The Alpha’s Bond: Forbidden but Wanted

The Mandate

The hall was still spinning when my father’s hand tightened on my shoulder and guided me out of the gathering. No one stopped him, no one even tried. Wolves parted around us like he had already claimed the right to decide what happened to me next.

I kept my head down as we crossed the corridor, my chest still burning under the mark. Every step felt wrong, like my body belonged to something else now and I was only borrowing it. My father did not speak until we reached his private wing at the far end of the estate, where the walls were darker and the air felt colder.

The door shut behind us with a heavy click.

He turned to face me, and the look on his face was no longer one he wears in public, no pack politeness, no fake concern, just the cold, steady stare.

“Sit,” he said.

I did not move right away.

His eyes narrowed. “Now!”

I sat in the chair across from his desk because refusing him was useless and because my legs were not steady enough to keep me standing. The air in the room reeks of whiskey, and decaying wood. A single lamp burned on the desk between us, throwing a yellow circle of light over his hands.

He folded his hands together and looked at me as if he were studying a problem.

“You understand what this means,” he said.

I kept my face still. “It means the room saw something it should not have.”

His mouth twitched once. “It means the Bond has chosen you.”

I said nothing.

He leaned back in his chair. “Do not be foolish, this is not a curse. This is power.”

For you, I thought.

But I did not say it. I had learned long ago that the fastest way to lose a conversation with my father was to sound honest in it.

He watched me for a moment, then stood and walked behind the desk. His fingertips brushed the edge of a folder there, then stopped. He did not open it yet, he liked making people wait, and he liked knowing they were waiting.

“Bastián Valdemar has spent six years cutting into our territory,” he said. “He has taken routes, traders, allies, and two of our border estates. He has humiliated us in front of the Sangre Antigua and left us with no easy answer.”

I stared at him. “And now you want me to fix that.”

“I want you to do what you were born to do.”

My father’s voice had no feeling in it at all. He opened the folder and pushed a stack of papers toward me that held maps, territory lines, lists of names… Some of them I knew, others were wolves who had already chosen a side, the rest were marked in red.

I did not touch the papers.

“Read them,” he said.

“I can see them from here.”

His gaze sharpened. “Do not play clever with me tonight.”

I let out a slow breath and looked down anyway. The estate lines were drawn in black ink, Valdemar territory bordered with thick red marks where Castellanos influence had been cut away. There were notes in the lines, too. Security routes, known habits, and weak points. The kind of details that only came from watching a target closely enough to know when to strike.

My father was not planning but hunting.

“You will go to him,” he said. “You will get close, and let the Bond do most of the work for you.”

My stomach tightened. “He already knows I exist.”

“Not as you.” His voice stayed calm. “As someone else. A lone wolf with no loyalty, no family, no real future. You will present yourself as someone worth keeping near and easy to overlook at the same time.”

I looked up at that. “And if he asks questions?”

“Then you answer enough to keep him interested and nothing more.”

“What exactly am I supposed to do once I am there?”

His eyes held mine without blinking. “You learn his routines, his weaknesses, his inner circle. You find where he is careless and where he is vain. You let him think the bond is making him generous, possessive, distracted. Leverage that.”

I stared at him. “You want me to seduce him.”

“I want you to manipulate him.”

The correction was so cold it made my skin tighten.

He stepped closer to the desk and rested both hands on it. “Bastián is an Alpha, he will react to the bond whether he wants to or not. He will protect what he believes is his. That is the opening. You step into it, and you hold the door open until I tell you to close it.”

He speaks about me like a trap, I thought.

My throat hurt when I swallowed. “And if he finds out who I am?”

“He will not.”

“That is not an answer.”

His eyes hardened. “It is the only one you need.”

I pushed my fingers into the arm of the chair so hard that my nails hurt. “You are asking me to walk into enemy territory alone.”

“No.” He tilted his head. “I am ordering you.”

The silence that followed felt thick enough to choke on.

He straightened and moved around the desk until he stood directly in front of me. I had to tilt my head up to look at him. He was close enough that I could smell the whiskey on his breath and the iron edge of his scent, the same scent that had filled my childhood like a warning.

“You forget yourself,” he said softly. “You are not being sent because I trust you. You are being sent because you are useful now.”

Something cold settled in my stomach.

He looked at me for a long moment, then said, almost casually, “If you fail, I lose territory. If you succeed, I gain a weapon inside Valdemar walls. Either way, you will serve a purpose at last.”

My chest went tight.

That was when I saw it; not in his words, because his words had always been ugly. I saw it in the way he stood over me, the way the papers sat on the desk, the way he was not asking whether I agreed. He had already decided my place in the plan. I was not a daughter in this room, I was bait.

A sacrifice dressed up as strategy.

The truth hit me so hard my vision blurred for a second, my hands went numb. My father had not brought me here to brief me. He had brought me here to make sure I understood the shape of the cage before he locked it.

He reached for the folder and closed it with one clean motion.

“Tomorrow,” he said, “you begin learning how to survive at his side.”

I looked at him and felt something inside me go very still.

Because now I understood.

He was not sending me to Bastián Valdemar as a daughter.

He was walking me toward the s*******r as if I were already dead.