Mark of Sin: Bound to the Cruel Alpha

A frost so absolute laced his words that goosebumps erupted across my arms. I had pushed him past his breaking point. The realization shattered my fragile courage, leaving a sharp dread in its wake. He was capable of inflicting the kind of pain that would make me regret existing altogether.

"No, you didn’t! But you have no right to treat me like this!" I blurted out in a single, breathless rush. "I’m not a prize dog you can parade around at midnight to show off to your friends—men who brought along disposable Omegas for a single night!"

A heavy, muffled crack echoed through the line, as if his fist had slammed into a solid wall or table.

"It seems I failed to clarify your place, breeder," Magnus growled, his voice dropping an octave into a low, terrifying vibration. "You belong to me. If I decide it, you won’t just wear a collar—you’ll be waiting on your knees outside my door with your mouth open, ready to take my cock and whatever else I give you."

My fingers went numb, almost dropping the phone onto the pavement. My hands shook violently as my mind fractured into a chaotic spiral of panic and rage. A hundred fierce retorts rushed to my lips—every sharp, cutting word I wanted to hurl back into his face. But holding those arguments inside my head didn’t offer a single ounce of relief.

The terrifying truth hit me like a physical blow: he truly regarded me as nothing more than his personal property. He was a monster. A fucking monster.

"You’re a monster," I whispered, my voice breaking on the final word, betraying just how dangerously close to the edge I was.

"You have no idea how right you are, breeder. Now get your ass back inside the club."

"No." I shook my head, even though he couldn’t see me. "You don’t have the right to treat me like this. I’m a person. Besides, I found out you already had a fated mate, which means the bond on my skin is fake. For all I know, you just paid off those doctors to fake the tests!"

"What did you just say?"

The temperature in the air plunged. For a second, I thought the heavy glass windows of the club behind me were vibrating—or maybe it was just my own body trembling so violently. His tone sent a wave of primal terror straight through me. He sounded ready to murder someone.

"I said, I know you had a fated—"

"Talk about this subject again, and I will show you what true pain feels like," he cut in, his voice laced with so much lethal poison and absolute rage that my breath hitched.

I couldn’t listen to another second of it. I ended the call. My hands were shaking so hard I almost dropped the phone again, forcing me to take several jagged, deep breaths just to keep from collapsing on the curb.

I opened the maps app on my phone and felt tears prickling behind my eyes. I was stranded right in the dead center of the Upper District.

No public buses ran through this area at midnight. Walking back to my academy dorm would take nearly five hours on foot, whereas my parents’ house was a three-hour trek. As much as I dreaded the idea, I had to head toward my parents. We hadn’t spoken or even exchanged a text message since the terrifying day Magnus had claimed me and carried me away.

Yet I had no other choice. Hitchhiking at this hour was suicide, and I didn’t have a single cent for a cab—and there was no way in hell I was using the credit card Magnus had given me. I wouldn’t touch his money if my life depended on it. I’d rather walk all night until my feet bled.

As I marched through the quiet streets, my mind kept racing in circles. It was fundamentally impossible for an Alpha to have two fated mates. It defied every law of nature, every piece of werewolf biology and bond lore I had ever studied.

It could have been possible in the past, many-many years ago, but not anymore.

The paranoid thought that Magnus had somehow bribed the clinic to fake our soul-bond results kept resurfacing. But why? Who was I compared to him? What could a high-ranking, powerful Alpha possibly gain from binding himself to an ordinary, penniless Omega from the lower sectors?

By the time I finally turned onto my old street, exhaustion had settled deep into my bones. All I wanted was to collapse onto the small couch in my family’s kitchen, pull a blanket over my head, and sleep for a few blessed hours.

But as I reached the lot where my childhood home was supposed to be, I froze.

The house was gone.

In its place stood the wooden framing of an unfinished, two-story luxury cottage. Construction materials—stacks of lumber, bags of cement, heavy power tools—were scattered across the yard where my mother’s yellow wildflowers used to bloom.

Had they been evicted? Did the authorities seize their property because of my registration with Magnus?

Panic clawing at my chest, I picked my way carefully across the lot, dodging piles of broken brick and rusted rebar. Suddenly, a familiar voice called out through the dark. It was our old neighbor, out walking his aging mongrel—a stray he had adopted years ago.

He strolled up to me with a broad, warm smile stretching across his face.

"So, what do you think of your family’s new place?" he asked, stopping beside me and nodding toward the construction site.

I stared at him in utter bewilderment. "This... this is their house?"

"Yep, your dad landed a massive government grant and a huge subsidy for his research lab," the neighbor explained, affectionately scratching his dog behind the ears. "He was so over the moon he didn’t dry sober for two straight days. He even managed to mark old Mrs. Meg’s prized lawn while he was at it."

I flushed with embarrassment at his lighthearted chuckle. My father was a notorious, unruly mess whenever he drank, often pulling absurd stunts like that. My mother tried her best to keep him on a tight leash and away from alcohol, but her efforts rarely succeeded.