Chapter 13

Valerie

So that was it.

That was why the Alpha had wanted me.

It was not that he saw past my imperfections, but rather, my flaws were useful to him. He wanted to…use me.

I should not have been surprised. All my life, I was made fun of for my mark. Even long before I had been taken in as a slave, children pointed and laughed when they saw it. I recalled the way the neighbor kids used to point and said, “Look! She has a stain on her neck!” And for a long while, I thought it was just that—a stain.

For months, I tried to scrub it off in the bath, even making it bleed at one point. Eventually, I came to understand that it was not a stain at all. It was a part of me and I would never be rid of it.

I had never expected that for the past several years, it would be the one thing keeping me from living a life of slavery and abuse. I had also never expected that it would be the one feature on me that caught the Alpha’s eyes. That he would be the one to take me from the shop and feed me delicious