Mated to My Alpha Bully

CHLOE’S POV

“Chloe…?”

The word was barely out of his mouth before I wanted the floor to open up and swallow me whole.

I stood frozen in the empty hallway, afternoon sunlight slicing through the windows and doing nothing to warm the cold dread in my veins.

Classes had already started, leaving the corridors eerily quiet, which meant there was no audience to witness this—just me, and the one person on earth who made my skin crawl.

Drake Dawson.

The Alpha’s son. The boy with impossible blue eyes and a cruelty that ran as deep as his bloodline.

Before I could react, Drake snatched the paper straight out of my hands. My post-graduation placement form. The only ticket I had to getting away from this nightmare of a pack.

He looked down at the paper, his lips curling into a slow, mocking smile.

“What’s the point of filling this out?” he laughed, his voice dripping with condescension.

“What’s the point of even graduating when you’re too poor to send yourself anywhere? You think any top university is going to take an omega living on charity?”

The burn of humiliation crept up my neck in a hot wave.

“Give it back, Drake,” I said, my voice shaking despite my best efforts to keep it stern. “I’m late for class.”

He saw my reaction as a challenge and stepped closer, invading my space until my back hit the cold metal of the lockers. I held myself stiff, my hands balled into fists at my sides.

I knew I couldn’t do anything.

It had been like this for years. I had always had to bite my tongue around him.

He was the Alpha heir of Sterlink Pack, the absolute ruler of everything and everyone here, and I was nobody.

I hated how much I’d stared into those striking blue eyes since the day he started tormenting me, forced to look at him just to see how much he despised me.

It would have been so much easier if he was ugly—if he looked like those stone gargoyles in old movies, making my hatred for him much more simple.

Instead, he was insanely beautiful. I couldn’t pretend the way all the other girls in school looked at him wasn’t true. Drake Dawson had the face of a god and the soul of a monster.

“You never learn, do you?” Drake murmured, his voice dropping an octave, sending a shiver through me. “You really think you can just walk away from here? Better watch yourself, Chloe. Remember… I know your secret.”

My breath caught.

Slowly, Drake pulled out his phone, tapped the screen, and flashed a picture right in front of my face.

There it was. The exact reason I had spent years swallowing my pride and taking every ounce of his abuse.

It was a picture of my mother, taken inside the pack’s most popular strip club, The Velvet Siren.

People who frequented there knew her by her stage name, Red Ruby.

She wore a mask while she performed, but even being the club’s most popular dancer wasn’t enough to pay our piling bills. She was a prostitute on the side.

I had kept it a secret for years, until the day Drake shoved this picture in my face and my entire world collapsed.

I knew Drake and the other elite guys from school frequented the club, but I had no idea how he connected the dots. 

I had made sure never to be seen near that area, much less with her. Even when my mother needed me to drop something off from home, I wore a black hoodie and pulled a mask over my face so nobody could recognize me.

But how?

How had he found out? How had he gotten that picture of my mother without her mask on?

It was the maddening mystery I had tried and failed to solve ever since sophomore year.

“You see this?” Drake whispered, leaning in so close I could smell the sharp scent of his cologne. “This is the only reason why your life in school isn’t worse than it already is. You should be thanking me, Chloe. Imagine what would have become of you if the whole school ever found out.”

He tilted his head, his blue eyes flashing with malicious amusement.

“Imagine what they would say knowing your mother is the infamous Red Ruby, and that slut runs right in your family.”

My eyes grew heavy, burning with hot, traitorous tears.

I forced myself to look away, staring desperately at the floor. Slowly, I could feel the pain running through my body turn into anger.

Who was he to judge me? I knew exactly what my mother did to survive, but who was he to stand there and look down on me like I was some kind of criminal?

At least she works for her money instead of terrorizing people just because they’re the Alpha’s son, I thought bitterly to myself.

I didn’t say it out loud—or at least, I thought I hadn’t.

