His Rejected Mate, His Hidden Heir

Chapter 2: The Frenzy

The howling stopped.

That was worse than the howling.

I sat frozen on my bed, my thin blanket clutched to my chest, listening to the silence that had swallowed the night. The mark on my neck throbbed with its own heartbeat. My hands were shaking so badly I had to press them against my thighs to keep them still.

Get a grip*, I told myself. *Whatever's happening out there, it has nothing to do with you.

But my body didn't believe me. My body was screaming — every nerve, every instinct, every drop of hybrid blood in my veins was screaming that something was wrong, something was coming, something was about to happen that I couldn't stop.

I got dressed. I don't know why. Maybe I thought I'd need to run. Maybe I thought I'd need to help. My fingers fumbled with the buttons of my shirt, my shoes, my jacket. The mark on my neck was visible now — I caught a glimpse of it in the small mirror above my washbasin. A faint silvery glow, like moonlight trapped under my skin.

I'd never seen it do that before. I'd never seen it do *anything* before.

A crash somewhere in the compound made me jump. Then voices — shouting, panicked, the kind of voices wolves used when things were going very, very wrong.

"The Alpha is back!"

"He's in the frenzy — don't get close!"

"Where are the healers? Someone get the healers!"

I pressed myself against my door and listened. Footsteps thundered past in the corridor outside. Someone was crying. Someone else was giving orders that no one was following.

Then the footsteps stopped. And I heard something that turned my blood to ice.

Breathing. Heavy, ragged, animal breathing. Right outside my door.

The door wasn't locked. It had never needed to be locked. Who would bother breaking into the hybrid's room?

The handle turned.

I stumbled backward, my spine hitting the far wall. The door swung open, and *he* filled the doorway.

Kane.

I'd seen him from a distance a dozen times — tall, powerful, commanding. But I'd never seen him like this. He was covered in blood, most of it not his own. His shirt was torn, hanging off his shoulders in shreds. His eyes weren't gray anymore — they were solid, blazing gold, the eyes of a wolf in full control of its human form. His breathing was harsh and uneven, each exhale a growl that vibrated through the small room.

He didn't look at me like a person. He looked at me like prey.

"Alpha — " I started, but the word died in my throat.

Because his nostrils flared. He scented the air. And those gold eyes locked onto mine with an intensity that made my knees buckle.

He crossed the room in two strides. His hand clamped around my wrist — not hard enough to break bone, but hard enough that I knew he could. His skin was burning hot, fever-hot, like his blood was boiling inside him.

"You," he said.

Not a question. Not a greeting. A recognition — primal and absolute, the way a wolf recognizes its territory. Its kill. Its *mate*.

The word echoed in my head, and I nearly laughed at the absurdity of it. Kane, Alpha of IronClaw, couldn't possibly be scenting me as his Mate. I was a hybrid. I was a servant. I was nobody. The frenzy had confused him, that was all. His wolf was running on instinct, and his instinct was scrambled.

"Alpha, you're hurt," I tried. "You need the healers — "

"I need *you*."

The words rumbled out of him like thunder, and the mark on my neck exploded with sensation — not pain, exactly, but something so intense it blurred the line between pleasure and agony. I gasped and grabbed at my throat, and Kane's eyes followed the movement, fixed on the spot where the mark was glowing.

His free hand came up. His fingers brushed my neck, and the contact sent a shockwave through my entire body. I felt it everywhere — my chest, my stomach, my legs, places I didn't have names for. The bond, I realized dimly. The Mate Bond was activating, responding to his touch, his presence, his wolf calling to something inside me that I'd spent my whole life believing didn't exist.

"Wait," I whispered. "Please. You don't want this. You don't want *me*. You're not yourself — "

He didn't answer. His mouth found my neck — not the mate mark, the other side — and his lips traced a burning line along my skin. I felt the scrape of teeth, not yet biting, just *there*, a promise and a threat wrapped together.

