Chapter 2 The Alpha Who Didn’t Bid
I woke to the sound of an engine I couldn’t place.
Not a truck. Not a train. Too smooth. Too quiet. A low, steady purr beneath my spine.
My wrists burned.
I tried to move. Metal clicked.
Chains.
No cuffs. Thick leather lined with steel, strapped to my wrists and locked into the seat. My ankles were bound too. The windows were blacked out. No light. No city. Just darkness and the faint glow of blue lines running along the ceiling.
A luxury vehicle.
The kind only pack Alphas used when they didn’t want to be followed.
Across from me, a man sat with his legs apart, elbows resting loosely on his knees.
Alpha DeLuca.
Up close, he was worse.
Not because he was cruel.
Because he was controlled.
Dark hair. Clean jaw. No visible marks. No jewelry. No wasted movement. His presence filled the space like pressure. My wolf curled tight and low inside me, instinct screaming the word my mind refused to say.
Alpha.
He did not smile.
He did not apologize.
He spoke like we were already in the middle of something.
“What is your full blood name?”
I swallowed. “Isabella Hart.”
His eyes stayed on mine.
“That is not a blood name.”
“It’s the only one I have.”
He waited.
The silence stretched until my skin prickled.
“Who taught you suppression?” he asked.
“No one.”
A lie.
He didn’t call it out. He simply reached into his coat and withdrew a small silver blade.
The driver’s hands tightened on the wheel.
The Alpha rolled the blade once between his fingers, then leaned forward.
“Where is your father?”
“I don’t know.”
Another lie.
He took my left hand.
I jerked.
His grip closed, firm, not painful, but impossible to break. He turned my wrist, studying the skin like he was reading something written there.
Then he pressed the blade.
Not a cut.
A kiss of steel.
Sharp.
A bead of blood welled up.
The reaction was instant.
The air changed.
The driver’s breathing hitched. His head turned slightly, like something had tugged his senses. My own lungs stuttered. My wolf surged, furious, trapped, clawing to rise.
The Alpha’s face altered.
Not surprising.
Calculation.
His eyes darkened. Something focused there. Sharpened.
He released my wrist.
The blood drop slid down my skin.
He watched it fall.
Then he looked back at me.
“Who taught you suppression?” he asked again.
I said nothing.
The blade vanished back into his coat.
He leaned into the seat, studying me the way a war map is studied. Not for beauty. For weak points.
The vehicle turned.
Moments later, the darkness lifted.
Lights slid across the window. Tall buildings. Iron bridges. Wet streets. The city.
But not the human one.
The one beneath it.
The pack house rose at the end of a private street. Stone and steel layered together, old architecture reinforced with modern defenses. Wolves lined the perimeter in human form, but nothing about them was human. They felt me before they saw me.
When the door opened, the sound hit.
Heartbeats.
Dozens.
Then the smell.
Territory.
Power.
Old blood.
Every instinct in me went still.
As he guided me out, reactions rippled.
Some of the wolves bowed their heads.
Some stepped back.
One man whispered a word under his breath.
“Registrar.”
I didn’t know what it meant.
But the Alpha did.
His jaw tightened.
“Lock the house,” he said.
The order was carried.
Doors slammed.
Metal sealed.
Voices echoed down the halls.
“Borders closed.”
“Phones down.”
“No outbound.”
He didn’t touch me again. Others took over, unhooking the cuffs from the vehicle, escorting me through corridors too clean to be prisons and too empty to be homes.
We passed people who stopped when they saw me.
Not staring.
Paused.
As if something inside them was trying to kneel.
I was led into a room on an upper level.
It was not a cell.
There were no bars.
There was a bed.
A table.
A bathroom sealed behind glass.
But the walls were reinforced steel beneath silk paneling. The ceiling glowed faintly with ward-lines. The door locked with a sound too final to be comfortable.
Containment.
Not captivity.
The Alpha dismissed the guards.
They hesitated.
He looked at them.
They left.
He stood between me and the door.
“You were not purchased,” he said. “You were intercepted.”
I laughed, sharp and breaking. “I was chained and auctioned.”
“You were diverted,” he replied. “Before someone less careful obtained you.”
“I want to leave.”
He didn’t answer.
“I said I want to leave.”
“If you leave this house unclaimed,” he said calmly, “you will start a war you cannot survive.”
My fear flared into anger. “That’s a threat.”
“No,” he said. “That is a consequence.”
“You kidnapped me.”
“I removed you from an unstable market.”
“You drugged me.”
“They did.”
“You chained me.”
“They would have sold you in pieces.”
I stared at him. “Then why are you keeping me?”
His gaze didn’t waver.
“Because the moment you crossed neutral ground, treaties began to react.”
I shook my head. “You’re lying.”
“You don’t smell like any pack,” he said. “You don’t carry territory. You don’t register blood claims. And yet every border I hold shifted the moment you bled.”
My stomach tightened.
“That is not a coincidence.”
“Then let me go,” I said. “If I’m such a problem, let me disappear.”
“Disappearance,” he replied, “is what collapses systems.”
I opened my mouth.
The world exploded.
The sound tore through the building, violent and close. The floor lurched. Lights flickered. A shockwave rolled through the air.
I was thrown against the table.
The Alpha caught me before I fell.
For a second, I was against him.
Solid.
Unmoving.
His heart was steady.
Not startled.
Commanding.
He released me immediately.
The door flew open.
An enforcer stumbled in, blood running down his temple, his shirt torn.
“Alpha. Southern border pack. They breached the canal route. Three dead.”
The Alpha turned.
“They said something,” the man continued, breath ragged. “They said it before they burned the trucks.”
“What?” the Alpha asked.
The man glanced at me.
Hesitated.
Then said, “They said the Blood Key has surfaced.”
The room went quiet.
Too quiet.
Something deep inside the building shifted. Not sound. Pressure. Like an enormous animal changing position beneath the floor.
The Alpha did not look away from me.
Slowly, deliberately, he turned his head until his eyes met mine again.
The calculation was gone.
Something else had replaced it.
Something older.
He stepped closer.
Not threatening.
Certain.
Very quietly, so only I could hear, he asked:
“What did your father make you?”