Stealing the Alpha’s Heart

LYSSA

Consciousness floated to me slowly, each like a tiny step towards lucidity. I was vaguely aware that I’d had some incredibly intense dreams, but I only began comprehending them as I drew towards wakefulness again.

But then, when I finally opened my eyes, I realized that maybe my dreams were less dreams and more something else entirely.

Where am I?

I certainly wasn’t in any of the apartments I usually hid in. It was far too comfortable, stylish, and decorated.

Shifting, I tried to sit up to figure out what was wrong, only to become very aware of pressure across my waist. Freezing in terror, my brain supplied that the weight seemed to belong to an arm.

But whose arm?

My adrenaline must have finally kicked in because my entire brain was suddenly flooded with memories of everything that had happened before I blacked out.

I’d been drugged or… or something. And then there had been wolves. Actual wolves in the city! There was a lot of other stuff, but it all combined into a messy collage in my brain. And now I was in bed with some guy! Was he sleeping behind me? Was he armed with a dagger or a gun in case I tried to escape?

My heart had a full-on volcanic eruption in my chest, but I forced myself to stay still while collecting at least a few of my thoughts. I needed to get out. I had to, even if it seemed like the most terrifying option in the world.

It took me a couple of painful minutes, but eventually, I was able to work up the nerve ever so slowly to try to move. Bit by bit, I shifted until I realized that the man behind me was still asleep. Well, at least there was one little blessing to the whole situation. With just a little bit of coaxing pressure, I got him to remove his arm himself and roll over.

Slipping out of bed, I looked around the room to get my bearings. Had I been trafficked? That was the only thing that made sense to me, which meant I needed to escape immediately.

There were multiple doors, and I rushed to the closest one, throwing it open to find an insanely large bathroom. Seriously, it was almost the size of one of the bedrooms in the apartments I squatted in. Who needed that much space?

However, I didn’t have time for further criticism and rushed to the next door. But I didn’t quite get there before the man from the day before sat up, rubbing the sleepiness from his eyes.

It was such a domestic, normal sort of thing to do that I slowed — a bit gobsmacked.

“Where are you going?”

Where was I going? I would think that much was evident, but I found myself answering anyway.

“Home!”

Was it strange that I couldn’t help noticing how handsome he looked? His hair was slightly rumpled from sleep, and he wore a plain gray sleep shirt with comfortable black sweatpants. I should have been terrified of him, and yet I wasn’t. Sure, I was apprehensive and mad as hell, but he didn’t feel dangerous to me.

And that was incredibly stupid.

Snapping myself out of it, I rushed to the next door and flung that open to just to see a closet. A stupid closet that was also the size of a small bedroom.

How loaded is this guy?

I heard movement behind me and whirled to see that the man had stood, hands loosely on his h**s. His frame was even more broad and enticing in his casualwear, evident even though I was trying very hard to ignore everything about his appearance.

“If you’d like to change, you’re welcome to borrow my clothes, but they’ll probably be a bit big for you.”

How could he sound so casual? He’d kidnapped me and put me in his bed!

Wait… his bed?

It was like it all suddenly clicked in my head, and for a moment, I did indeed run cold with terror. Had he… had he…?

No. He couldn’t have. The only sore place on me was my neck and the soles of my feet from all my running. Although I’d never had se*x before, I was pretty sure I’d have a lot more pain from my first time — even if I was drugged up to my gills.

But I was more certain than ever that I needed to get away. I needed to get home. Looking at the man, Melon, or Mehron, or whatever his name was, I tried to figure out if I could get to the other door behind him. Naturally, I’d picked the wrong choice twice.

“Hey, hold on a minute.” The handsome fellow raised his hand as I tensed to launch my escape, giving me the slightest pause. But I still glanced between him and the door, my mind trying to calculate a million things at once.

Suddenly his voice turned deeper, every syllable rattling through my bones like the percussion section of a particularly emphatic orchestra. “Sit down and have coffee with me. I just want you to hear me out!”

I shouldn’t listen to him; I knew that. And yet I couldn’t come up with a good reason not to. In fact, listening to him seemed like a matter of course, so I walked up to his side like everything was perfectly normal.

