My Fated Alpha's Cruel Game

Elena’s POV

The hospital smelled like bleach and old coffee.

My sneakers squeaked against the polished floor as I tore down the corridor. I didn’t slow down. I couldn’t.

“Emergency — I’m looking for my mother — she was brought in—”

The nurse at the desk pointed without looking up. “That bay.”

I shoved the curtain aside.

And I stopped breathing.

My mother lay on the narrow bed with a thin blue blanket pulled to her chest. Her skin looked almost translucent under the fluorescent lights. You could see the fine bones of her cheeks pushing through, the hollows beneath her eyes gone deep and purple. Her hair, still damp from whatever sweat had taken her down in the diner, clung to her temples.

Her chest rose. Fell. Rose again. Barely.

“Mom?”

She didn’t answer. She didn’t open her eyes.

“Are you her daughter?”

I turned. A middle-aged man in a white coat stood behind me. His face was careful. Neutral. The kind of face a doctor wears when he is about to break you.

“Yes. I’m her daughter. What happened. What’s wrong with her.”

He gestured for me to step out of the bay. 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

I didn’t want to leave her. But I went.

He folded his hands in front of him. “I’m going to be direct with you. I think you’d rather I was.”

“Yes.”

“Your mother’s body is shutting down.”

The words landed somewhere outside of me. Like he was saying them to another girl.

“She collapsed from exhaustion, yes. But the exhaustion is not the cause. It’s a symptom.” He paused. His eyes searched mine. “How long ago did she lose her mate?”

My throat closed.

“Years,” I managed. “A long time ago.”

He nodded slowly. “Some of us survive it. Most of us don’t. She has been holding on for you, I’d guess. Fighting hard. But the body can only do that for so long. The organs begin to fail. The wolf fades first, and then the human follows.”

“How long.”

“Weeks. Months, if she’s lucky.” His voice was gentle but it did not soften anything. “I’m sorry.”

I set my jaw. I looked him straight in the eye.

“She’s not giving up.”

“I didn’t say she was.”

“She’s not. She wouldn’t. She has me.”

“I know.”

I pushed past him and went back through the curtain. I took her hand. Her fingers were cold and thin as sticks.

“Mom,” I whispered. “You hear me? You stay.”

A porter arrived. Then an orderly. Papers were signed somewhere out of my sight. They wheeled her bed into the elevator and I followed, clutching the rail.

Third floor.

The doors opened onto a hallway that did not belong in this hospital. Carpet. Soft lighting. A nurse in a crisp uniform who actually smiled.

They rolled her into a private room. IV lines. A monitor that beeped in a slow, steady rhythm. A real window. A chair that did not look like it had been donated from a waiting room in another century.

I stood in the doorway and stared.

We could not pay for this. Our insurance would not cover the doorknob of this room.

I walked out.

Beta Hugo was standing by the elevator. Hands folded in front of him. Calm as stone.

“Beta Hugo.”

“Elena.”

I walked right up to him. I did not look away.

“Did you arrange this room. Or did he.”

“I follow Alpha Marcus’s orders.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It’s the only one I have.”

I laughed. It wasn’t a real laugh. “You know what’s funny about that arrogant Alpha?” I pulled a half-crushed cigarette from my pocket and tucked it behind my ear. “One minute he says I’m not worth being called his. The next he’s paying for a private room. Such twisted mood swings. Which is it?”

Hugo’s jaw tightened.

“Why is a Beta acting as a bodyguard?” I went on. “Don’t you have a pack to run. Or does he not trust you with anything real.”

“Watch your mouth.”

“I’m watching it fine.”

We stared at each other.

Then his shoulders dropped, just a fraction. Something almost like pity moved behind his eyes, and I hated it.

“Go outside,” he said. “Smoke. Breathe. Your mother is being cared for.”

I went outside.

I stood against the brick wall by the service door and lit the cigarette I’d tucked behind my ear. My hands were shaking. The smoke burned. I let it.

It was long past dark when I finally made it back to the trailer.

The porch light flickered the way it always did. Inside, the kitchen was empty. The kettle cold. I opened the fridge. A jar of peanut butter, nearly empty. Half a loaf of bread going stale at the edges.

I made a sandwich standing up. I ate it standing up. I chewed and did not taste it.

Then I changed. An oversized t-shirt that used to be my father’s, soft from too many washes. Cotton shorts. I dragged my trigonometry book to the kitchen table and opened it to where I’d left off.

Sine. Cosine. Tangent.

Numbers did not care what was happening to me. Numbers stayed what they were.

I worked through a few problems before I felt it. That crawling sense on the back of my neck.

I looked up.

Across the lot, under the flickering streetlamp, two massive wolves sat side by side. Still as statues. Eyes glowing gold in the dark. They weren’t hiding. They were openly letting me see them.

A knock on the door broke the silence.

I jumped.

I limped to the door and opened it a crack.

A man in a delivery uniform stood on the step, holding a long white box in both arms. It was easily the length of my whole torso.

“Elena Fairfax?”

“Yes.”

“Signature, please.”

I signed. He handed me the box. He tipped his cap and walked back down the cinder-block steps and was gone before I could ask who had sent it.

I carried the box inside. Set it on the kitchen table next to my trigonometry homework. It was heavier than it looked.

I lifted the lid.

Tissue paper. Cream-colored. Folded tight. On top of it lay a small envelope, thick and elegant, my name written across the front in sharp black strokes.

I opened it.

Wear this tomorrow. We have a function tomorrow night. Someone will come for you at dusk.

No signature. None was needed.

I set the note down.

I peeled back the tissue paper.

And I stopped.

The fabric inside was an obsidian blue. Deep, almost black, until the light caught it and it ran blue like water at midnight. Silk. Real silk. My fingers knew the difference before my eyes did. Beneath it, nested in their own layer of tissue, a pair of designer heels. The kind of heels I had only ever seen in the glossy pages of magazines left behind in the diner booths.

The price of this dress would have been worth months of our income.

He forces me into hiding, yet he sends me silk.

I closed the lid.

I went back to the window. The two massive wolves were still there, gold eyes fixed on my door.

I drew the curtain. Slowly. Deliberately. So they could see me do it.

I slept badly. I dreamed of my mother’s hand going cold in mine, and woke up with my face wet.

Gray light was just starting to crawl across the kitchen table when I sat up. The white box was still there. The note still beside it. None of it had been a dream.

I splashed water on my face. I pulled on jeans. I laced my sneakers carefully. I was going to the hospital. I was going to sit by her bed and hold her hand and be there when she opened her eyes.

I grabbed my bag.

Then it came.

A voice sliding cold and clean into the back of my head, uninvited, the way a mind-link does when someone more powerful than you decides they have the right.

Elena Fairfax. Report to the school. Immediately.

Principal Brooks.

I froze with my hand on the door.