When the Alpha Lost His Human Childhood Sweetheart

I had just latched the clasps on my old suitcase when the clinic's decaying wooden door was blasted from its hinges.

Slade stood in the shadows. He leaned against the doorframe, looking effortlessly handsome and completely unthreatened. "I knew I'd find you."

He stepped inside, his expensive leather shoes groaning on the rotten floorboards.

I instinctively backed away, my hand reaching for the silver scalpel on the table.

But he was too fast. In the blink of an eye, he had crossed the room.

My back slammed against a medicine cabinet, sending glass vials clattering. His large hands pinned me there.

"Where did you think you could run?" he demanded, is voice low and seductive, nuzzling my ear.

I tried to struggle, but there was no room.

Suddenly, the feral look in his eyes receded for a moment, replaced by a flicker of panic.

"For three hours, I couldn't feel you," he pressed his forehead against mine, his voice hoarse. "I thought something had happened to you..."

The heart I thought could no longer be moved gave a painful twinge.

But I quickly snapped back to reality. This was an Alpha's possessiveness, not love.

"Let go of me, Slade."

"Not until you tell me where you're going with that suitcase."

"That has nothing to do with you."

"Nothing to do with me?" he scoffed, his hand clamping around my jaw, tilting my head up so he could smile down at me.

"Every breath you take belongs to the Blackwood Pack. You're mine, Eloise. You don't get to leave until I say so."

"I've repaid my debt to this pack. With my dignity, and with the flower I burned." I looked him straight in the eye. "I am free."

"What did you say? Free?" He released me and pulled a yellowed parchment from his coat.

Slap.

He slammed it down on the dusty clinic table.

"Look at this."

The moment my eyes fell on it, the long list of arguments I had prepared died on my lips.

The parchment was titled in large letters: Guardianship Pact. At the bottom was my mother's elegant signature, next to the embossed crest of the Blackwood Pack.

My mother had told me about her connection to the Blackwood pack.

Twenty years ago, during the pack wars, the then-Luna of Blackwood, Slade's mother, Slone, had fled to the human world and been saved by my mother.

As a doctor, my mother had saved Slone's life.

As fate would have it, their personalities clicked, and they became the best of friends.

Later, when my mother fell gravely ill, she brought a young, orphaned me to the Blackwood Pack, entrusting Slone to raise me.

To give me a legitimate reason to stay in a werewolf pack, Slone saw that I had inherited my mother's gift and wanted to train me as a healer for the werewolf world.

"Don't forget, Eloise. Your mother signed this pact. As long as the Blackwood pack stands, you belong to it as its healer."

A chill ran through me.

I understood that my mother and Slone had devised this as a compromise to ensure I could survive.

But now, it had become the very chain that bound me.

Slade closed the distance again, his fingers tracing my cheek in a deceptively gentle gesture. "Tomorrow night is the bonding ceremony. You must be there."

"Since you were naughty and destroyed the Moonlight Flower, you have to make it up to me," he whispered against my lips. "Prepare a vial of pure restorative essence. Present it to Rosalind. On your knees. Show everyone how much you love your new Luna."

"If you refuse," he released me and adjusted his collar, smirking. "I will burn this clinic to the ground. I know how much you love your mother's trash. Just like you burned that flower."

This clinic held all of my mother's manuscripts, the only things I had left of her in this world.

I looked at him, the man who had been my lover for ten years, now a complete stranger.

"Fine," I heard myself say, my voice unnaturally calm. "I'll be there. I'll give you the 'loyalty' you want."

Slade smiled, satisfied.

"See you tomorrow, Eloise. Wear something nice for me."

His figure disappeared into the night.

I picked up the vial of energy essence from the table, my fingers stroking the cool glass.

"A pact," I whispered, "must eventually be settled."