It wasn’t, obviously, and part of my brain screamed that I needed to get away. And yet I felt a pleasant sort of agreeableness at his command.

“Here, this way.”

Like a true gentleman, he opened the door, gesturing for me to follow him. I did, only to step into a lush living room.

I didn’t know if it was the act of moving through a doorway or if the shouting part of my brain finally gained control, but suddenly I felt free to act again. I lunged forward, racing away from my captor. A rumbling growl — yeah, a literal growl — sounded from him, fueling my panicked fleeing.

But he was impossibly fast, and before I could get far, he grabbed my hand, pulling me to a stop.

“Please, take a seat. It’s too damn early for all this without any coffee.”

Once more, that odd feeling of wanting to obey drifted over me. It was so unlike myself that I legitimately just blinked at him for a couple of moments, trying to figure out what was happening.

“My name is Mahlan Reese, and I am the alpha of my pack.” As if it meant something, he held out his wrist, showing a tattoo of something.

Wait, that’s not a tattoo!

The raised flesh told me it was actually a brand, a moon and trees burned into his flesh. I stared, shock flowing through me, only for him to raise my wrist and look at it.

“You don’t have a pack brand.”

“What the hell is a pack brand?”

He let out a soft chuckle, sounding more melancholy than condescending. “You don’t know what it means?”

“Of course I don’t!”

I felt like I had suddenly been launched into another world where everyone used strange words that didn’t make sense in how they were using them. Was this some sort of gang code? Trafficker talk?

“I don’t know anything! Like, for example, where I am!” This time I was the one who was closing the distance between us. I didn’t know where I got the gall, but I was suddenly poking his chest like I was in charge. “You wanna answer that one, buddy?”

“We’re in my home, actually.” His apartment. Sure. That would be too convenient. I was probably at some sort of compound. That was where traffickers hung out, right?

“You mentioned you had somewhere to go last night?”

What? Oh, right. All of that had slipped my mind. “My graduation! Do you have any idea how important that is? Was!”

He looked properly contrite, but that didn’t please me. In fact, something was coiling in my stomach that told me I should obey him. Make him happy — bizarre stuff.

“What is going on here?” I asked, trying not to sound scared. I didn’t think I was successful, but oh, well, I figured I was justified considering everything.

“I know this is a lot, but I’m a wolf, and an alpha of my pack, as I said.”

I laughed. Because how could I not? He was a man, yet he was talking about being some sort of animal.

Then again… I did see wolves suddenly appear in the alley, hadn’t I? No… that must have been the drugs. He was trying to take advantage of my formerly inebriated state.

“Think hard. I know what you saw when I fought Cyprus.”

“That… that wasn’t a hallucination?”

Mahlan shook his head. “It wasn’t, my dear. I can continue, but I can stop if this is too much.”

I nodded, my words not coming to me.

“Okay, but if this gets overwhelming, you tell me, all right?”

His voice sounded so caring, so concerned that it confused me. How could a stranger feel anything like that for me?

“I marked you, that’s what that bite is. I could scent you across the building above the restaurant, but it’s when you picked the pocket of one of our most venerated alphas in our entire city that I knew for certain.”

Yeah, I always knew being greedy would be the end of me. I still wasn’t buying whatever alpha, wolf thing the guy was trying to sell, but I could totally see how that man had been an important figure in whatever weird society Mahlan was a part of.

“I marked you thinking it would get that alpha to let you go. It was supposed to bring you under my jurisdiction. But, uh, it didn’t quite work.”

It was insane. It was impossible. And yet I found myself believing him, which made me wonder if I was certifiable. Nothing made sense, but something within me was adamant that he was being honest.

Who knew? Maybe we were all crazy.

“I’m sorry that it happened the way it did. It is permanent, which I mentioned before, but I figured it was important enough to reiterate.”

My mind swirled as I tried to figure it all out. The practical, logical side of my mind was trying to calculate a thousand and one different reasonable theories, while another part of me felt borderline enticed to trust the man.

“I know that this is a lot, but there is something I need to know.”

I looked at him blearily, my brain feeling like it was going to melt. “What?”

“You said graduation. How old are you, exactly?”

