CHAPTER THREE
1067 Words
"What is the meaning of this, Marcus?"
The words come out as a low growl, my Alpha power bleeding into every syllable. I watch Alpha Marcus's face drain of color as he scrambles backward from his seat. Good. He should be afraid.
The bond in my chest burns like molten silver every time I look at the girl by the serving table. My mate. The very thought makes my wolf pace restlessly while my human side recoils in disgust.
"Alpha Zion, I can explain—" Marcus starts, his voice cracking.
"Then explain." I let my power flood the room, pressing weaker wolves to their knees. Plates crash to the floor. Someone whimpers. "Explain why my mate—and don't you dare pretend you don't know what she is—has been living like a slave in your pack."
The dining hall erupts in chaos. Gasps echo from every corner. A few pack members actually stumble backward, as if distance might protect them from the implications.
But I only have eyes for her. The way she shakes her head frantically, violet eyes wide with terror. How she opens her mouth like she wants to deny it, to scream, to do anything—but no sound comes out.
"She's nothing," Marcus stammers, gesturing wildly at her. "An abomination. Half-vampire scum we should have culled years ago, but she's useful for—"
"Useful?" The word tastes like poison on my tongue. My claws extend involuntarily. "You kept my mate as kitchen help?"
My wolf is howling now, a constant roar of rage in my head. It sees the thin scars covering her forearms where her sleeves have ridden up. The way she instinctively covers her throat with trembling hands. The bone-deep exhaustion in her posture that speaks of years of abuse.
PROTECT, IT SNARLS. DEFEND. KILL ANYTHING THAT HURTS HER.
The protective instinct slams into my conscious hatred like a freight train, and that just makes me angrier. How dare she? How dare this creature—this thing I should have put down on sight—make me feel anything but revulsion?
Twenty years of hunting vampires. Twenty years of perfecting the art of turning them to ash. And this is fate's reward for my service.
I take a step toward her, murder in my eyes.
She bolts.
Smart girl. Too bad it won't save her.
She's faster than any human has a right to be—vampire blood will do that—but I've been hunting her kind since before she drew her first breath. I know their patterns, their desperate moves when cornered.
She tries to leap the main staircase and I cut her off. Darts down a narrow servants' corridor.
When she crashes through the door at the hall's end, I'm right behind her.
The servants' quarters. Of course they'd stick her down here.
The room makes my wolf snarl with protective fury while my mind catalogs seventeen different ways to snap her neck.
There was a thin mattress on the floor, a cracked washbasin and Peeling wallpaper that reeks of old fear and neglect.
She's pressed against the far wall now, trapped between me and her pathetic accommodations. Her chest heaves with panicked breaths, those strange violet eyes darting around like a caged animal searching for escape.
There isn't any.
"You're coming with me," I growl, my voice thick with hatred and something darker I refuse to acknowledge.
The bond won't let me kill her—I learned that lesson when the agony dropped me to my knees the moment I'd considered it. But making her suffer for ruining my life just by existing? That I can manage.
She opens her mouth to argue, to plead, to do whatever desperate thing prey does when death comes calling.
Nothing comes out.
Not a whisper. Not even a broken sob.
I frowned and stepped closer but she didn’t make a sound. Then realization hits me and my knees weakened immediately.
She can’t speak. Those scars on her throat aren’t random violence…she can’t speak.
My broken, silent mate can't even beg for mercy.
“Who did this to you?!”
But she didn’t answer, didn’t even look up at me.
The protective rage wars with my disgust, twisting in my chest until I can't breathe properly. She slides down the wall, curling into herself like she's done this a thousand times before. Arms wrapped around her knees. Head tucked down.
Making herself disappear.
I should feel nothing but hatred. She's everything I've trained myself to destroy. Half-vampire. Unnatural. An insult to the natural order.
But watching her try to become invisible in that corner, seeing the way her shoulders shake with silent sobs, something cracks inside my chest.
"Look at me," I commanded, crouching down to her level.
She doesn't move.
"I said look at me."
Slowly, so slowly it's painful to watch, she raises her head. Those violet eyes are swimming with unshed tears, but there's something else there. Not quite defiance—she's too broken for that—but a stubborn refusal to completely surrender.
"Can you understand me?"
A small nod.
"Good." I keep my voice steady, controlled. "Here's how this works. You belong to me now. Not Alpha Marcus. Not his pack. Me. Is that clear?"
Another nod, more uncertain this time. She doesn't understand what's happening, what this bond means, what I plan to do with her.
Neither do I.
"I don't know what twisted sense of humor fate has," I continue, the words bitter on my tongue, "binding me to something like you. But it's done. I'm stuck with you, and you're stuck with me."
She stares at me with those haunting eyes, and I see the exact moment she realizes she has no choice in this. Her shoulders slump in defeat.
When I stand and extend my hand, she just looks at it like it might bite her.
"Take my hand, little abomination," I say. "Unless you'd rather stay in this hell."
After a long moment, she takes my hand.
Her skin is ice-cold against mine, and the bond purrs with satisfaction at the contact. My wolf practically preens while my human side wants to scrub my hand clean.
OURS, it whispers with dark pleasure. Finally ours.
She's mine. Broken, silent, and damned—but mine.
And I had absolutely no idea what I was going to do about it.
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