guys—all upper-tier Alphas and high-ranking Betas—stopped mid-conversation. They stared at me as if a swamp monster had just walked onto their floors.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” muttered Jax, the team’s defensive enforcer. He was six-foot-four of pure muscle, and his upper lip curled in disgust. “The track rat actually showed up.”

“Where’s my locker?” I asked, keeping my voice steady, though my heart was hammering against my ribs. I refused to let them see me sweat. I was the daughter of a disgraced Beta, but I wasn't a coward.

Nobody answered. A few of them chuckled, turning back to their bags.

I scanned the room and finally found a rusted, narrow locker at the furthest corner, right next to the communal showers where the floor was damp.

Painted across the metal door in jagged, red marker were the words: **TRAITOR LUCK.**

Inside, my required Wolfball uniform was missing. No jersey, no padded shorts, no protective gear.

“Looking for this?”

I turned around. Standing near the exit was Chloe, the head cheerleader and the beta-born daughter of one of the academy’s primary financial donors.

She also happened to be Ethan Vance’s off-and-on girlfriend. She was holding my dark blue varsity jersey over a massive, steaming trash can filled with discarded protein shakes and muddy turf clippings.

“Oops,” Chloe smirked, letting go of the fabric. It dropped right into the slop, soaking in the gray filth. “Must have slipped.”

The locker room erupted into snickers.

“You think you belong here just because you can run fast, Lin?” Chloe stepped closer, her expensive floral perfume mixing nauseatingly with the smell of the trash. “You ruined Ethan's season. You broke his wrist. If it were up to the pack council, you’d be bleeding out in a ditch right now. Don't think for a second you're going to survive this team.”

I didn't say a word. I walked over to the trash can, reached in, and pulled out the soaking, stained jersey. I wrung out the wet muck right, ignoring the gasps around me, and pulled the damp fabric straight over my head.

“Thanks for holding it for me,” I said, giving her a sharp, sarcastic smile. “Saves me the trouble of getting it dirty on the field.”

Her face flushed with fury, but before she could snap back, the bell signaled the start of practice. I was already ten minutes late.

When I sprinted out onto the main field, the rest of the team was already lined up in perfect formation.

Coach Miller, a scarred Alpha veteran with a permanent scowl, was pacing the field. Beside him stood Ethan.

Even with his right arm immobilized in a stark black cast, Ethan commanded the entire field.

His storm-gray eyes locked onto me the second my cleats hit the grass. The intensity of his gaze felt like a physical weight pressing down on my chest.

“You're late, Lin,” Coach Miller barked, his voice echoing off the empty stadium bleachers. “Ten laps around the entire perimeter. Weighted vest. Now.”

“Coach, someone hid my—”

“I don't care about your excuses!” Miller roared. “On this team, if one person fails, the pack fails. Look at your Captain. He’s standing here with a broken bone because of you. You want to play with the big dogs? Prove you can handle the punishment. Ten laps. Move!”

I bit my tongue so hard I tasted copper. I walked over to the equipment bench, strapped a heavy, twenty-pound sand-weighted vest over my damp jersey, and hit the perimeter track.

The sun was brutal, baking the turf.

With every lap, the vest dug into my shoulders, pulling at my center of gravity.

From the center of the field, I could hear the sharp cracks of the team practicing their drills—the violent collisions of a sport where players were allowed to partially shift their claws and extend their fangs for dominance.

By lap eight, my lungs were burning, and sweat was stinging my eyes. I slowed down just a fraction to catch my breath.

“Look at her,” a smooth, mocking voice sounded from the sidelines.

Ethan was leaning against the water station, holding a sports drink in his left hand. His dark hair was damp from the heat, framing his fiercely handsome, arrogant face. A cruel, lazy smile touched his lips as I ran past him.

“Maybe you should just quit, Lin,” Ethan called out, his low baritone carrying effortlessly over the wind. “Save yourself the embarrassment. A fragile little Beta like you is going to get absolutely broken the first time a real Alpha tackles you on that field. Just drop the scholarship and leave. You’re a liability.”