Somehow, my brain had enough spare juice to feel a little bit snarky. “Nineteen. I started school late.”

Despite everything going on within me, I didn’t miss his relieved sigh. “Worried you marked up a minor? That wouldn’t be a concern if you just asked first.”

Now that I’d said it, the thought stood sharp and crisp in my mind. What if I’d started school early? What if he’d found me a couple of years earlier when I was just sixteen? Would it have mattered? Would it have stopped him?

Rage bubbled up in me, sharp and biting. With my heart thundering in my chest, my head started getting fuzzy.

“You marked me without permission! For life!”

To his credit, Mahlan stood back and let me pace while I tried to come to terms with what had happened. My entire world turned inside out, and I had nothing to hold onto. I had so many questions, all piling on top of each other in a panicked heap.

“How is this supposed to work if I’m not a wolf?”

He didn’t answer right away, which made my stomach do a couple of flips. I’d been around long enough to know what an ominous silence was. But thankfully, he spoke before I could spontaneously combust.

“That’s the thing.” He paused, and it was strange to see a flicker of uncertainty cross his confident features. “You have to be a wolf for it to work. There have been legends of certain… fey, I suppose you can call them, being able to take marks from other shifters, but that’s about it.”

“Fey? Are those a thing too? What, ya gonna tell me the boogeyman and the tooth fairy are real too?” I was yelling but was pretty disinclined to care about my volume levels.

“There’s a whole world of people beyond humans, but that’s not important right now.”

“Oh, really, what is then?”

“Me, you, and that mark.”

Right. He actually did have a point with that one. I needed to get caught up with what happened to me before I got caught up with a magical menagerie of mystery miscreants.

“Okay, yeah, the mark. How do we even know it worked at all?”

Suddenly, Mahlan drew himself to his full height, which was nothing to sneeze at. But I didn’t feel intimidated as I should have. No, instead, I wanted to lean in as he took a step toward me. To close my eyes and surrender.

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Slowly, as if he really did care about if I was frightened or not, Mahlan lifted his hand and gently ran a finger across the raised bite mark on my neck. Instantly, I felt like I’d been handed a warm, soothing cup of tea, given a full body massage, and a really good hug all at once. I wanted to sink into the pleasant rush of endorphins and never get out.

All the panic in me, as well as the simmering anxiety that had been eating at me for years, died down to a dull whisper at the back of my head. For once, I could just be me. Stress-free and feeling good.

But then his finger went away, and reality came crashing back like the wrecking ball it was. The deluge of all those negative emotions after such sweet bliss was borderline cruel, and I felt my system reacting as if it were in shock.

“I…” It was all too much. I was just nineteen and trying to graduate high school. I didn’t need anything else on my plate. “I have to go.”

It took all of my willpower to break away from Mahlan and his potent draw.

“My friends have to be worried about me. I missed graduation and our after-party!” What if they called the cops? Sure, they would be doing it to look out for me but notifying the authorities of my existence could upheave my life even more than accidentally pickpocketing some wolf mafioso.

I began to pace again as dread built up, my body trying to find a way to deal with the sudden surge of frenetic energy contained within my very human form. I was about to have a meltdown, I could feel it in my teeth and down to my toes.

“I’m sorry, but you can’t,” Mahlan said lowly.

Oh, so I was a prisoner after all.

“Why not?”

“Because being marked without finishing the claim makes you an even greater target than just being my mate.”

Great, more weird-a*s mumbo jumbo. “What could you possibly mean by that?”

“I mean that others will want to… take advantage of your situation.”

“And who put me in this situation?” Ah, there was my anger again. It was much easier to deal with than the helpless despair and confusion trying so desperately to take hold within me. “I didn’t ask to be some alfalfa’s mate!”

“Alpha’s.”

“Like I care! Do you think I needed or wanted this? My friends are worried about having their last fun summer before adulthood and moving into college dorms. Because of you, now I have to be worried that I’ve been marked for life by some madman or a literal werewolf!”

I could feel that my emotions were in a sharp tug of war between the panic and the rage, sending me hurtling towards a full-on mental break. But before I could get there, a knock sounded at the door.

With my luck, it was probably Krampus himself on the other side. And why not? It wasn’t like my world could get any weirder.