The Alpha's Sun-Blessed Mate

Chapter 2

My mother found me an hour later, curled in wolf form beneath the back porch of our house.

“Baby.” Her voice was soft. Careful. The way you talk to something wounded. “Come inside. Please.”

I didn’t want to shift back. In wolf form, the pain was muffled. Distant. Like screaming underwater. But as a human, I’d have to sit with it. Feel every crack it left behind.

I crawled out anyway.

She’d brought clothes. I shifted and dressed without looking at her, my movements mechanical. She led me inside, up the stairs, into my bedroom. Tucked me into bed like I was five years old again and had a fever.

“He doesn’t love me,” I whispered.

My mother sat on the edge of the bed, stroking my hair. Pushing the long caramel waves back from my face the way she’d done since I was little. “I know, sweetheart. I’m so sorry.”

“Six months, Mom. SIX MONTHS. While I was planning our mating ceremony. While I was picking out flowers and stressing over the guest list. They were laughing at me behind my back.”

My mother’s hand tightened in my hair. “Albert is a fool. And that girl? I can’t believe Mira would do this to you.”

I closed my eyes. But the image was already burned in. Albert’s back. Mira’s face. The way the sheets had been tangled around their legs. I was going to see it every time I blinked for the rest of my life.

I caught a glimpse of myself in the vanity mirror across the room. My eyes were swollen and bloodshot, the green almost neon against how red the rest of my face was. Mascara tracked down both cheeks. My hair was tangled from shifting, leaves caught in the waves. I looked exactly like what I was: a girl who had been gutted and was still trying to hold her insides in.

A knock sounded on my bedroom door.

“Go away!” I shouted.

“Ann, please.” Albert’s voice, muffled through the wood. “We need to talk.”

“I have nothing to say to you!”

“I’m asking my father’s permission tonight.” He said it fast, like ripping off a bandage. “To marry Mira instead. I’m calling him in a few minutes.”

I sat bolt upright.

“You’re WHAT?”

“I love her. I want to be with her. My father needs to approve the change.”

My mother was off the bed and at the door before I could blink. She yanked it open hard enough that it bounced off the wall.

Albert stood there in a wrinkled shirt buttoned wrong, his dark hair still a mess from Mira’s fingers. At least he had the decency to look like he hated himself.

“You will NOT ask Alpha Luca anything!” my mother hissed, stepping into his space. For a woman half his size, she was terrifying when she wanted to be. “Do you understand what you’re doing? This arrangement was made at Annabelle’s birth by your father himself. You can’t just throw it away because you caught feelings for someone else!”

“I can ask,” Albert said, stubborn to the bone. He had that look on his face, jaw set, blue eyes hard. The same expression I’d seen in old photos of his father. Father and son, cut from the same stone, even if Albert was still the rougher version. The draft before the final copy. “Dad is reasonable.”

“Your father is going to be furious.” My mother’s voice was ice. “This arrangement has stood for twenty-two years. It was his design. His command. You’re spitting on his authority by even picking up that phone.”

Albert’s jaw locked tighter. “Then he can tell me no. But I have to try. For Mira.”

He pulled out his phone and walked down the hallway, already dialing.

I scrambled out of bed. My mother and I pressed our ears to the door like a couple of shameless eavesdroppers. Which is exactly what we were.

“Dad?” Albert’s voice carried down the hall. “I need to talk to you about something important.”

A pause. I couldn’t hear the other side, but I could picture Alpha Luca’s deep voice. The calm before the storm.

“It’s about Annabelle. And the arrangement.” Another pause, longer this time. “Dad, I’ve fallen in love with someone else. Mira. You remember her? Annabelle’s friend. We’ve been together for six months and I want to marry her instead.”

My stomach twisted into a knot.

“I know it’s unconventional, but... what? Dad, wait.”

The tone changed. Albert went from pleading to defensive in the space of a breath.

“That’s not fair! You can’t just... I’m not a child anymore! I should get to choose my own mate!”

Silence. The kind that made the hallway feel ten degrees colder.

“Dad, please. I love her. I don’t love Annabelle. I never did. The arrangement was your idea, not mine. I’m asking permission to...”

He went quiet. And even from behind a closed door, through a phone, I could feel it. Alpha power. The kind that doesn’t raise its voice because it doesn’t have to.

“Yes, sir.” Albert’s voice was small now. Young. The defiant son crumbling back into a boy caught doing something wrong. “I understand. But...”

Cut off again.

“Fine. Yes. I’ll wait.” A pause. “How soon?”

I held my breath.

“Within 12 hours?! But that’s... yes. Okay. No, I won’t do anything until you arrive. Yes, sir.”

The call ended.

My mother and I looked at each other. Her face had gone pale.

“Alpha Luca is coming home,” she whispered.

Albert appeared at my door again. His face was tight, the cockiness stripped clean.

“My father is coming home tonight,” he confirmed. “He wants to handle this in person.”

“What did he say?” I hated how weak my voice sounded.

“He said...” Albert swallowed hard. “He said absolutely not. That I’m forbidden from pursuing anything with Mira. That the arrangement stands.”

Something flickered in my chest. Not hope exactly. More like the ghost of it. A reflex.

“But he’s coming home to talk to both of us,” Albert continued. “In twelve hours.”

“And then what?” my mother demanded.

Albert met my eyes, and what I saw in his face made something cold settle in my stomach. Not guilt this time. Fear.

“He said no one does anything until he arrives.”

The way he said it. Like a warning. Like even Albert, who had inherited half the man’s DNA and grew up under his roof, was afraid of what was coming through that door in six hours.

I’d met Alpha Luca a handful of times. He’d been a tall shadow at pack events, a deep voice at the other end of a dinner table, a presence so commanding that entire rooms rearranged themselves around him. I remembered dark hair. Blue eyes that cut through people. The way conversations died when he entered a room. Albert looked so much like him it was almost unsettling, but the father had an edge the son hadn’t earned yet. Something sharper. Harder. More dangerous.

He’d left for overseas to take over a pack right after I turned eighteen. Four years ago. I’d barely thought about him since.

But my wolf was thinking about him now. Pacing. Restless. Something stirring in the back of my mind that I couldn’t name.

Alpha Luca was coming home.

And I had a feeling that nothing in my life would ever be the same.