Mark of Sin: Bound to the Cruel Alpha

We burst into the lecture hall, breathless, with tangled hair and flushed cheeks. A group of girls from the Omega Committee was already sitting in a semi-circle against the wall. All ten of them—including Lina, who stood in the center of the room with her arms crossed, boring holes into us with her stare. Her perfectly straight hair was pulled back into a sleek ponytail, and a thin mating mark gleamed on her wrist—subtle, yet unmistakable.

Lina slowly raised her hand and checked her watch.

"You’re almost late, girls. Another two minutes and we would have left without you."

Her voice was icy, each word dropping like a pebble into the silence. I stood there, breathing heavily, feeling sweat trickle down my back. Beside me, Annie let out a scoff, but kept it quiet so as to not make things worse.

"Sorry, Lin," I mumbled, trying to sound convincing. "Unforeseen circumstances. We didn’t do it on purpose."

Lina swept her gaze over us, and apparently, the sight of our flushed faces was enough to convince her. She let out a slow exhale, still frowning, but the anger in her eyes faded a little.

"Fine. But we’re going to discuss this later. Let’s go."

She turned on her heel and walked out first. The rest of us trailed after her like a flock of ducklings following a mother duck.

The whole time, I was lost in my own thoughts. My wrist pulsed as if it were alive, every step sending a throb of pain shooting up my arm. Every now and then, I yanked my sleeve down lower, wincing.

How on earth am I going to hide this damn mark?

But deep down, I already knew nothing could hide it. And that realization burned me from the inside out.

We walked for about half an hour through the sun-drenched city. Autumn hadn’t quite claimed its rights yet. The bright rays of the sun warmed our shoulders, offering the final remnants of heat before the inevitable cold set in.

The streets were packed with people: students carrying backpacks, office workers holding coffees, random passersby. Annie walked beside me, pouting like a child who had been denied candy. She didn’t understand why she was being dragged along to these screenings when, at the slightest sign of a mark, she’d be sent to this academy ahead of everyone else anyway.

Annie was the kind of a breeder who was perfectly content with her status and desperately wanted to meet her alpha. Her parents were omegas too. The perfect pair, zero compromises, a couple of wolves resolved to their fates. Annie had no idea how hard it was for those born into families where carrying the breeder gene was considered repulsive.

I pulled my sleeve down again, grimacing at the pulsing of the mark. Finally, we arrived at the academy building—a gray, massive structure with endless corridors smelling of bleach and fear.

We were seated in the hallway and handed numbers. I ended up near the very back of the line, just like Annie, who hadn’t wanted to wait around for everyone else.

"I’d rather just go last," she said listlessly, slumping into a chair and stretching out her long, slender legs clad in black jeans.

Breeders looked a lot different from other female wolves. They grew more delicate, more graceful. Their features softened, and their hips widened to ensure they could carry large offspring for their alpha. Their breasts grew fuller, ready for nursing. Simply put, a breeder was an incubator for an alpha.

A lot of alphas saw it exactly that way: omegas were meant to function as birthing machines, and were good for nothing else after that.

A regular woman could give them pleasure. A wolf of another status could be their life companion. But in order to have pups, an alpha could only impregnate a breeder with his calling mark.

And most alphas are quite okay with that.

After all, a breeder omega could only find pleasure with an alpha, too. And while they weren’t common, there were still those who hadn’t found their fated pair yet and had to survive their heats without losing their minds from the fever.

Suppressants took a heavy toll on the body and were only prescribed as a last resort.

Every minute spent on that hard plastic chair felt like torture. I was shaking with fear. This wasn’t my first screening, and I knew exactly what to expect. But the mark had appeared, and my only hope now was that the others would take longer to get checked, prompting Lina to leave the two of us behind. That way, my mark wouldn’t become public knowledge.

The girl ahead of me stepped into the office, and I started shaking even harder. I felt like the chair was shaking right along with me. Trying to distract myself, I glanced at the door. Maria was still plump and round. It was instantly obvious that she hadn’t awakened yet and didn’t have a mark. When she walked back out, she looked completely calm, even smiling.

Lina suddenly unglued herself from the wall and walked over to Annie.

"Can you two make it back on your own? I have things to take care of at the club."

Annie nodded, flashing a thumbs-up and a wink. "I’ll get this girl back, don’t worry. We’ll make it in one piece."

In her usual manner, Lina completely ignored the gesture—she was far too high and mighty for such trivialities. She just nodded and waved over the rest of the girls who were clustering around, waiting.

Some looked happy, others sad, but they all trailed after her to head back to the academy. Those of us undergoing the screening were excused from classes, but we were still required to go back for our things before heading to the dorms, giving us time to recover from the procedure.

I let out a heavy breath. When my turn finally came, I stood up and nearly collapsed. My legs buckled from sheer terror.

Stepping into the sterile room, I looked at the doctor. The man sitting at the desk, filling out paperwork, was definitely a beta.

Damn it. Last time, the examiner had been an omega.

"Strip," he said immediately, without looking up from his papers.

I didn’t stand a chance. The second he saw the mark, he’d log it into the database, and by tonight, my parents... I was too terrified to even imagine what would happen. They would tear me to pieces.

Unlike Annie’s parents, mine were regular humans. Well, my father was. My mother was a "broken" omega who had never gotten her wolf awakened, which ultimately got her kicked out of her pack.

When the truth came out in the tenth grade that I was a breeder, there had been a deafening scandal at home. My father had ranted and raved, accusing my mother of cheating, and from that day on, my sister and younger brother treated me completely differently—and not for the better.

You see, a breeder werewolf could only be born from two omegas, so I was... an anomaly, if I were to put it nicely. Naturally, I became an outcast in my own family, even though we shared the same blood.

My father dragged me to get a DNA test, which proved I really was his daughter; it was just that a dormant breeder gene had somehow awakened in me.

The doctor tried to convince them that having a breeder daughter was a blessing, but my parents saw nothing good in it. On the walk home, my father told me he wouldn’t let me disgrace the family by tying myself to some alpha just so he could use me and toss me aside later on.

He said if a mark ever appeared, they would tear it off or burn it right off my skin.

I was under their legal custody until the exact moment I passed into the custody of an alpha. I had no freedom. No independence.

I swallowed hard and began to take off my clothes, praying this male would be reasonable enough to agree to hide the truth.