I should have fought. I should have screamed. I should have done something other than stand there trembling while the most powerful wolf in the territory pressed me against the wall and breathed me in like I was the only source of air in the world.

But I didn't fight. And I didn't scream.

Because some part of me — some deep, buried, animal part that I'd spent twenty-one years pretending didn't exist — *wanted* this. Wanted him. The mark on my neck wasn't just glowing now. It was singing, vibrating at a frequency that matched the growl in Kane's chest, and my body was answering him in a language older than words, older than packs, older than the Moon Goddess herself.

His teeth sank into my neck.

I cried out — pain and something else, something that flooded through me like molten silver, burning and beautiful and terrifying all at once. The mark that had been a faint silvery glow for my entire life blazed to life, and I felt the bond lock into place with an almost audible click.

The world tilted. I was falling — no, Kane was falling, his body finally giving out as the frenzy released its hold. He collapsed against me, his weight driving us both to the floor, his face pressed into the curve of my shoulder. His breathing evened out. His eyes — gray again, human again — fluttered closed.

He was unconscious. The frenzy had passed.

And I was marked.

I lay there on the cold stone floor, Kane's body heavy on top of mine, the mate mark on my neck pulsing with new, alien life. Blood trickled down my collarbone from where his teeth had broken skin. I could feel him through the bond now — not his thoughts, but his feelings. Exhaustion. Pain. A deep, nameless hunger that had nothing to do with food and everything to do with the woman pinned beneath him.

The woman he had claimed without asking. Without knowing. Without caring.

What have I done?

The question was wrong. I hadn't done anything. I hadn't chosen this. But choice didn't matter to the bond. The bond didn't care about consent or status or the fact that I was a half-breed kitchen girl who wasn't supposed to have a Mate at all.

The bond only cared about one thing: that we belonged to each other now. Whether we wanted to or not.

I don't know how long I lay there. Minutes. Maybe an hour. The bleeding stopped — mate marks healed fast, one of the few things I remembered from the old stories. The mark would scar, a permanent silver brand that every wolf in the pack would recognize.

Every wolf in the pack.

Oh, God.

They would know. The entire pack would know what had happened. They would smell him on me. They would see the mark. And they would never, ever believe that I hadn't asked for it, hadn't schemed for it, hadn't somehow tricked the Alpha into claiming me during his moment of weakness.

A hybrid. Marked by the Alpha.

It was either a miracle or a catastrophe. And I had a sinking feeling I knew which one the pack would choose.

Footsteps in the corridor. Voices — the healers, finally, searching for their Alpha. I tried to push Kane off me, but he was too heavy, dead weight, and my limbs were weak from the marking, trembling and useless.

The door — which had swung half-shut — banged open.

Darius stood in the doorway. The Beta's eyes went wide as he took in the scene: his Alpha unconscious on the floor, blood on his mouth, and me — the hybrid kitchen girl — pinned beneath him with a fresh mate mark blazing silver on my neck.

"Moon Goddess," Darius breathed.

Behind him, I heard gasps. More pack members. More witnesses. The news would spread through the compound like wildfire. By morning, everyone would know.

Darius moved fast. He pulled Kane off me — gently, carefully — and shouted for the healers. Someone threw a blanket over me. Someone else was asking me questions I couldn't hear. The world had gone muffled and distant, like I was underwater.

I touched the mark on my neck.

It was still warm. Still glowing. And beneath my fingers, it pulsed with a steady, unstoppable rhythm.

*His* heartbeat. I could feel it through the bond. Kane's heart, beating in time with mine.

The Alpha had marked me.

And nothing — absolutely nothing — would ever be the same again.

* * *

They carried Kane away to the healer's hut. Someone helped me to my feet, wrapped the blanket tighter around my shoulders. I didn't look at any of them. I couldn't. All I could do was press my hand to the mark on my neck and feel his heartbeat — steady now, calm now — pulsing through the bond like a promise I hadn't asked for and didn't know how to keep.