Fated to the Grumpy Beta

༺ ELARA ༻ "Can you walk?" Darren asked, his voice rough and clipped. "I—I'm fine," I stammered, wincing as I shifted my weight. The sore ache between my legs flared up instantly, proving otherwise. Barely an hour ago, I had been a virgin. Now, I was leaning against a frost-slicked stone pillar in the deserted lower courtyard of Pillak Towers, my dress thoroughly ruined. I never imagined this was how my first time of intimacy would be. My fingers were shaking so much that I could barely haul the torn linen of my shift up over my exposed breasts. I fumbled with the laces of my dress, trying to tuck myself back into my clothes. My eyes darted around in a panic, because the world was a useless blur of shadows and shapes. My glasses. "Where... where are my—" My voice was pathetically small and raspy from all the wanton sounds I'd been making in the dark. I dropped to my knees on the frozen ground, my hands scrambling uselessly through dirt and fallen leaves. A broad shadow stepped into my blurred field of vision. Warm, calloused fingers brushed mine for a brief, electric second as he held out the wire frames. "Here. Put them on," Darren muttered, his voice gravelly and rough. I scrambled back to my feet, shoving the frames up the bridge of my nose. The world snapped back into sharp focus. I winced as the sting between my thighs flared again, reminding me of the filthy things I’d been doing with the Beta in the dark. But the cold distance radiating off him was proof that I had made a mistake. A catastrophic, statistically improbable blunder. The sort that belonged in the historical archives, warning readers not to be THIS stupid. Something flickered across Darren’s expression as he stared down at me. It looked like guilt and regret. It made me feel a thousand times worse. My cheeks flamed hot with shame. I was trying so hard not to burst into tears. Think, Elara. Focus on something else. But I couldn’t. I was a mess—shaky, teary, and spiraling out of control. So my brain did what it always did in moments of extreme crisis: it cooked up useless facts to keep me grounded. Fact One: Pressing a human female against a stone pillar in sub-zero Northern weather should induce hypothermia. It does not when the full-grown wolf male crushing her possesses the body heat of a furnace. Fact Two: Sandalwood and cedar were a devastatingly unfair scent combination for a male who had given me the cold shoulder for months—and was giving me that exact same shoulder right now. Fact Three: My body was still thrumming like a plucked bowstring, aching for a pleasure it had only just discovered. How in the hells had I let this happen? I knew the answer: I was hopelessly infatuated with the grumpy Beta. But as he turned his back on me, I realized a devastating truth: he would never choose a woman like me.