THE ALPHA PRINCE

💫RAYNE💫

I could not stop shaking.

My wrists were still pinned behind my back, the rope was cutting into my skin with every step the men forced me forward. My legs moved on their own now, one foot after the other, because I did not have a choice.

I knew exactly where they were taking me.

The Pack House. The Alpha Prince.

I did not even have to ask. Everyone knew where thieves went…. Straight to the Alpha.

I was beyond terrified. Not because I had stolen. I had stolen plenty of times before and always managed to slip away clean. This was different. This time they had caught me, and this time I knew exactly who I was about to stand in front of.

I had heard stories about the Alpha Prince. He was cold, cruel and merciless.

Nothing like his parents.

I had always admired Alpha Queen Isora. People said she once fed starving rogues instead of killing them on sight. People said she saw the good in everyone, even the ones nobody else bothered looking twice at. I used to lie awake as a child and dream about meeting her one day. Maybe if she were the one standing in front of me right now, she would understand why I stole. Maybe she would look at my bag of vegetables and see a girl trying to survive instead of a criminal. Maybe she would forgive me.

But she was not here.

Her son was.

And everyone said he had inherited none of her mercy.

The path curved and the trees fell away, and the Pack House came into view.

I had never seen anything this beautiful in my life.

Flowers climbed along the stone walls in colors I did not have names for. Fountains carved from white marble sent water arcing into the afternoon light, catching it, throwing it back in small rainbows. The walls themselves rose higher than any building I had ever stood beneath, enormous slabs of gray stone fitted together so tightly I could not find a single crack between them.

Everyone was preparing for the bonfire tonight. Children ran barefoot across the grass, laughing, chasing each other in circles. Women stood on ladders hanging lanterns from the low branches of the trees lining the courtyard. Men carried stacks of wood on their shoulders, sweat shining on their necks, calling out to each other as they built the fire pit higher.

Life continued like I was not standing here with dirt smeared across my face and stolen vegetables still crushed inside the bag one of the guards now carried.

I suddenly felt filthy. My dress was torn at the shoulder from where Dahlia’s hands had grabbed me. My knees were caked in dried mud from crawling through the field. My hair had come loose from its braid and hung in my face in matted pieces. I did not belong in a place this beautiful, not for one second.

They marched me up the stone steps and through a set of doors taller than three men standing on top of each other. The inside of the Pack House swallowed the noise of the courtyard behind me. My footsteps echoed against a floor so polished I could almost see my own reflection staring back up at me, dirty and small and out of place.

They stopped me in the center of a long hall. I kept my eyes down, fixed on the floor.

I did not dare to look up.

If I did not look at him, maybe he would not notice me. Maybe he would just tell his guards to throw me out back into the trees where I belonged.

Maybe.

“Look at me.”

The voice cut through the hall. I froze completely, my whole body locking in place.

I could not do it. I did not want to see his face, I did not want to know what kind of man matched a voice like that.

“I said.” A pause, heavier than the silence before it. “Look at me.”

Slowly, my chin lifted.

He was younger than I had imagined. Much younger.

I had pictured someone older, someone hardened by decades of ruling, but the man sitting in front of me could not have been more than a few years past my own age. He was beautiful in a way that made my stomach twist, sharp cheekbones and dark hair falling loose across his forehead, his shoulders squared beneath a black coat that looked like it belonged on someone carved from stone rather than born from skin.

His eyes found mine and held them.

They were blue, but nothing like the ocean the way I had always pictured an Alpha’s eyes in the stories I grew up on. These reminded me of winter. Pale and sharp and empty of any warmth at all.

Everything about him felt untouchable. Like someone had carved him from ice and forgotten to breathe life into him afterward.

But why could I not breathe?

The second our eyes met, something inside me shifted. A strange warmth spread through my chest, spreading out from somewhere behind my ribs, and it felt wrong. It felt like something was pulling me toward him, an invisible thread drawing tight between us.

No. That was impossible.

I was just scared. That was all this was. Fear. Nothing more.

Stop looking at him.

Look away.

What is wrong with me?

He is the Alpha Prince. He is about to decide whether I live or die. But I couldn’t. My heart was racing. Anyone’s heart would be.

He did not ask me anything. He turned to the guards instead, his eyes leaving mine for the first time since he had ordered me to look at him.

“What did she steal?” His voice was calm. Too calm. Almost bored, like the answer mattered less to him than the weather outside.

One of the guards stepped forward and dumped my bag onto the floor in front of me. The vegetables spilled out across the polished stone, rolling in different directions.

Carrots. Onions. Bell peppers.

I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me whole. I had never felt smaller in my entire life, watching my stolen food scatter across the floor of a room this grand, in front of a man who could probably buy an entire farm without thinking twice about the cost.

“How much does it cost?”

The guard named a number. It sounded small to my ears, small enough that my stepmother spent more on wine most weeks, but I knew it did not matter. At least not to him.

I risked another glance up at his face.

Our eyes met again.

This time the strange feeling grew stronger, spreading through my chest until it almost hurt, a pulling sensation lodged somewhere behind my breastbone.

Why? Why now?!

I tore my eyes away from his, dropping them back to the floor.

Something changed in the room. I felt it before I understood it, a shift in the air, a silence that had not been there a moment before. Did I offend him more than I already had? Did I stare too long? Did I do something wrong without even realizing it?

I risked one more glance. I could not help it.

His eyes had changed. Darker now, the winter blue gone somewhere deeper, like he was looking at me for the first time all over again. Like I had become something entirely different in the span of three seconds.

I did not understand any of it.

He spoke, and his voice filled the hall.

“Lock her up.”

Everything inside me stopped. I had expected death, I had braced myself for it the entire walk here, and instead I got three words that made no sense at all.

“But Your Highness.” One of the guards stepped forward, his voice edged with confusion. “She’s just a—”

“She’ll repay every coin she stole.”

The guard hesitated, glancing between me and the Prince like he was waiting for the rest of the sentence, the part that would make it make sense.

“For how long?”

He did not even look at me when he answered.

His eyes had already moved past me, to something on the wall, to anything other than my face.

“Until I decide her debt has been paid.” His voice did not waver, did not change, like he was discussing the weather instead of the rest of my life. “She’ll be one of the pack’s slaves.”

Slave.

I was going to become a slave.

My father’s face flashed behind my eyes. Ronan. My dress, torn in half on the kitchen floor. The bonfire I would never get to attend.

Everything else disappeared.

I was never going home.