Claimed by My Mafia Alpha King

Nicholas’s POV

The mahogany desk in my master study was completely buried.

Mountains of manila folders covered the polished wood. Digital tablets loaded with encrypted surveillance footage were stacked precariously near the edge. Hundreds of printed photographs were scattered like a disorganized deck of cards.

Every single piece of paper represented a lead.

Every single lead was a dead end.

I hadn’t left the private estate in four days. I had locked myself in this massive, suffocating room. Harrison’s human fixers were working around the clock. They scoured the city. They pulled facial recognition from subway stations. They bribed traffic cops. They hacked into hospital registry databases looking for birth records. They handed me absolutely everything they found.

It was all garbage.

I picked up a glossy photograph from the top of the pile.

It showed a pale, blonde woman walking out of a grocery store holding an infant car seat. My chest seized for a fraction of a second. I pulled the picture closer to the heavy brass desk lamp. I scrutinized the blurry face.

No.

She was too tall. Her shoulders were wrong. She walked with too much human confidence.

I threw the photo across the room. It hit the heavy oak door and fluttered uselessly to the floor.

I grabbed the next file. Grainy ATM footage of a teenager in a baggy sweater.

Trash.

Next file. A blurry shot of a woman with a stroller in a park.

Trash.

None of them were her.

My wolf snarled violently. He was a vicious, caged beast tearing at my ribs from the inside. He didn’t want to look at papers. He didn’t want to read human reports. He wanted to hunt. He wanted to smell blood and rain. He wanted to rip the city apart with his bare claws until we found our family.

The mate bond was a constant, burning wire stretched tight across my chest.

I could feel her. I knew she was alive. I knew she was somewhere in this sprawling, polluted concrete jungle. But the bond was a dull, directionless ache. It couldn’t give me a street name. It couldn’t give me an exact address.

I leaned back heavily in the leather executive chair.

I rubbed my face with both hands, dragging my fingers through my dark hair. My eyes burned. I hadn’t slept more than three hours in the last week. The exhaustion was a heavy, crushing physical weight. But I couldn’t stop.

If I closed my eyes, I saw her terrified face. I saw her bleeding in my dungeon. I saw the empty, cold bed in Greystone.

I let out a low, ragged breath. I grabbed my crystal glass from the edge of the desk and downed the amber whiskey. It tasted like absolute ash.

I hated this human world. I hated the concrete. I hated the exhaust fumes. I wanted to burn it all to the ground.

I slammed the empty glass down on the wood.

The crystal cracked, but I didn’t care. I was done for the night. I needed to move. I needed to hit a punching bag until my knuckles bled. I pushed the heavy chair back and stood up.

As I turned away from the desk, something caught the corner of my eye.

A plain, unmarked folder had slipped half off the edge of the mahogany desk. It was buried under a stack of useless financial reports from one of Harrison’s downtown casinos.

I stopped.

I didn’t know why, but a sudden, violent cold swept through my veins. The wolf inside me went completely still. His ears perked up in the dark.

I turned back around.

I reached out and pulled the folder free. I flipped it open.

There was a single, high-resolution photograph paperclipped to a brief typed report. The heading read: *Unconfirmed Sighting - University Campus.*

I picked up the photograph.

My heart completely stopped. The air vanished from my lungs in a single, violent rush.

The background of the image was a brick pathway lined with autumn trees. There was a crowd of blurry human students walking by in the distance. But right in the center of the frame, slumped on the cold bricks next to a patch of grass, was a girl.

She was wearing a cheap, oversized sweater. Her pale blonde hair was falling out of a messy knot. She was clutching a grey baby carrier tightly to her chest.

It was her.

Irina.

My mate. My wife.

I gripped the edges of the photograph so hard the glossy paper crumpled under my fingers. My eyes devoured her face. She looked exhausted. She looked terrified. But she was real. She was alive.

And the tiny, bundled shape strapped to her chest...

My son.

The breath ripped out of my throat in a jagged, broken gasp. I had found her. After months of dead ends, after bleeding myself entirely dry, I was finally looking at her.

But then, my eyes shifted.

I looked slightly to the right of her fragile frame.

The overwhelming, crushing relief instantly mutated. It warped into something dark, violent, and utterly uncontrollable.

She wasn’t alone.

There was a man in the photograph.

He was young. A human college student in a dark jacket. He was crouching right next to her on the dirty brick path. He wasn’t just standing there. He wasn’t just passing by.

He was touching her.

His large hand was firmly wrapped around Irina’s delicate arm. He was pulling her up from the ground. His face was angled toward hers, looking at her with an expression that made the blood in my veins instantly boil. It was a look of deep, infuriating familiarity. It was a look of protective warmth.

My wolf snapped.

The cage shattered completely. Pure, unadulterated Alpha rage exploded in my chest like a bomb.

My eyes bled instantly into pitch black.

A terrifying, inhuman roar ripped straight from my throat.

The sound vibrated the heavy glass windows of the master study. The terrifying, primal noise echoed down the massive, empty halls of the estate.

Someone was touching my mate. Another male had his hands on my wife.

The jealousy was a living, breathing fire. It consumed my entire brain. It demanded immediate, overwhelming violence.

The heavy mahogany desk splintered under my clenched fist. I didn’t care about the college. I didn’t care about human laws or drawing attention. I was going to rip that boy’s arm straight off his body.

I snatched my phone off the desk with a violently shaking hand.

I hit the speed dial. The line connected instantly to my head of security. I didn’t wait for a greeting.

"I am heading to the university."