MATED TO THE COLD ALPHA

Chapter 7

Sera P.O.V

The lock clicked and then there was silence.

Just the hum of the ceiling light, the four walls and the sound of my own breathing filling the room that felt smaller than it had an hour ago.

I stayed on the edge of the bed for a long moment. Hands flat on my knees. Eyes on the door.

He was gone.

The bag too was gone with him.

I stood up. Not because I had anywhere to go but because sitting still felt like something I couldn't afford right now. I moved to the door first, pressed my palm flat against it, and felt the solid resistance of the door, the weight of the lock on the other side. Then I stepped back and crossed to the window. Latched from the outside.

I already knew both of these things.

But I checked them anyway.

Then I sat back down on the bed and pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes and tried to think past the thing sitting in my chest that I did not want to think about.

The moment he grabbed my neck.

That current. That chain reaction spread outward from the exact point of contact like something that had been waiting behind a door, and his hand on my skin had swung it wide open without asking. Hot and electric, and so immediate that my entire body had gone still before my brain could catch up with what was happening.

I dropped my hands from my face.

I knew what a mate bond was. Every wolf knew. It was discussed. Documented. Spoken about in pack gatherings and events, and whispered about between young wolves who hadn't experienced it yet. The way it felt. The way it chooses. The way it didn't ask for permission from anyone before being involved.

I pressed my lips together.

He had felt it too. I had witnessed it move through him, that single moment where something cracked open behind his golden brown eyes before he shut it down completely, stepped back and looked at me like it hadn't happened at all.

He had set the bag on the chair. Straightened himself. And gone right back to his cold demeanour.

I lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling.

The ceiling light hummed.

Somewhere within this estate I could hear faint movements. Doors. Footsteps. The distant murmur of voices was too far away to make out. This building hasn't fully slept yet. I had figured that out already.

I thought about William.

About Grethe sitting in that small healer's room with her pale worried eyes not knowing where I was or what had happened. About the roots sitting somewhere in this pack house in the hands of a man who looked at me like I was a problem he was dealing with.

‘I am telling you the truth Alpha.’

I had said each word like I was placing them down carefully on a surface that might c***k. And he had looked at me for a long time after that. Reading me the way he seemed to read everything thoroughly and without expression, and then turned away.

I didn't know if he believed me.

I didn't know what would happen if he didn't. All I know is that he isn't letting me out of this room.

The ceiling light continued to hum.

I turned onto my side and pulled my jacket tighter around myself even though the room wasn't particularly cold. An old habit. Something about having the jacket on felt like keeping one layer of armour between myself and everything outside it.

I closed my eyes.

Sleep didn't come. Instead, my mind kept returning to the same moment. The same point of contact. The same current.

“Stop it” I told myself.

“Stop thinking about it.”

The man had locked me in a room. Taken William's only chance of survival. Looked at me like I was a variable he hadn't decided the value of yet. He was the most feared Alpha in the entire werewolf world and he had made it clear in every possible way that whatever the bond meant to the universe, it meant nothing to him.

It meant nothing to me either.

I pressed my face into the flat pillow and exhaled slowly.

And then, warm. Quiet. Tentative.

Like a light switching on in a room that had been dark for hours.

“Sera.”

My eyes opened.

I sat up so fast the bed tilted slightly. I pressed a hand to the side of my head and reached inward, toward that familiar warm place that had been empty since the woods and found her there.

“Tala.” The relief that moved through me was intense. “Where have you been? I've called out to you so many times.”

A pause. Then she sounded softer than her usual voice. Almost shy.

“I was, overwhelmed.” She said. “I needed a moment.”

“A moment!” I repeated. “You went completely silent on me while I was being chased through the woods, pinned to the ground and locked inside a strange room, and you're telling me that you needed a moment.”

“Sera.” Her voice had changed. The shyness was gone. Something else was replacing it, something warm and rising. “Did you feel it?”

I went still.

“Feel what?” I said.

“The bond”

“Yeah, I did, so what?”

“HE IS OUR MATE SERA.” The words came through my mind like she had been holding them behind her teeth for hours and had finally run out of patience entirely. “He is ours. Didn't you feel it? That current? That—that pull? That was the bond. That was our fated mate bond and he is—” she paused and I could feel her almost vibrating with it. “He is also extraordinary. Did you SEE him? Up close? That face? That jaw? Those eyes? Oh my God.” She was beaming with excitement.

“He locked me in a room Tala.”

“Details, Details,” she said, brushing it off.

“He took the Moonveil Roots.”

“Sera—”

“William is still cursed, and we are locked inside the house of the most dangerous Alpha, who has just decided I am his personal investigation project, and you want to talk about his jaw?.”

A beat of silence.

“It was a very good-looking jaw though,” Tala said quietly.

Despite everything, despite the locked door and the missing bag and the weight sitting heavy in my chest, something that almost felt like a laugh moved through me. Small and unwilling and gone almost immediately. But still there.

“I've missed your company” I admitted.

“Me too.” Her voice was soft again. Genuine. Then it shifted back, warm and dreamy and completely unstoppable. “But Sera. He felt it too. I felt him feeling it. The bond chose us. It chose HIM for us. Which means—”

“Which means nothing,” I said firmly. “It means nothing to me, what matters to me the most is William's condition. Until I'm out of this room. I—”

“IT MEANS EVERYTHING,” Tala said. “Whether you're ready to accept it or not.”

I tried to open my mouth to argue. But the sound of footsteps stopped me.

Not from deeper in the hall this time. Close. Just right outside the door. A different sound rhythm from the guards I had been hearing. Heavier this time. More than one person.

I swung my legs off the bed and sat up straight.

The footsteps stopped outside the door.

Then a voice, not the Alpha's, low and close enough to carry through the wood.

"The Alpha wants her moved.”