Mark of Sin: Bound to the Cruel Alpha

Hearing that he had secured a state grant for his modest laboratory was utterly baffling. With his abrasive personality and quick temper, he managed to alienate everyone he worked with, firmly believing the world was out to get him. He spent half his life complaining about systemic bias and insisting his brilliant mind was being tragically underappreciated.

His lab barely generated enough income to keep the lights on, producing only a handful of basic chemical solutions that yielded tiny profit margins.

It was an unaccredited, privately owned operation, and its sole distribution channels were equally shady, unaccredited pharmacies. Only the deeply impoverished or the truly desperate bought supplies there, risking low-grade, potentially dangerous concoctions because they couldn’t afford anything else.

"Do you happen to know where they’re staying right now?" I asked softly, my voice barely above a whisper as a cold, sickening foreboding pooled in my stomach.

The neighbor glanced at me, then bent down to gently scoop his aging dog into his arms.

"At a local hostel, most likely. They’re out apartment hunting for your sister. Your dad couldn’t stop bragging that she got accepted into a prestigious prep program for some private academy up in the Central District. Pure money-grab if you ask me—what can a place like that even teach her?"

I swallowed down a hard, painful lump in my throat. An apartment... prep courses... Must be nice.

A hollow, bitter ache spread through my chest. I didn’t even dare ask about my brother; I didn’t have the stomach to inflict any more emotional wounds on myself tonight.

They hadn’t bothered to call me. They hadn’t thought to drop a single text to let me know where they were, or to give me a heads-up in case I ever wanted to visit. Though, to be fair, why would they assume I’d ever come back here?

Still... we were supposed to be a family. They could have at least let me know they were doing well, that their lives had suddenly flipped upside down, that our childhood home was being torn down and rebuilt into a grand estate.

The vast, aching chasm separating me from them had just widened into an impassable canyon. I truly had nothing left here.

What were my options? Creep into the unfinished frame of the house and sleep on raw plywood, only for the construction crew to catch me at dawn and call the police? It was a pathetic idea.

I bade the neighbor a quiet goodnight, turned around, and began the long, agonizing trek toward the academy dormitories.

I had nowhere else to go.

It meant another two hours of walking on raw, blistered feet, but exhaustion had rendered me completely numb. Pulling an earbud from my bag, I started a playlist and kept walking through the quiet streets. Strangely enough, the fear of being jumped or attacked in the dark had vanished entirely. Terror had burned itself out, leaving behind a cold, all-consuming emptiness.

As I set up my music, I noticed several missed calls and a string of unread text messages from Magnus illuminating my phone screen.

I didn’t open them. I knew there wouldn’t be a single shred of comfort waiting in those notifications, and I couldn’t stomach thinking about our next inevitable encounter. I didn’t want to think about him at all after the bombshell I had overheard tonight.

Maybe it was all just a colossal mistake. Maybe our fated bond didn’t actually exist. Maybe I was never meant to meet my true mate at all, and Magnus and I were just the victims of a catastrophic error.

Desperately clinging to that thread of hope was the only thing keeping me sane, because the alternative—learning to survive with this soul-crushing truth—was something I couldn’t comprehend.

Walking down the desolate, silent avenues, a sudden flicker of warmth caught my eye behind a dilapidated house. Flames danced inside an old oil drum. Instinctively, I veered toward it. I knew exactly who might be resting there, and a quiet ache in my chest urged me to seek him out. I just wanted to talk to someone grounded. Someone real. But when I stepped into the overgrown backyard, the space was empty.

The night air was biting cold, so I decided to thaw out for a moment. I sank into a sagging armchair parked beside the makeshift fire, extending my trembling hands toward the heat, watching the hypnotic sway of the ember-red flames.

"Good grief, Jane, what in the blazes are you doing out at an hour like this?"

An elderly man emerged from behind the structure. He wore faded, tattered trousers that were meticulously clean, along with a heavily pilled, threadbare sweater. His beard had grown dramatically since we last met, now cascading nearly to his waist, matching his silver hair bound tightly in a topknot.

"Hello, Adam. I just stopped by to warm up for a bit... if you don’t mind?" I asked gently.

He knitted his brows, studying me with a sharp, discerning gaze before approaching and dropping into the opposite worn-out armchair.

"Have you looked at a clock lately?" he chided softly, a stern edge in his voice wrapped in unmistakable paternal care. "Proper young ladies aren’t prowling the streets at midnight; they are tucked away safely in their beds, fast asleep."

"My bed was out of reach tonight. Things came up," I tried to offer a lighthearted excuse, but my voice sounded thin and hollow.

"Ah, ’things’ at your age," he chuckled, stroking his long beard with a wink. "Usually just code for gathering unnecessary life lessons the hard way."

Adam was homeless. We had met years ago when I was still in high school, volunteering alongside Rolon every Sunday to distribute free hot meals to the needy. Adam never missed a week. Over plastic bowls of soup, we had struck up conversations that gradually turned into a genuine friendship.

As it turned out, he lived in this abandoned shell of a house, located not far from the lot my family had been granted when my breeder gene surfaced.