I forgot that I was dealing with an Alpha wolf, and that Drake had this terrifying habit of intercepting the surface thoughts of a weak omega like me when we were this close.

“You think you’ve got a clever mouth in that head of yours, don’t you?” Drake’s voice cut through the air, dangerously low.

Stupid. I should have known better than to be so loud with my thoughts around him.

Before I could even blink, he closed the distance, his hand shooting out to grab me by the throat, slamming my back hard against the lockers.

Panic flared in my chest. I bit back my tears, cursing myself. Never talk back. I knew this.

“You’ve got a lot of nerve for a nobody,” Drake growled, his face inches from mine, his blue eyes blazing with fury. “Say it. Apologize right now, or I swear I’ll post this picture on every student’s dashboard before the bell rings.”

Terror overrode my pride.

“I… I’m sorry,” I whispered, forcing the words past his tight grip. “I shouldn’t have talked back. Please.”

“Please what?” he demanded, his fingers tightening slightly around my neck.

I swallowed hard, humiliation burning in my throat as I forced out the degrading title he had made me use for years. “Please… master.”

With a scoff of disgust, he finally let go of my throat.

I looked down, holding my burning neck as tears spilled over my lashes and rolled down my face.

“Ungrateful bitch,” Drake sneered, glaring down at me. “You’re a good for nothing, and all you’ll ever be is a whore like your mother.”

He crushed my placement form in his fist and dropped it at my feet.

Then, with a final look of disgust, he turned and walked off down the corridor, his footsteps echoing into silence.

I stood there for a long moment before it took everything in me to pull myself together.

Shakily, I picked up the crumpled form from the floor, smoothing it out against my skirt as I stood.

This will end soon, I told myself, gripping the paper like a lifeline. In a month I’ll be done. I’ll go so far away from this pack and this school that I’ll forget Drake Dawson ever existed, and I’ll finally be free of him.

…

That thought carried me through the next several weeks. 

Drake continued his relentless games, and the other students followed his lead, laughing at me for being poor and living on the Alpha’s scholarship.

But now, the day was finally here.

I sat with the rest of the graduating students in a simple black dress I had washed and reworn far too many times. 

Around me the air buzzed with electric energy, because it wasn’t just a graduation. It was our coming-of-age, the day our bodies fully matured and our bonds were unlocked. 

Girls whispered and giggled, praying to the Moon Goddess for a mate among the school’s Alpha heirs, a golden ticket to an extravagant life and college status.

That wasn’t my dream. I couldn’t care less about the bond unlocking, or about mates and true love. I just wanted my certificate and my placement papers so I could leave this pack once and for all.

After the speeches, students were called up one by one for their certificates and blessings from the Alpha, who stood proudly on the stage as the school’s leading sponsor. 

Because I had miraculously stayed the best graduating student despite everything, my name echoed through the auditorium first.

“Chloe Byrne!”

My stomach twisted into a knot, but I forced my feet to move, walking up the steps of the stage under a sea of watching eyes. I kept my head down, just wanting to get it over with.

As I stepped forward to receive my certificate, the air around me suddenly shifted.

A sharp, violent jolt of electricity tore through my veins, so intense my knees nearly buckled. A peculiar scent, one I had never inhaled before, flooded my senses, cutting through the entire auditorium. 

My wolf, dormant and battered for years, shrieked inside my mind, waking up with a terrifying roar.

I gasped, stumbling so badly that a teacher had to catch me.

God. I knew what this was. The stupid unlocking.

This wasn’t what I needed. I didn’t want to find my mate here. Not in this pack.

I raised my eyes, confused. Sitting across the stage, near the edge where the high-ranking guests sat, was Drake.

I watched his breath hitch. The mocking smirk that had formed at my panic vanished entirely, replaced by sheer horror as his blue eyes grew wide. The same shock wave had slammed into him too.

He tried his best to compose himself but the second his eyes fell back on me, I heard it.

My wolf’s voice for the first time, “Mate.”