Mark of Sin: Bound to the Cruel Alpha

I violently shoved the luxury piece back into the boutique packaging as if it were a venomous viper.

"Jane!" Annie gasped, grabbing my forearm. Her eyes were blown wide, shining with enough excitement to light the entire room. "Why didn’t you tell me you were seeing someone? His taste is incredible! This... this is a literal masterpiece!"

Completely forgetting her naked terror from moments ago, she reverently reached out to stroke the pristine leather.

"Do you even understand what this is?" she babbled, her voice climbing an octave. "This is from the ultra-limited autumn drop! It sold out worldwide last week! The waitlist for high-ranked wolves is six months long, and you just have it sitting on your bed!"

Her voice overflowed with pure, unadulterated awe. Annie was a certified fashion addict; she could identify a luxury house just by the click of a zipper. To her, the bag was truly a work of art.

To me, it was a biological insult. A blatant display of dominance.

"How much do you think it’s worth?" I asked quietly, doing my best to strangle the tremor in my voice. In my head, a calculated tally was already running.

Sell it. Get rid of it. Take the cash. I could buy a normal bag, restock my groceries, and finally put something away for a rainy day. Walking around our neighborhood with a luxury item like this was practically a death sentence anyway. I’d get mugged in the first dark alleyway just for the logo—and they’d probably beat me for ransom, too, assuming that if I had the funds for a bag like this, I was carrying a thick stack of cash, too.

Annie rolled her eyes, cradling the leather against her chest like a newborn pup.

"It costs a kidney, Jane! It’s insanely expensive! You have to let me borrow it, please! Just once! Even if it’s just for a photo!"

Her face twisted into a pathetic, wide-eyed pout, begging like a cartoon cat. But it didn’t touch me. Inside, everything was boiling with pure, unadulterated humiliation.

"For God’s sake, no, Annie," I cut her off harshly, snatching the gift back from her hands and shoving it firmly into the black silk. "I’m not taking this. I’m giving it back to him."

***

I sat on a stone bench near the North Sector parking lot, feeling the biting morning frost penetrate the thin layers of my clothes.

Yesterday’s confrontation had ended badly, and the short night hadn’t erased the memories—only numbed them. But the morning had started even worse. Worse was too mild a word for what had happened.

Magnus’ actions had made it crystal clear: he considered me his property. A pet. A trinket. And that was something I flatly refused to accept.

A desperate conflict tore at my chest.

On one hand, I knew that defying the system was professional suicide. I couldn’t handle the backlash. It was entirely useless to fight against the laws hammered into our skulls from the moment we were born. An Omega Breeder belonged first to her family, then to her Alpha mate, and there was no third option. The state protected these ancient pack laws with the exact same lethal precision it used to guard its borders.

On the other hand... a rebellion was simmering in my blood, a hot rage that made me want to scream until my throat bled.

I kicked a stray pebble with the toe of my sneaker, watching it clatter across the empty asphalt. It was so early that the campus looked entirely abandoned. When I’d snuck down the dormitory stairs, the elderly receptionist was fast asleep, her forehead pressed flat against a half-finished crossword puzzle.

It explained how the courier had managed to breach the all-female wing; he had simply slipped right past the sleeping cerberus. Otherwise, she would have taken his head off at the threshold. You didn’t mess with that woman. Rumor had it that in her youth, this frail-looking grandmother had led a fierce Beta girl-gang that patrolled the lower districts with baseball bats, enforcing women’s safety. Looking at her hardened face, I entirely believed it.

As I waited, I watched the pale sun creep over the horizon, casting cold, sharp light over the stone courtyard adjacent to the lot. The air smelled heavily of damp earth and morning dew. Under normal circumstances, I lived for these quiet, solitary pockets of time. But today, the clock was ticking, and I desperately hoped he would just show up.

I kept a sharp eye out for his vehicle, nervously gnawing on my lower lip. He’d arrive either in that midnight-black monster or the deep burgundy car. I prayed to the Goddess he didn’t own a third. If he did, it would make it impossible to track his arrivals, to turn into a ghost and avoid him on campus.

Right now, my only goal was to shove this damn bag back into his hands.

I pulled my oversized hoodie tighter around myself, leaning my spine against the ice-cold exterior wall of the building. This sweatshirt had been massive even on the old version of me.

I’d bought it in the clearance section back when my weight felt like a catastrophic disaster, back when I thought I looked like a blimp. Then, it had simply looked baggy. Now, after losing so much weight from stress, it hung off my frame like a deflated sail on a broken mast. But it was warm, and lately, the chill had been settling deep into my marrow—and I knew it wasn’t just because of the autumn weather.

I didn’t know why I had assumed Magnus would arrive before everyone else. Perhaps it was our volatile connection, sharpening my intuition into something hyper-alert.

My instincts hadn’t lied.

The black monster of an SUV glided effortlessly into the lot, slicing through the morning silence with the soft crunch of tires on damp asphalt. I immediately stood up, brushing loose crumbs and dust from my jeans. Goddess, who designs stone benches in a climate like ours? It was a one-way ticket to a hospital bed with a frozen backside.

Clutching the parcel containing his "gift," I marched toward his vehicle. I tried to keep my stride steady and confident. But with every foot I closed between us, my resolve evaporated a little more.

Then, he stepped out of the car.