After My Alpha Rejected Our Secret Mate Bond

I woke to the sound of the door opening.

Not Miriam this time. The footsteps were lighter. Deliberate. I turned my head — slow, because even that small movement sent a spike of pain through my leg — and saw Coraline Adams standing in the doorway.

She was still wearing the ceremonial dress. Pale silk that caught the dim overhead light. Her hair was perfect. Her makeup had not smudged. She looked like a bride.

She looked at me the way you look at roadkill.

"Hello, Anastasia."

Her voice was different. Flat. No warmth, no performance, no breathless distress. Just cold efficiency.

I tried to push myself up on my elbows. My leg screamed. I made it halfway before I had to stop, gasping.

"Don't get up on my account," Coraline said. She stepped inside and closed the door behind her. The lock clicked. "We should talk."

"There's nothing to talk about." My voice came out hoarse. "You won. Congratulations."

She smiled. It did not reach her eyes.

"You still think this is about winning," she said. "That's cute. This was never a competition, Anastasia. You were never in the running."

She crossed the room slowly, her heels clicking on the bare floor. She stopped at the foot of the cot and looked down at me with something close to pity. But not quite.

"Carter never intended to claim you," she said. "You were a body to mark in the dark. A secret he kept because it was convenient. You really thought he loved you?"

"He did." The words came out before I could stop them. "He does."

"He doesn't." Her voice was patient. Explaining something obvious to a child. "He needed someone to fuck while his father arranged the real alliance. That's all you were. A placeholder."

I wanted to argue. I wanted to reach down the mind-link and prove her wrong. But the bond was still that thin corroded hum, and Carter was still choosing not to hear me, and the proof I needed was not there.

Coraline tilted her head. "You're crying," she observed. "How embarrassing."

I had not realized. I wiped my face with the back of my hand. It came away wet.

"I want you to understand something," Coraline said. She leaned forward slightly, resting her hands on the metal rail at the foot of the cot. "Everything you thought you had? It was never real. The marks, the promises, the little cabin at the edge of the territory — that was all set dressing. And now the play is over."

She straightened. Smoothed her dress.

"You should have stayed away from the ceremony," she added. "That was stupid. But I suppose desperation makes people do stupid things."

She moved around the side of the cot. I tried to track her but my body was too slow, too broken. She stopped near my head.

"Let me show you something," she said.

Then she grabbed my hair.

I screamed. Or tried to. Her hand clamped over my mouth before the sound could fully form. She dragged me off the cot — my leg caught on the frame and I felt something tear inside it, something that had been holding together by sheer luck — and pulled me across the floor toward the small attached bathroom.

I clawed at her wrist. My nails did nothing. She was stronger than she looked, or maybe I was weaker than I thought.

She kicked the bathroom door open and hauled me inside. The tile was cold under my knees. She shoved my head down toward the toilet bowl.

"This is where you belong," she said.

And she pushed my face into the water.

I could not breathe. I thrashed, tried to pull back, but her grip was iron. Water filled my nose, my mouth. I choked. My hands scrabbled against the porcelain, slipping, finding no purchase.

She held me there.

Seconds. Maybe ten. Maybe twenty. Time stopped meaning anything. There was only the water and the burning in my lungs and the absolute certainty that she was going to hold me under until I stopped moving.

Then she yanked me back up.

I gasped. Coughed. Water streamed down my face, my neck, soaking the thin hospital gown. I tried to pull away but she still had my hair wrapped around her fist.

"Do you understand now?" she asked. Her voice was still calm. Businesslike. "You are nothing. You were always nothing."

She shoved my head down again.

This time I could not even fight. My body had nothing left. I just hung there, limp, while she held me under and the water closed over my head like a grave.

She pulled me up again. I collapsed against the toilet, gasping, shaking.

"Good," Coraline said. She released my hair. "I'm glad we had this talk."

Then I heard it. Footsteps in the corridor. Heavy. Fast. Carter's footsteps. I would know them anywhere.

Coraline heard them too.

She stepped back. Her hand went to her own face. She dragged her nails down her cheek in four precise lines. Blood welled up immediately, bright red against her pale skin. She tore her sleeve at the shoulder. Grabbed the doorframe and let herself slide down the wall into a sitting position, her face crumpling into manufactured sobs.

The door burst open.

Carter filled the doorway. His eyes went straight to Coraline, bleeding and weeping on the floor. Then they flicked to me — soaking wet, gasping, collapsed against the toilet — and something dark and final settled into his expression.

"What did you do," he said.

It was not a question.

Coraline looked up at him with huge, tear-filled eyes. "She attacked me," she whispered. "I came to check on her, to see if she was okay, and she just — she went crazy, Carter. She said I stole you. She said I ruined everything. I tried to calm her down but she —"

Her voice broke beautifully. She lifted one shaking hand to her bleeding face.

Carter's jaw tightened.

He looked at me. And I saw, in that moment, that he believed her.

Every word.

"Carter." My voice was a rasp. "Carter, please. She's lying. She did this to herself. She —"

"Enough."

The Alpha tone again. It hit me like a fist. My throat closed. My wolf whimpered and curled in on itself, trying to make itself small enough to survive.

Carter crossed the room in two strides. He crouched down next to Coraline, his hand gentle on her shoulder. "It's okay," he murmured. "You're safe now."

Then he stood. Turned to me.

And I saw his eyes go cold.