Don't Call Me Your Mate, Alpha

ELARA'S POV

I made it three blocks before my knees gave out.

One moment I was speed-walking past a closed patisserie, the next I was gripping a streetlamp, lungs burning, thighs still pressed together from the ghost of that fir scent.

"You're fine," I told the lamppost. "You just slapped the most dangerous Alpha on the continent and ran away like a shoplifter. Normal Tuesday."

Lampposts are terrible therapists. I straightened and walked the remaining fourteen blocks with the mechanical precision of a woman postponing her breakdown until she was behind a locked door.

The apartment was two rooms I sublet from a grad student who was "studying abroad." I locked the door. Checked the lock. Checked it again.

Then I did what any rational woman would after discovering her Mate bond was a murderous billionaire: I dragged my suitcase out and started packing.

"Okay," I muttered. "Train station. First train to anywhere. Change your name. Become a mysterious woman who tends bar in a coastal town and never talks about her past."

My phone buzzed. I froze. Buzzed again. Father.

I picked up.

"Elara." Breathless, excited—the voice he used when a deal went well. "You won't believe what's happened."

"Try me."

"The Hargrove debt. It's been resolved. All of it." He laughed, a sound so foreign I nearly pulled the phone away. "Kaelen Ashford. His office contacted me ten minutes ago. They've bought every one of Hargrove's debts, including ours. We're free."

“What did you do to him to get him like that? ”

The words kept coming, but I'd stopped hearing them.

I'm buying it. Kaelen's voice, soft and dangerous, replaying in my skull. I'd assumed it was a flex. But he'd meant it.

If my dad ever found out I got all this by slapping that guy, he sure wouldn't be laughing.

"Did you hear me? The Ashford heir wants to meet you. Tomorrow. His estate. He's sending a car at nine."

My knees did the buckling thing again. I sat hard on the bed.

"Father." Too calm. "Did he say why?"

"Does it matter? This is Kaelen Ashford. The family owns half the eastern territories. If he's taken an interest in you, we're not just saved—we're elevated. Do you understand what this means?"

I understood what it meant to him. A daughter was a bargaining chip. A debt was a chain. And Kaelen Ashford had just bought the chain.

I don't remember hanging up. The suitcase sat half-open—two pairs of jeans, a sweater with a hole in the sleeve, the entirety of my life in a carry-on. Pathetic.

The fir scent was gone, but my body still hummed with it, a low vibration settled somewhere between my hipbones.

Running was still an option. The train station was twenty minutes away. I could vanish into a coastal town where no one knew what a Mate bond was and no one had silver eyes that promised destruction.

But my father would still be here. His debts would still exist. And Kaelen—the man who'd let me walk away, who'd picked up my ribbon and decided to buy the ground beneath my feet—would still be looking.

I sat back down. Picked up the phone. Stared at the dark screen.

Tomorrow. Nine o'clock. A car. His estate.

I didn't sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw silver. Every time I breathed deep, I imagined fir. Every time I shifted my legs, the ache reminded me my body had already made its choice.

At three a.m. I gave up and googled him.

The results were extensive. Business journals. Pack gossip columns. A profile in Alpha Quarterly calling him "the most eligible bachelor in the supernatural world" and "the heir who will either save the Ashford pack or burn it to the ground." The photo was grainy, black and white, taken at some gala. He wasn't smiling. He looked like a man who never had.

My stomach flipped.

"Traitor," I told it.

At six I watched the sun rise over the brick across the street and thought about my mother. She'd believed in Mate bonds—told me fairy tales about fated love and the universe conspiring to bring two people together. I'd believed them once. Before I'd watched my father strip the romance out of everything.

What would you say, I asked her silently, if you knew I'd found mine? That I'd slapped him and called him a geriatric fossil?

The sunrise didn't answer. Also a terrible therapist.

At seven I showered. At eight I stood before my thrift-store wardrobe rack, trying to decide what one wears to meet the Alpha who owns your family's debt and your biological destiny. The one nice blouse. Dark jeans. Boots without blisters. My hair went up in a clip—I couldn't find the blue ribbon.

At eight forty-five I went downstairs. At eight fifty-seven the car arrived—black, sleek, worth more than my entire degree. A stone-faced Beta with the Ashford crest opened the door without a word.

I got in. The engine purred. The city slid past the tinted windows, and I pressed my palms to my thighs and tried to remember how to breathe.

The fir scent still clung to the edges of my memory like smoke.

What happens next, do you think?

The question echoed, unanswered, as the car turned toward the Ashford estate and the city disappeared behind us.