My Fated Alpha's Cruel Game

Elena’s POV

The ballroom swallowed me whole.

I had thought the entryway was a lot. The entryway was nothing.

Red and white silk drapes hung from the high ceiling in sweeping arcs, pinned up with gold cord. Marble columns lined the long walls. At the base of each column sat a floral arrangement so massive and so perfectly arranged that I knew, without asking, that each one cost more than most people earned in a month.

I kept my hand on Marcus’s arm and my chin up. I did not look at the floor. I did not look at the ceiling either, because craning my neck would have marked me as an outsider faster than anything else.

“Marcus.” A silver-haired man broke away from a cluster near the nearest column. “A word.”

“Of course.”

Marcus slid his hand off the small of my back. He did not look at me. He did not introduce me. He stepped away and was immediately absorbed into a ring of men in dark suits, their voices dropping into that low serious register men used when the words being spoken had numbers attached to them.

I stood there.

I stood there for what felt like a long time.

A woman in gold laughed somewhere to my left. Dozens of confident Alphas and Lunas filled the room. As a few drifted past me with champagne glasses in their hands, their eyes slid over my gown without slowing.

I was a ghost.

No. I was worse. I was a ghost they had decided not to see.

A waiter passed with a tray. Tall slim flutes full of something the color of late sun. I reached out and took one without looking at his face, because if I had to look at one more face pretending I was not there I was going to do something I regretted.

The champagne was dry and cold. I took a long swallow.

My shoulders dropped slightly.

I walked.

I walked because standing still made me visible in a way walking did not. I drifted along the edge of the room with my glass in my hand and my dress whispering around my ankles. Up close the silk on the walls smelled faintly of roses. Someone had perfumed the drapery. Who perfumes drapery.

The food tables ran along the far wall. I drifted toward them for want of anywhere else to be.

Small pale things on toast. Something pink and translucent curled on a bed of green. A dish of tiny black beads that glistened under the light. Another platter of what looked like sliced meat, cut paper-thin, folded into roses.

I stared at the table.

“Not hungry?”

The voice came from my right. Deep. Easy. A little amused.

I turned.

A man stood a polite step away from me, his own plate empty in his hand. He was tall. Taller than Marcus. Black hair, cut shorter on the sides. Dark eyes with something kind at the corners.

“I don’t know what any of this is,” I admitted.

He laughed. A surprised laugh. “Neither do I. I’ve been standing here trying to identify that.” He pointed with his empty plate at the pink translucent thing. “I think it used to be a fish.”

“Is that what it is.”

“Possibly.”

I looked at the table again. I looked at my champagne.

“I would kill a man,” I said, “for a normal cheeseburger.”

He laughed. Out loud. A real laugh, the kind that came up from the chest, and several heads turned at the sound before politely turning back.

“A cheeseburger,” he repeated.

“With the cheese actually melted. Not that cold square nonsense.”

“Pickles.”

“Obviously pickles.”

“I like you already.” He shifted his plate into his left hand and offered me his right. “Alpha Damien. Obsidian Pack.”

I took his hand. His grip was firm but careful, the way a man grips the hand of a woman he does not want to crush.

“Elena. From Peak Pack.”

His eyebrows moved. Just a fraction.

“Peak.”

“Yes.”

“And you are here with—”

“Alpha Marcus.” I took another sip of my champagne. “I’m his mate.”

Something passed across his face. It was not cruel. It was not even surprise, quite. It was the look a man wore when he had just been handed a piece of information he now had to hold very carefully.

“I see.”

“You know him.”

“I do.”

“You don’t like him.”

“That,” Damien said slowly, “is more complicated than it sounds.” He set his plate down on the edge of the table. “Marcus and I used to be friends.”

“Used to be.”

“A long time ago, now.” He glanced past my shoulder, then back to my face. “We have a history. It is not the kind of history I would want to bore a woman at a party with. But I will say this, Elena. Other Alphas in this room are afraid of your mate. Most of them just hide it better than I do.”

I did not know what to do with my face.

“Afraid,” I repeated.

“Afraid.”

“Of Marcus.”

“Yes.”

I looked down into my glass. The gold caught the light and threw it back at me in fractured pieces.

“I should let you go,” Damien said quietly.

“Why.”

“Because he is watching us.”

I didn’t turn. I didn’t need to. I could feel it, suddenly, the way you feel a draft from a door that has just opened behind you. The hair on my arms lifted.

Damien inclined his head to me. Slight. Polite.

“It was very nice to meet you, Elena.”

“Alpha Damien.”

“Enjoy your evening.”

He walked away. Not fast. Not slow. Just the pace of a man who knew exactly how visible he was and had decided not to care.

I stood at the table with my champagne in my hand and hesitated for a moment before I looked.

Marcus was not in his circle anymore.

He was coming across the ballroom toward me. His hands were in the pockets of his trousers. His jacket was open. His face was perfectly calm.

His eyes were black.

Not dark green. Not the shade of his irises shadowed by the chandelier. Black. All the way through, iris and whites both, for a fleeting moment, before the color flooded back in like water filling a glass.

I took a step back. The table caught me at the hip.

He reached me.

He did not say anything. He lifted one hand out of his pocket. Slow. Almost lazy. His fingers closed around my upper arm, just above the elbow, and squeezed.

“Walk,” he said.

“Marcus—”

“Walk, Elena.”

I walked.

He steered me along the edge of the room. A woman smiled at us as we passed. Marcus smiled back. His hand on my arm did not loosen. I could feel every single one of his fingertips through the thin strap of my gown.

A side door. Dark wood. He pushed it open with his free hand and guided me through.

Stone steps down. Cool air. The smell of cut grass, lavender, and something green I did not have a name for. Lanterns swayed on wrought-iron hooks along a path lined with clipped hedges. Roses climbed a low wall. Somewhere behind the topiary, a fountain ran.

A garden. A beautiful garden. Lit the way a garden gets lit for lovers to walk in.

He pulled me off the path, behind the first row of hedges, where the light from the house did not quite reach.

He let go of my arm.

He turned me to face him with one hand flat against my shoulder.

I opened my mouth.

His other hand came up and across and his palm cracked against my cheek.

The world went white.

My head snapped sideways. My heel slid on the gravel. I stumbled, caught myself on the low wall with my free hand, and the glass dropped out of my other one and shattered somewhere in the dark at my feet.

A high thin ringing filled my left ear.

My cheek was on fire.

I pressed my fingers to it. The skin was hot. It was already swelling. I could feel it pulsing against my fingertips in time with my heartbeat.

I looked up at him.

He was adjusting his cuff.

He was adjusting his cuff, like a man who had just brushed lint off a jacket.

“Marcus.”

“Do not come back inside,” he said, “until that mark is gone from your face.”

“Marcus—”

“I don’t care how you do it. Cold water. The powder in your bag. Whatever you women use. I do not care.” He pulled his cuff straight. He did not look at my cheek. He did not look at my eyes. He was looking somewhere over my shoulder, at the fountain, maybe, or at nothing at all. “But you will not embarrass me in that ballroom tonight. Do you understand.”

I could not speak.

“Elena.”

“I understand.”

“Good.”

He turned and walked back toward the stone steps, his shoes crunching on the gravel. He climbed the steps and opened the side door, leaving me alone in the shadows of the garden as I pressed my fingers against the stinging red mark on my cheek.