CHAPTER TWO: CONTRACTED PRISON

Seraphina

I was humiliated. A side mistress. A discarded, unranked bed-warmer and breeder offered crumbs in front of the entire elite world.

“No!” I said. It was meant to be a scream, but it came out as a broken whisper. I took a shaky step forward with my head shaking violently. “No, Rowan... you promised me...I’m your girlfriend”

My stepmother’s cold voice cut through the air before Rowan could answer.

“Silence, girl!” the woman barked “You think you have a right to complain? You are a charity case! The elders have tolerated your presence long enough, but let the truth be known tonight—you carry none of our blood! You are not family. You are nothing!”

Laughter broke out among my step-siblings in the front row. The pack elders nodded in cold agreement.

“Get her out of my sight” my stepmother mother sneered. “She has one hour to clear her things.”

As they dragged me backward toward the doors, former friends and peers stepped aside, turning their backs on me one by one.

“Rejected!” a Beta boy spat as I passed.

“Desperate Omega...lol” another girl snickered.

One of Quinn’s supporters deliberately shoved his shoulder hard into mine as I was forced past. I stumbled, my weak knees giving out completely, and fell hard onto the floor. No one helped me. They only stepped over my dress.

From the table, I saw Asheron watched the spectacle. His face was an unreadable mask of cold detachment. He saw me on the floor, bleeding from a small scrape on my palm, trying desperately to pull myself up while cradling my stomach.

The memory of our stolen kiss...or rather, my stolen kiss still haunted me to date and now I was being publicly humiliated in front of him.

Beside him, his fiancée Pearl caught the moment he kept staring at me and I stared back. She looked from him to me crawling on the floor, and her eyes narrowed

That night, the lowest Omega dorms smelled like filth

Every breath felt like I was a step closer to death. Outside the academy was celebrating. Rowan and Quinn’s engagement had just been formally announced.

He knew I had nowhere else to go. He knew I would have done anything for him. He thought I was so weak, so thoroughly broken by years of being my stepmother’s punching bag, that I would accept a place in his shadow while he placed his pack’s crown on Quinn’s head.

“No” I whispered to the empty room “Not for me. For the baby.”

If I stayed here, Quinn would make sure this child never saw the light of day. And Rowan... Rowan would look at my pup and see only a inconvenient secret, a stain on his shiny new Luna’s reign.

Through the thin bond-scraps that still clung to my soul, a sudden spike of distant, mocking laughter hit me. Rowan’s voice floated through the lingering link: “She’ll crawl back. Omegas like her always do.”

I didn’t wait for the rest before making the important decision to run away. In no time, I wrapped the cardigan tighter around my shoulders, slipped out into the midnight and ran without directions

The borderlands between our royal pack and the dark, jagged territory of the rival academy were dangerous even for blooded warriors. For me, it was a death sentence.

By the time I got tired, I slowed down but when I relaxed, I heard a guttural growl echoed from the tree line. Then another.

Yellow eyes ignited in the darkness. Three massive, scarred feral wolves stepped out from the brush; rogues.

The lead rogue lunged at me

I screamed, dropping to the mud and wrapping my arms tightly around my stomach to shield my child. I braced for the sharp tear of fangs but it never came.

A terrifying roar shattered the night, so loud and vibrating with pure Alpha energy that the air itself seemed to split open.

A blur of dark fur struck the rogue in mid-air. The intruder was hurled fifty feet across the clearing, smashing into a boulder before collapsing motionless.

The remaining two rogues yelped in terror and backed away instantly.

Asheron stepped out . He wasn’t fully shifted, but his Alpha aura hit the tension.

Silence fell over the forest, broken only by the sound of my breathing.

He turned slowly toward me. Recognition flashed in his eyes, instantly swallowed by a wave of cold, venomous contempt.

“You again” he sighed

Every step he took scared me “The pathetic little stray from the corridor” he sneered, looking down at me as if I were a stain on his forest floor. “Rejected by her own pack, running like a coward into my lands. Did you think you could come crawling across my border to seek pity?”

“I... I didn’t mean to...” I stammered out “I was just trying to cross...”

He reached down grabbed the front of my cardigan and hauling me up off the ground with a single, effortless motion. I gasped as my feet dangled inches above the mud.

“You are weak” he scoffed “You let them discard you, and now you bring your pathetic scent onto my territory. I should leave you here for the next pack of rogues to finish.”

I clutched at his wrists. Deep inside my chest, the memory of that corridor kiss flickered—the dangerous, possessive lightning that had snapped between us. I saw a flicker of it in his eyes now, too: a flash of dark anger at the fact that despite his disgust, his own body went rigid at my proximity.

“Please. ” I whispered, my voice breaking. “Hurt me if you want... but let me stay. J-just... give me shelter. I can’t go back.”

Asheron stared at me for a long moment.

With a growl of irritation, he dropped me. I landed heavily on my knees in the grass.

“Get up,” he commanded, turning his back on me and dusting off his sleeves. “You will not bleed on my border, and you will not wander back into royal lands to bring their politics to my doorstep. You step inside my pack house once and there is no escape.”

An hour later, I was dragged into the his estate.

I stood shivering near the centre while Asheron sat behind a massive desk. He had removed his coat, leaving him in a crisp black shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows.

The air in the room was filled with his dominant Alpha presence. He made no effort to soften it; in fact, he let it press down on me, forcing me to feel every ounce of my own powerlessness.

“Listen closely, rejected Omega” he started off. “I do not care about your sob story. I do not care that Rowan discarded you. And I certainly do not want you near me.”

“However...” he continued, lifting his gaze to trap mine, “you are now on my land. The royal pack claims you are a traitor and a runaway. Rowan will eventually realize his pride can’t handle losing something he considered his property, and he will come looking. I will not have my borders breached for a weakling.”

He turned some papers toward me and slid it across the desk.

“This is a formal protection contract” he stated coldly. “It grants you sanctuary within my estate walls. Under my name, neither Rowan nor your stepmother can touch you. You will be fed, clothed, and housed in this place.”

I took a hesitant step forward, looking down at the dense black script filling the page. “What... what do you want in return?”

A dark, mocking smirk touched the corner of Asheron’s lips, though his eyes remained completely dead.

“You give up everything” he whispered, leaning forward into the firelight. “You sign away your freedom. You never step foot on that land again. You remain under my absolute authority, trapped under my roof, bound to my rules until I decide otherwise. As for the rest...we’ll see how it goes.”

He held out the silver pen.

“Sign it” Asheron growled, disgust lacing every syllable as his eyes tracked the way my hand shook. “Or I drag you back to the border right now and throw you to the dogs.”

My fingers brushed against his as I took the pen. Another sharp, electric spark snapped between our skin. Asheron flinched back instantly as if he had been burned, a look of pure repulsion crossing his sharp features.

He wiped his hand against his trousers, glaring at me with open hatred for the effect I somehow had on him.

I knew that this was another cage. I was trading one master for another, placing myself at the mercy of an Alpha who despised the very sight of me.

But as I leaned over the desk, my eyes caught a clause near the very bottom of the ancient document, hidden beneath dense legal terminology.

My breath hitched.

It wasn’t just a contract for refuge. The wording granted Asheron total, unchallengeable possession over my physical body and scent, effectively legally classifying me not as a guest, but as his private, unassignable Omega.

It was a claim in everything but name.

I looked up at Asheron as horror and confusion fought in my chest. He was watching me with indifference, completely uncaring of the trap he had just laid.

“Sign this or go back and be a side mistress.”

I shook my head slowly, swallowed the lump in my throat and signed that damned contract anyway.