Claimed by the Ruthless Alpha

Chapter 2

Senior year moved fast in a wolf pack.

The classes were designed that way. The packlife did not wait for anyone to catch up, especially not for the kids who were already expected to lead, protect, and serve once graduation came and went. By October, Jeremy had already attended two alliance meetings with his father, and the pack was buzzing with the kind of low-level energy that happens right before big things shift.

I kept my head down and focused on what I could control.

Training every morning before school. Classes. Studio work three afternoons a week. Homework. Sleep, when I could get it. The nightmare was a constant, but I had gotten good at functioning around it.

The insults at school had gotten creative lately.

Janelle Reed was a year older than me, already eighteen, already checked for a mate bond and confirmed that Jeremy was not hers. That fact had not made her less determined. It had just made her meaner.

"Looking a little rough today, Zara," she said outside my locker on a Tuesday morning, her voice carrying just enough for the girls around her to hear. "Late night? Or early morning? I hear you keep a pretty open schedule for the pack boys."

I did not stop moving. I switched out my books, closed my locker, and turned to leave.

"So witty, Janelle. I am genuinely impressed the school system hasn't given up on you yet."

It would take her a minute to parse that. I was already at the end of the hall.

Lucas appeared at my elbow from nowhere, which was a wolf thing I had never fully adjusted to. "Is she still going with that angle?"

"She cycles back to it every time Jeremy is gone. It's the only material she has." I gave him a half smile. "I'm fine."

"I know you are." He looked at me for a second too long, the way they all did sometimes, like they were checking something I could not see. "You would tell us if you weren't?"

"I would tell Jeremy."

"Jeremy is the reason half of them bother you in the first place."

"Then maybe I'd tell you," I said, which made him laugh.

The truth was, I had told them plenty. They knew about the nightmares. They knew about the loneliness that occasionally crept in when I thought about what my life would have looked like if my parents had survived. They knew that I loved this pack and also understood with complete clarity that I was not of it, not really, and that knowing made certain days harder than others.

What I had not told any of them was that I was starting to feel it. The pulling feeling in the air that everyone described before things changed. Like static before a storm. I had no wolf instincts to blame it on. I had no rational explanation for it. I just knew something was coming, and it was bigger than senior year and college applications, and I was not ready for it.

Three weeks into October, the alliance gathering was announced.

The Golden Crescent Pack was hosting. Three other packs would send their Alphas, their seconds, and their heirs. Jeremy had known about it for months and had been preparing accordingly. Uncle James spent an entire dinner explaining the political weight of hosting this particular group, because one of the attending Alphas was someone whose territory bordered theirs, and relationships between border packs were either your greatest protection or your most dangerous liability.

"Which one?" I asked.

Uncle James and Aunt Nadia exchanged a look.

"The Dark Moon Pack," Uncle James said.

I did not know the name. I filed it away.

"Their Alpha is young," Aunt Nadia said carefully.

"He took over early. His father was killed in a rogue attack four years ago and Ryker stepped into the role at seventeen."

"Seventeen?" I looked up from my food.

"He is twenty-one now," she said. "And he has built something significant with that pack in a very short time. People respect him. Most of them out of genuine admiration. Some of them out of fear."

She paused. "You will be respectful and cautious, Zara. He is not someone who is used to being questioned."

"I question everyone."

"I know," she said, and she did not sound reassured.

I forgot about it by the next morning.

The gathering was two weeks away. I had a test on Thursday, a training evaluation on Friday, and a new routine I was trying to add to the studio self-defense curriculum. I had things to do. I was focused.

I did not think about Ryker Cole again until the night of the gathering, when I walked into the Golden Crescent Pack's main hall with damp hair and borrowed earrings and stopped dead in the doorway.

The room was full of people I did not recognize.

And one of them was already looking at me.

He stood near the far wall with two other men, broad and still and completely at ease in a room full of strangers the way only people with real power ever are. He had dark hair and sharp jaw and his eyes were of a color I could not name from this distance but felt like they were doing something I did not have words for.

He was looking at me like he already knew something about me.

And then I felt it.

It was not a pull either was it a nudge….it was something more like a door swinging open inside my chest, one I had not known existed, and warm air rushing through it without permission.

“Oh no,” I thought.

“Oh, absolutely not.”