Claimed By The Beast Alpha

POV: Crysta I am so tired. I cried but I couldn't touch the wall. I have to avoid leaving a handprint and I cannot rest. Bane has been pushing me for over an hour as I hide in the shadows of the forest. My long white gown makes it hard for me to run. It snags on every branch and pulls me back. I grabbed the fabric to pick it up properly but my foot hit a patch of wet mud. I slipped and fell. Before I could move a heavy shadow fell over me. Bane caught up to me. He did not look like the man I loved. He looked like a monster ready to eat me alive. As his teeth moved toward my neck I snapped my eyes open. I woke up panting in the hay. My heart was slamming against my ribs. My skin was cold with sweat. I have this dream all the time. It is the dream where my mate Bane is the one who kills me. I tried to calm my breathing but then I felt a vibration. Above my head the floorboards groaned. Three sets of heavy boots were moving and dragging across the wood. The hay poked through my thin dress like tiny needles against my skin. I opened my eyes to the familiar darkness, listening to the empty room like I always did with the soles of my feet pressed flat against the floor. Three sets of boots that were heavy and dragging moved somewhere above me. I sat up slowly, pressing my back against the cold wall as I reached for my dress hanging on the rusted nail beside me. My fingers found the fabric, then froze the moment I tried to lift my arm. A sharp, hot pain tore through my left side, and I hissed through my teeth, dropping the dress into the hay. "Easy," I whispered to myself. "Easy, Crysta." I tried again, this time slower, breathing through the burn. Yesterday's session had been bad. Elder Voss had lined up six of the younger Silverfang warriors for combat drills, and when they needed something to practice their hits on, they looked at me. They always looked at me. I was the safest target in the pack because nobody would answer for whatever they did to me. I got the dress on, one careful movement at a time. When I pressed my palm flat against my ribs, I could feel the swelling, which was thick and tender, beneath my fingers. Two, maybe three bruised ribs. The boots above me stopped for a sec Then the floor shook with a sharp, deliberate stomp, and I felt it rattle up through my spine. I immediately grabbed my shoes and headed for the stairs. The main house was already loud with bodies. Pack members were moving in every direction, dressed in their ceremony whites and greys, and each voice was layered over the others in a way I could feel more than hear. The excitement had a texture to it, buzzing and warm, vibrating through the walls, the floor and the air itself. Nobody looked at me as I stepped inside. Though I wasn’t expecting that because nobody ever really did. I was a piece of furniture to them. The deaf girl who slept in the hay corner that showed up when she was needed and disappeared when she was not. I slipped through the crowd, keeping close to the walls. "Crysta!" Mara appeared from the kitchen doorway, her sharp face was tight with irritation. She was the Beta's wife, and she wore that title like a weapon. "You look like you slept in a barn." "I did," I said. Her eyes narrowed me down. "Don't be smart with me. Fix your hair before we reach the clearing. I will not have you embarrassing this household." She turned and walked away before I could respond, which was fine. I had nothing to say to her anyway. I smoothed my hair back with my fingers, tucked the loose strands behind my ears, and followed the crowd outside. As I stepped outside, I felt the cold morning air. The morning air was cold and sharp against my face. People streamed past me toward the sacred clearing, their voices rising and overlapping, bright with anticipation. I caught pieces of conversations from the mouths of people who had no idea I was watching their lips. "Bane is choosing today. I heard it straight from Dira." "About time. The Alpha's son has waited long enough." "Whoever he picks better be worthy. We need strong blood going forward." I kept my eyes down and started walking. Then a hand found mine. I did not need to look. I already knew the weight of that hand, the specific warmth of it, the way his fingers always curled around mine as they belonged there. "You're limping," Bane said, falling into step beside me without a word of greeting. "Good morning to you, too." "Crysta." "I'm fine." "You're leaning to your right. You only do that when your ribs hurt." He said it quietly, close to my ear, low enough that the people around us could not hear. "How bad?" "Manageable." He made a sound that was not quite a word. Somewhere between frustrated and tired. I knew that sound too. "Walk closer to me," he said. I moved closer, and his arm came around my shoulders carefully, his hand resting just above the worst of the bruising like he already knew exactly where it was. Maybe he did. He had two years of practice reading my injuries. "People are watching," I said. "Let them." "Bane, if your father sees--" "I said let them, Crysta." His voice was quiet, but it had that edge, the one that made it clear the conversation was finished. I stopped arguing. I was too tired to argue, and if I was being honest with myself, his arm around me felt like the only warm thing in the world right now, and I was not ready to give it up just yet. We walked in silence for a moment. "Today's the day," I said finally. "Yes." "Are you ready?" He glanced down at me. "Are you asking if I'm nervous?" "I'm asking if you're ready." "Those are the same questions." I looked up at him, and he was already looking at me, his dark eyes werw steady, giving nothing away the way they always did. Bane had a face built for patience. It never cracked, not in public, not where anyone could see it. Only sometimes, when it was just the two of us, did something softer come through. "I'm not nervous," I told him. "You're lying." "Maybe." A corner of his mouth moved.. My chest did something complicated, and I looked away before he could see it on my face. The truth was that I had been holding onto today like a rope over a very deep drop. If Bane stood in that clearing and called my name, everything changed. The hay corner, the training sessions, the way Mara looked at me like I was mud tracked across her clean floor, all of it would have to change because nobody touched the Alpha son's chosen mate. Nobody. And if he did not call my name, I did not know what I would do with the silence that followed. His hand squeezed mine once, firm and brief, and then we reached the edge of the clearing, and he let go. The sacred stones stood in a wide circle, each one carved deep with the Silverfang crest, dark with age and oil from a hundred ceremonies before this one. The pack was filled the spaces between them, pressing shoulder to shoulder, voices dropping to murmurs as the Alpha took his place at the center. Alpha Dread was a large man, broad across the chest, with grey hair at his temples, and eyes that missed nothing. Beside him, the Luna held the silver blessing bowl, her face composed and ceremonial. Bane walked forward to meet them, and I watched him go, watched the way the crowd parted for him like water, like he was something the world naturally made room for. Which he was. I stayed at the outer edge of the circle, pressed against one of the standing stones, my hands flat at my sides. The girl beside me leaned toward her friend and said something, and I caught the tail end of it on her lips. "...won't be anyone useless, that's for certain." I turned away from her. At the center of the clearing, the Alpha placed both hands on Bane's shoulders and spoke the formal words. The Luna dipped her fingers in the oil and pressed them to Bane's forehead. The crowd went very still. I pressed my own hands against my thighs and breathed. Bane turned to face the circle. His eyes moved across the crowd, and I could not tell, from where I stood, if they found me or passed over me or stopped somewhere else entirely. My heart was doing something loud and useless behind my ribs. As I reached the sacred clearing, my Spirit Sense suddenly flared with an oily, suffocating dread that made my knees buckle before the ceremony even began. For a split second, the pitch-black world in my head completely shattered. A blinding flash of light ripped through my mind, and I saw a terrifying pair of obsidian eyes staring right back at me.