Mark of Sin: Bound to the Cruel Alpha

Power is a dangerous drug. It seeps into your blood, poisons your very soul. It travels through generations, ruining sacred fates.

Perhaps power is what made the Moon Goddess abandon us. Tired of the powerful wolves playing with fate, she left us all, forcing us into a life of abandonment and despair.

Still, she was merciful enough to give us her final gift –– our mates.

But not everyone was this lucky.

Alphas... the mere backbone that holds us all in check, were left without their fated mates, thus getting exactly what they always wanted –– freedom to choose.

Until they couldn’t do that anymore.

Now, the only way for Alpha to find his mate and continue his bloodline is to get a "calling mark" –– a branding stamp meant to attract an omega breeder, who will then be used as a living womb and a plaything with no freedom.

They are not meant to be loved. They are not meant to be cherished. They are only meant to submit, obey, and spread their legs... anytime, anywhere.

And I am... one of those things.

. . .

The restrooms at our school were never a place anyone entered willingly. The tiles were cracked, the grout had turned a grim, dark color, and the mirrors were scratched and smeared with things I preferred not to think about.

The overhead bulb flickered constantly, as if it, too, was utterly exhausted by the chaos of student life.

I gripped the edge of the sink so hard my knuckles turned white. A thin stream of water trickled out, rattling against the porcelain. The sound drowned out everything else in the room, but it couldn’t drown out the main thing: a dull, throbbing heat pulsing right beneath the skin of my wrist.

Rolling up the sleeve of my thin sweater for the hundredth time, I stared down at my arm.

"Damn it... damn it... damn it..."

A drawing of a rose stared back at me.

It was large, bold, and entirely too alive to be a mere image on flesh. It had jet-black leaves and a crimson bud that looked as though it had just been dipped in fresh blood.

The lines curved perfectly along the contour of my wrist, as if adapting to my body. With every beat of my heart, the design seemed to breathe. The longer I stared, the more it felt like it was about to burst right through my skin.

A sharp pain sliced through my wrist like an electric shock. Hissing, I thrust my hand under the freezing tap water.

It was useless. The cold just mingled with the heat, morphing into a strange, itching agony.

A calling mark.

This wasn’t a tattoo from a parlor. This wasn’t some foolish mistake born from sharing a laugh with a friend. It was a calling mark. A real one. A fated one. As usual, female wolves got the absolute "best" of everything.

I knew that marks were painful when they appeared.

I’d heard the stories and seen the aftermath once or twice. Some people spent twenty-four hours writhing in agony; others howled into their pillows, swearing that when they found their fated match, they’d bite off whatever was within reach.

But nobody had warned me it would hurt this much. If getting a tattoo was this excruciating, then the Alphas who covered their bodies in ink every year, hoping to spark a fated bond, were downright psychotic.

Though, if you really thought about it... who else in their right mind would willingly put themselves under the needle just for a chance? Alphas. Alphas and their eternal obsession with control and their own self-importance.

Pack Alphas, city Alphas, rogue Alphas, and even the ones living behind the high walls that kept us segregated from one another—they all shared the same logic: I’ll get a tattoo, and maybe somewhere out there, lands away, my fated match will feel the same mark flare up. Then boom—destiny, fanfares, a happy ending, and... pups.

Betas and gammas got tattoos sometimes too, but for them, it was mostly just an addiction, a trend, a way to feel closer to the system—to the Alphas and breeder omegas.

For us, it was something else entirely. For Alphas, a tattoo was bait. A symbol. A guiding star in the attempt to find your other half.

That was why almost all Alphas put their first tattoos in highly visible places—forearms, collarbones, necks—so that if luck struck, they’d see their match instantly.

They wanted it so that if their fated match’s mark ignited somewhere on the other side of the city or the world, they would feel it right along with them. To live through that exact moment together. There were even forums dedicated to searching for matches, and a government registry that logged marks to help pairs find each other.

Despite the humans’ distaste for us werewolves, we were fully integrated members of society.

Yeah, right.

Except that most people chose something small. Modest. A line of text. A symbol. A miniature design. That way, if fate decided to ignore all their efforts, they wouldn’t have to live with a giant reminder of how they’d deluded themselves.

But my match... whoever he was... was clearly a certified psycho.

The rose took up almost the entire inner side of my wrist, its thorny branches creeping down toward my palm. This wasn’t a delicate little flower; it wasn’t anything sweet. There was something predatory and ominous about its beauty. Like a beautifully crafted weapon. Gleaming, mesmerizing, but dark all the same.

"To be honest, I was counting on finding my fated match approximately never..." I muttered under my breath.

And it was the truth. With my status as an unawakened Omega and my reputation back in high school for being a misfit, the chances of actually finding my Alpha felt like a cruel joke from the Goddess.

Growing up, I’d been labeled defective: an Omega whose full Awakening was severely delayed, on top of being overweight—it sounded like a medical diagnosis.

I’d been chubby, constantly out of breath, forever flushed, with broad shoulders that practically begged for people to crack jokes.

Later, defying my doctors’ advice, I went on a brutal diet and shed the weight within a couple of months. The fat melted away, my body completely reshaped itself, and my hormones turned into my personal executioners.

But the memories of being called a "blimp" never truly vanished. Not for me, and not for anyone else.

If I ever expected to see a mark, it was at forty, by accident, following a nervous breakdown and a couple of stints with chronic depression.

Definitely not now.

Not in the thick of the academic year, and certainly not with exams and a thesis hanging over my head. And worst of all, right before the academy’s damn registry check... where they log everything and tell your parents.

"Jane!"

The voice behind the door hit my nerves like a physical blow.

"Are you going to mess around in there all day?! Lina is losing her absolute mind out here! We’re late for the inspection, and we’re literally just waiting on you!"

The shout made me flinch, splashing water from the basin onto the floor. The pain in my wrist instantly flared up again, as if my nervous system had suddenly decided, Hey, why don’t we take another bite out of her sore arm?

"I’m coming!" I yelled back over the rushing water, viciously twisting the tap shut.

The stream died, and the mirror caught my reflection, stripped of the distracting flicker of light.

My skin was pale, my eyes slightly wide, my lips chewed raw. If I saw a classmate looking like this, I’d assume she was about to take the final exam of her life—not that she’d just received the fated mark most people spent their whole lives praying for.

I took a deep breath in, then let it out. Again. And again. The mark hadn’t vanished. Why the hell hasn’t it vanished? The heat wasn’t going away either. Which meant this wasn’t a hallucination, a dream, or the side effects of an energy drink.

This was real.

I pulled my sleeve back down, hiding the rose. The thin fabric of the sweater did little to mask its outline from my own eyes, but to anyone else, I hoped it just looked like a shadow or a stain. My hand was shaking, but I forced myself to stand tall and face the door.