Chapter 2

Elaina

I don’t remember walking back to my room. My body carried me on trembling legs as my mind kept spinning like a cart wheel in mud.

The image of my step mother wrapped in Darien’s arms had burned into my eyelids. I just couldn’t get the picture of their lust out of my head. Every time I blinked, I saw her laugh, heard his groan, and smelled their betrayal in the air.

Melissa didn’t only betray me, she’d also betrayed my father. She’d betrayed the sacred position of Luna. She’d betrayed my mother’s position by sleeping with that filth.

Tomorrow, I was supposed to belong to him. Tomorrow, my father would smile and be blinded to the fact that the man he has chosen for me was already warming another woman’s bed. His woman.

I clutched the edges of my vanity, staring back at the figure in the mirror. The person looked like a ghost, pale face and disheveled hair with flushed cheeks.

No. I don’t look like a ghost. That would have been better because ghosts have freedom, but I don’t. I looked like a prisoner. A prisoner who was now going to spend the rest of her life in another kind of prison cell.

My mind wandered, searching for reasons why Alpha Darien would have accepted to mate me despite my dormant wolf. The fresh memory of seeing him have sex with my step mother altered my brain to find just a single reason.

My virginity.

Of course, why else would an Alpha in his late thirties want a twenty-one years old wolfless brat? There was no doubt about this, I am going to be his sex doll. My father is going to trade me as a pawn in their stupid game of alliance.

But I will disappoint them both. If they wanted to use me as a pawn, then I would ruin the board. I won’t let Darien take me. Not whole. Not pure. Not his.

I reached under my bed and pulled out a box from underneath it. The clanging sounds of the bottles kind of settled my nerves slightly before I opened the box. I took a bottle of wine from the collection I usually keep in case of sober times. Which was almost everyday.

I unscrewed the cork with a loud pop. I didn’t sip. I stuck the bottle to my face, and took long swigs like a drunkard. And maybe I was.

Tonight, I wasn’t drinking because I was sober. I was drinking because I needed the extra help of alcohol for what I was about to do.

It didn't take long before the heaviness came. My tongue felt thick, my limbs sluggish, and my balance slipping with each careless step I took towards the door. It took me a moment to figure out which one was the actual door knob from my doubling vision.

The door swung open with one careless yank, peeping Into the hallway with glossy eyes and almost immediately, I found my target.

One of the warriors was sneaking into the guest wing. I didn’t know why he was sneaking, and honestly, I didn’t care.

A whistle escaped my lips, the high-pitched sound was a talent I didn’t realize I had until now. It echoed through the hallway, ultimately startling the warrior to look in my direction.

I laughed at him even though it wasn’t funny, and then I laughed even harder when he told me to ‘shh’ and be quiet. He covered the distance between us in a few steps, sealed my mouth with his hand, and entered with me into the room.

“You’re drunk,” he says as he shuts the door, his eyes scanning the room with a calmness that I don’t see everyday. “Why is the Alpha’s daughter getting drunk on the night before her mating ceremony?”

I laughed bitterly, though the pain still stung my chest. “Well, it’s because the Alpha’s daughter isn’t a daughter at all. She is a bargaining chip. A pawn to be dressed in white silk.”

He studied me in silence, and I kept talking, the effects of wine making me spill more than necessary information.

I leaned closer to him, my chest squeezing into his. “Tomorrow, I will be chained to a man twice my age. A man who—” my breath hitched as the memory flashed. “A man who already beds my stepmother.”

He said nothing, but I could see the recognition in his eyes, like he understood my pain without having to know me personally.

We were close. Extremely close. The kind of closeness that was forbidden between someone like me and him—a forbidden interaction, just like the one between werewolves and hybrids.

He looked different from the other warriors, taller and smelled different even. I filled my lungs with his sandalwood-like scent. Deep green eyes pierced down into mine, almost hypnotizing me with the extreme ease that swirled around them. His hair fell lazily over his forehead, glued to his skin by a sheen of sweat.

“Take me,” I whispered, desperation slurring my voice, “before he has the chance to.”

But just then, in the blink of an eye, everything changed. It started with his eyes— the rich green beauty flickers and was suddenly replaced by a pair of glowing blood red irises. The warmth of the room was instantly replaced by a chill that sent countless shivers through me.

A dark energy loomed, and all of a sudden I found myself under the scrutiny of a totally different being. It was the same person, but a different personality, almost as if he’d switched souls.

My breath shuddered. “Who are you? What—”

My words end with a gasp mixed with a moan when he grabs a fistful of my hair and slammed my body against the door. My cheek meets the cold surface and my heart clenches in my chest as my eyes widen. I had no clue why I let out a moan. It should have been a squeal, a scream, or a cry for help.

It should have been anything but a moan.

His hot lips meet the shell of my ear before he nibbles down and whispers. “I have smelled your scent from far away, Elaina. You’re my mate, and for years, I have been searching for you.”

Oh goddess. No. How did he know my name?

My eyes doubled in size as I tried to look back at him, but his unyielding grip prohibited me from the slightest movement. “W—what?”

“I should have met you being a good girl, but here you are being a harlot trying to get yourself laid by a mere warrior.”

“I’m not a harlot,” I protested, though the wine hadn’t began to clear from my eyes.

“Then why are you acting like one?”

“I’m not.”

“Is this what you want? To be used and thrown away like thrash?” He paused, then his hand run through my hair all the way to the down of my back. My body jerks by the enormous shiver that rush down my spine, surging to my center. I bit my lower lip, drawing a sharp intake of air.

“Or do you crave something more—something only your mate can give you?”

My words caught at the end of my throat when he lifted my dress up to my waist. Cold air attacked my backside despite the heat that was now inside the room.

He cups me through my laced panties and I gasped. “Mate,” A voice moaned in the recess of my mind as my body jerked to the rhythm of his touch.

My mind resisted him, but my body did otherwise. I purred like a kitten, rocking my body against his as unsolicited moans escaped me. I couldn’t bring myself to pull away from this stranger. I felt trapped inside my own body with him pulling the string and controlling me like a puppet.

His touch on my skin doesn’t feel like the first time, but more like reuniting with an old lover, the only skilled lover that seems to know how to twist my body in all the right ways possible. He held me closer, tighter, as if he feared someone was going to snatch me away from him.

For the first time since I was born, a growl escaped my throat, but it was more like a pleasurable growl. A response from something primal awakening inside me. My vision blurred, heat rippled through me, and then darkness swallowed everything. But in the darkness, I heard her. My wolf.