Her Alpha's Claim; Hockey King's Curvy Mate

Bella's POV.

I woke up on the cold floor of the boys' locker room, and every part of my body ached. My head felt heavy, and my neck throbbed with a pain I had never felt before.

I reached up slowly and touched the spot where his teeth had sunk into my skin. The mark was raised and warm under my fingers, and the second I remembered how it got there, my whole body went stiff with fear.

I tried to sit up too fast, and the room spun around me. My arms shook, and I felt myself tipping sideways toward the hard tile floor.

Before I could fall, strong hands caught me under the arms and lifted me up like I weighed nothing at all. I blinked hard until my eyes could focus, and there he was. Dominic.

He was already fully dressed again, standing over me with his arms crossed and his gray eyes locked on my face. He looked calm on the outside, but I could see the way his jaw kept clenching, like he was holding something back.

For a long moment, neither of us said a word. I sat there on the bench where he had placed me, and he stood a few feet away, watching me like he was waiting for me to break apart.

When he finally spoke, his voice came out flat and hard, the same voice I remembered from the mating ceremony.

"You're my mate," he said. "I have marked you. There's no need to feel that as a strange thing anymore."

I stared at him. Strange did not even begin to cover what I felt. My heart was still racing, and my neck still burned, and every part of me screamed that something enormous had just happened to my whole life without anyone asking me first.

But underneath his flat tone, I noticed something else. His shoulders were too stiff. His hands were pressed so tightly at his sides that his knuckles had gone pale.

He was not as calm as he wanted me to believe. He wanted me to feel okay, even if he had no idea how to say it the right way.

My fingers drifted back up to the bite mark, and I winced as it itched under my touch. Tears burned behind my eyes, hot and sudden, and I forced them back down before they could fall.

I was not going to cry in front of him again. Not after everything that had already happened to me today.

"Why did you walk away from me at the ceremony?" I asked, my voice shaking more than I wanted it to. "You didn't want me then. Why do you want me now?"

Dominic's jaw tightened even harder, and for a second I thought he would not answer at all. Then he let out a slow breath through his nose.

"I didn't know," he said. "My wolf, I guess he switched to choosing you. I felt different tonight. He doesn't always let me feel the bond right away."

I wrapped my arms around myself and looked down at the floor. None of that made the humiliation from the ceremony disappear. Everyone had seen him walk past me.

Everyone had laughed. And now I was supposed to believe that his wolf had simply changed its mind hours later, like I was something he could decide on twice.

Dominic must have seen the doubt on my face, because he moved closer and knelt down in front of me so we were eye level.

His hand came up under my chin, and he tilted my face up gently, his voice losing some of its hard edge.

"I know what happened with Elias," he said. "I found out what happened with the video. But none of that matters to me now."

My eyes went wide, and for one small second, something warm bloomed in my chest. Someone was telling me the video did not matter. Someone was looking at me like I was not the joke the whole school had decided I was.

But that warmth did not last long. It curled up and died almost as fast as it came, because I had believed someone once before when he told me things that were not true.

I had believed Elias when he said my body was perfect, when he said he wanted to wait for me, when he said I could trust him with anything. Look where that had gotten me.

So I said nothing. I sat there with my lips pressed together, staring past Dominic's shoulder at the row of lockers behind him, and I let the silence stretch out between us.

After a while, Dominic tilted his head, studying me the way someone studies a puzzle they cannot solve.

"Why are you so quiet?" he asked.

I finally looked at him. "Because the last time a boy told me things did not matter, I ended up standing in a hallway while the whole school watched a video of me in my underwear," I said.

"So forgive me if I do not just believe you because you say something pretty."

Something shifted in his expression. It was not anger, and it was not the cold mask he usually wore. It looked almost like he understood, even if he did not know how to say so out loud.

He did not argue with me. He did not try to convince me all over again. He simply nodded once, like he had accepted that trust was something I would decide to give him later, if I ever decided to give it at all.

For a moment his eyes hardened, and the softness from a minute ago drained right out of his face. He straightened up and took a step back, his arms crossing over his chest again, and his voice came out sharper than before.

"You still think you're worthless because of what he did," he said. It was not a question. "You're sitting here doubting everything I say because some coward with a puck for a brain made you feel small."

He said it like the idea itself made him angry, like he could not understand why anyone would ever look at me the way Elias had.

It did not sound gentle. It did not sound kind. But underneath the hard edge in his voice, I could hear something else trying to push through, something that almost sounded like he could not stand the thought of me hurting and did not know any other way to say it than to sound angry about it instead.

He stood up and reached down to help me to my feet. My legs still felt shaky, but his grip on my hand was steady, and I let him guide me toward the locker room door.

When we reached it, he stopped and looked back at me, his gray eyes searching my face like he was trying to memorize it.

"You'll come to the pack house tonight," he said. "We really need to talk. Bella."

He paused, and something in his voice softened just enough for me to notice. "I won't allow anyone to ever humiliate you again. I promise you that."

Before I could find any words to answer him, he turned and walked away, leaving me standing alone by the door with my hand still tingling from his touch.

I watched him go until he disappeared around the corner, and then I let out a long, shaky breath. My neck still throbbed. My mind still spun with everything he had said and everything he had not explained.

I did not know what it meant to be someone's mate. I did not know if the mark on my neck made me his forever, or if this was just another way for a boy to make promises he would break the second things got hard.

I pushed through the locker room door and stepped out into the cool evening air, and I started walking home.

My legs carried me forward on their own, one step after another, while my thoughts stayed stuck on everything that had happened since that morning. The video. The ceremony. The bite.

I kept touching the mark without meaning to, feeling the raised skin under my fingers every few minutes, and every time I did, I heard Dominic's voice again in my head. No one will ever humiliate you again.

I wanted so badly to believe him. Some small, stubborn part of me wanted to hold onto those words like they actually meant something.

Maybe this was my chance to be seen as more than a joke. Maybe this was my chance to finally matter to someone who would not throw me away the second it became convenient.

By the time I turned onto my street, the sky had gone dark, and the porch light outside my house cast a soft yellow glow over the front steps.

I slowed down as I got closer, confused by the sound of laughter drifting toward me. My mother's laughter. And underneath it, a second voice, low and familiar in a way that made my stomach drop before my mind even caught up.

I stopped walking completely when I saw him standing on my own porch, leaning against the railing like he belonged there, smiling at my mother as if he had not destroyed my entire life just that morning.

Elias.

His eyes lifted and found mine across the yard, and his grin stretched wider, slow and mocking, like he already knew exactly how much seeing him there would hurt.

"I heard you got claimed by the new Alpha," he called out, loud enough for the whole street to hear. "I guess you finally got lucky, poor girl.