Claimed By The Ruthless Alpha

POV Alpha Vantor I never learned what love felt like. My father was the leader of the Vantor pack. I was his son, but that never made him kind to me. It only made him hard. "Weak boys die," he told me once. I was six years old. I was lying on the ground, my ribs hurting from a hit I did not see coming. "Get up," he said. I got up. I always got up. By the time I turned ten, I understood something. Nobody protects you for free. Not your father. Not the men who bowed to him. Not even your own mother. My mother watched from the window sometimes. She saw what my father did to me. She never said a word. She died when I was thirteen. I did not cry. I did not remember how. My father died two years after that. A rival pack killed him. They thought his son was too young to fight back. They were wrong. I killed my first man when I was fifteen. I remember his face better than I remember my own mother's voice. By the time I turned twenty, I ruled seven lands. By twenty three, nobody said my name without looking down first. They called me Alpha Morgan Vantor. But some called me something else, quiet, behind closed doors. Monster. I did not fight that name. Monsters do not get hurt twice. I did not trust anyone. Trust was like a door. Every time I opened one, something came in and hurt me. So I stopped opening doors. I built walls instead. Every year the walls grew higher and colder, until even my own men were afraid to look at me. I told myself I did not need love. I told myself power was enough. I was wrong. But it would take me a long time to understand that. It was late autumn when I rode through the forest with three of my men. We were checking the edge of my land for trouble. That was when I smelled her before I saw her. Blood. Fear. And something else underneath it, something small and stubborn at the same time. "Alpha," one man called out. "Someone is in the clearing." I moved through the trees without making a sound. Then I stopped. She was on her knees in the dirt. Her hair was a mess. Her dress was torn at the shoulder. There were dark bruises on the side of her face. She looked like she had been running for days. She looked like she was ready to fall and never stand up again. But her eyes, when she looked up at me, did not give up. "Who are you," I said. It was not a question. It was an order. "Nobody," she whispered. "Nobody important." "Everybody is somebody," I said, walking closer. "What pack do you belong to." "None." Her voice broke, but her back stayed straight. "Not anymore." One of my men laughed. "A rogue, Alpha. Should we deal with her the way we always do." Something inside me moved before I understood why. "No one touches her," I said. The forest went quiet. She flinched at my voice anyway. It was the kind of flinch people make when they expect pain, even when the words are not loud. I knew that flinch. I wore it once too, a long time ago, before I decided to become the thing that caused it in others. "You are on my land," I told her. "I did not know this was anyone's land," she said. "I am sorry. I will leave." She tried to stand. She fell instead, catching herself with shaking arms. I should have walked away. I should have let my men do what they wanted with her. Instead, I bent down in front of her. I could see how tired she was. I could smell days of hunger under the blood and fear. "What is your name," I asked. She looked at me the way an animal looks at a bigger animal, trying to decide if answering would cost her more than staying quiet. "Elara," she finally said. "Elara," I said again, feeling the shape of it in my mouth. "You do not look like nobody to me." "Everyone else thinks so." "I am not everyone else." She looked at me then. Really looked. Something passed between us. I did not have a word for it yet. But I knew it was dangerous. "What happens now," she asked, so quiet I almost missed it. I stood up. I did not offer my hand to help her rise. I never learned how to be gentle. "Now," I said, "you belong to me." She opened her mouth to argue. That was when the ground began to shake under our feet. My second in command came running through the trees. His face was white with fear. "Alpha," he shouted. "The north packhouse is burning. And we found your mother's ring in the ashes. Someone wants you to know she is not as dead as they told you."