Marked By The Alpha I Was Sold To

Chapter Two

Mei Lin POV

Pregnant. Xin Yi was pregnant with Jun Wei's child. The word kept repeating itself in my head, over and over, until it stopped sounding like a real word at all and just became noise, a sound with no meaning left inside it.

I do not remember walking to his office. One second I was standing in the corridor with my back against the wall, and the next I was shoving the door open so hard it slammed against the frame and rattled the shelves behind it.

Jun Wei looked up from his desk, startled, a half-finished letter still under his hand.

"Is it true?" I asked.

He went very still. That stillness told me everything before he said a single word.

"Mei Lin"

"Don't." My voice shook. "Don't make me say it out loud when you already know exactly what I'm asking you."

The silence stretched too long, thick and unbearable, before he finally answered.

"Yes."

The floor tilted underneath me, or maybe it was just my own legs giving out slightly. I gripped the back of a chair to steady myself. "She's pregnant."

"The pack needs an heir, Mei Lin. We tried for two years, you and I, and nothing ever came of it. I had to make a choice for Sembawang's future."

"So you slept with her."

"I did what an Alpha has to do." He said it so calmly, so reasonably, that it made my skin crawl.

He wasn't even trying to hide it anymore. Wasn't even pretending this was anything other than exactly what it looked like.

"How long, Jun Wei?"

He didn't answer. He looked down at his desk instead, at the letter he had been writing, as though it mattered more than the two of us standing there with everything falling apart between us.

"How long have you been sleeping with her?"

"Almost a year."

A year. An entire year of him lying to my face every single night while I trained myself half to death in the yard, trying to prove I deserved a title he had already quietly decided to give away to someone else.

"You should have told me the truth."

"You would have left."

"Of course I would have left! You were sleeping with someone else while I still wore your mark on my skin!"

"I was securing this pack's future," he said, his jaw tight. "You could not give me that. She could. This does not have to end everything we had, Mei Lin. You could still stay here, quietly, and"

"Then reject the bond."

His hand froze against the wood of the desk. "What did you just say?"

"If any part of what we had was ever real to you, let me go. Make it official. Set me free."

"I am not doing that."

"Why not? You have already replaced me in every way that matters."

"Mei Lin, you are upset right now, you are not thinking clearly"

"I, Mei Lin, reject you, Jun Wei Tan, as my mate."

"Stop." His voice cracked down the middle. "You know it does not work unless both of us agree to it, you cannot just"

"Then I will tear it out myself."

I felt it begin, deep in my chest, the bond between us straining like a rope pulled far past its limit. Silver light spilled out from beneath my skin, bright and burning, climbing up my arms and across my collarbone.

Jun Wei's breathing turned ragged, his hands gripping the edge of the desk. "Mei Lin, stop, this is not safe for either of us"

"Accept it," I said through gritted teeth, "or I rip it apart and it hurts us both."

The light grew brighter, blinding almost, and my whole chest felt like it was splitting open slowly from somewhere deep inside.

"I accept!" he finally shouted, his voice breaking completely. "I accept the rejection!"

Something tore loose inside my chest, violent and absolute. Every nerve in my body caught fire all at once, and I hit the floor on my knees, gasping, unable to draw breath. When the burning finally faded and I touched my collarbone with shaking fingers, the skin there was raised and tender, a fresh scar marking exactly where the bond used to live.

I pushed myself upright on legs that barely held my weight and walked toward the door without looking back at him.

"Wait," he said, his voice small now, uncertain. "Where will you even go?"

I did not turn around. "Home."

I walked out of the pack house and into the cold night air, the new scar still burning faintly beneath my collar, until I finally stopped beneath a streetlamp and pulled out my phone with trembling hands. I called the only home I had left in the world.

My father answered on the second ring, as though he had been waiting.

"The two years are up," he said, before I had even spoken a single word. "It is time you honored our agreement."

I closed my eyes against the cold. "I am coming home."

"I see." A long pause followed, heavier than it should have been. "Come straight to the house. We will discuss everything once you have arrived."

Before he hung up, I heard him say something to someone else in the room with him, his voice low, almost forgetting I was still on the line.

"Tell them she is coming tonight. Have everything ready before she finds out."

Find out what.

The line went dead in my hand before I could ask him anything at all, and I stood alone in the cold with my new scar burning and a question I did not yet have the courage to answer. Somewhere behind me, back at the pack house, the music was probably still playing. Somewhere behind me, Jun Wei was probably already telling himself I would come back once I calmed down, the way he always did whenever he broke something between us and expected me to be the one who fixed it. Not this time. I tucked the phone into my pocket and started walking toward the only place left that still owed me anything at all.