I stopped dead in my tracks and turned around, wiping the sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand, before walking straight toward him. The weight vest clanked against my chest.

“I might be a Beta, Vance, but at least both of my hands work,” I shot back, staring directly into his eyes. “And from what I remember, it only took one accident from a 'fragile little Beta' to put the great Alpha Captain out of commission for the season. Who's the fragile one here?”

The nearby players gasped. Nobody spoke to Ethan Vance like that.

Ethan’s smile vanished instantly. His eyes flared a terrifying, glowing amber, and the air around him grew instantly freezing—the suffocating pressure of an Alpha command.

“Watch your mouth, traitor.”

“Make me,” I whispered.

“Lin! Vance! Stop the childish behavior and line up!” Coach Miller's voice shattered the standoff. “The rest of the team is doing the high-speed obstacle sprint. Lin, since you think you're a comedian, you're up first. Let’s see that track speed.”

I unbuckled the weighted vest, dropping it to the grass with a thud. I walked over to the starting line of the obstacle course designed to test a shifter’s reflexes and speed.

The entire team gathered around, smirking, waiting for me to fail.

“Go!” Miller blew the whistle.

I didn't just run. I flew.

The adrenaline from my argument with Ethan burned through my veins. I vaulted over the first iron log, my instincts kicking in.

A swinging pendulum weight came rushing toward my head; I dropped into a low, sliding dive beneath it, pushing off the turf with explosive power. My reflexes were sharp, honed by years of surviving on the perimeter of the pack where danger was real.

I scrambled up a vertical wall, flipped over the top, and crossed the finish line in a dead sprint.

The coach looked down at his stopwatch. He blinked, staring at the numbers, then looked up at me. The smug grins on the players' faces completely vanished.

“Thirteen point two seconds,” Coach Miller muttered, a tone of rare respect creeping into his voice. “That’s... that’s two tenths of a second faster than Ethan’s personal record.”

A collective murmur went through the crowd. I looked over at Ethan. His jaw was clenched so tightly a vein was pulsing in his temple. His stormy eyes were fixed on me, a dangerous mix of shock and fury swirling inside them. I had just outrun the academy idol on his own turf.

“Impressive,” Coach Miller said, clearing his throat and trying to regain control. “But Wolfball isn't an individual sport. It’s a pack sport. For the next three weeks, we are implementing mandatory full-contact pair training. If you can't sync with your partner, you don't play.”

The coach pulled out his clipboard, running his pen down the roster.

“Jax, you're with Miller. Marcus, you're with Luke.” The coach paused, looking from his sheet up to the two of us standing on opposite sides of the line. “And since our new Mid-Forward needs to learn how the Captain operates... Lin, you’re partners with Vance.”

“What?” Ethan and I shouted at the exact same time.

“No way, Coach,” Ethan snarled, stepping forward. “My wrist is broken. I can't do full-contact drills with a liability.”

“You have one good hand, Vance, and your eyes still work. You will direct her movements, and she will be your physical proxy on the field,” Coach Miller said dismissively, turning his back to walk toward the equipment shed. “Class dismissed. Start your synchronization drills immediately.”

The team began to disperse, casting hostile glances at me as they headed toward the showers.

I turned to grab my water bottle from the bench, but before my fingers could touch the plastic, an iron-grip slammed down on my left wrist.

I was violently jerked backward. My back hit the chain-link fence of the field with a rattle.

Ethan was towering over me, his massive frame completely trapping me against the metal wire.

His left hand was clamped around my wrist like a vice, pinning it beside my head.

His face was inches from mine, so close I could feel the hot, furious breath against my skin. His scent flooded my senses, making my inner instincts scream to run.

But I didn't run. I stared right back, my breath coming in short, rapid gasps.

“Listen to me, you little parasite,” Ethan growled, his voice a low rumble that vibrated right through my chest. His amber eyes burned into mine. “You might have tricked my uncle, and you might be fast on a track. But on this field, you are nothing. Don't mistake this partnership for anything good because I am going to make every single second of this an absolute, living hell until you break.”