The Alpha's Regret

Ryker

I woke slowly to the crisp, echoing calls of morning birds overhead. For a long moment, I kept my eyes closed and lay still on the damp earth. My mind ran through a methodical combat assessment, taking stock of a body that by all logic should be a broken, lifeless corpse. Yesterday, dark shadow poison had flooded my veins, turning my blood to toxic sludge. Massive claws from a rogue beast had shattered my ribs, nearly puncturing my left lung. I should have died under the trees. At the very least, I should be screaming in agony, choking on my own blood as the venom dissolved my internal organs piece by piece.

I drew a deep breath. My chest expanded smoothly. No jagged bone grinding against lung tissue. No suffocating wheeze. I ran a hand down my thigh where the poisoned arrow had struck. Smooth, unblemished skin met my fingertips. The tearing gashes across my abdomen had sealed into faint, raised lines that would fade in days. Healing from shadow poison required days submerged in the moon pools at Vane Manor with constant herbal infusions. Yet here I was, healed and pain-free.

I pushed myself up, sitting bare under the dawn light inside a circle of towering, ancient standing stones. My clothes were gone, shredded during the chaos of my shift last night, leaving my naked body exposed to the cool morning air. I scanned the clearing. The remnants of my unlikely salvation lay scattered across the moss.

Withered strands of luminescent moon vine rested near my thigh, the edges blackened from use. Crushed silverleaf petals, stripped of their usual glow, stained the dirt. Beside them sat a crude, makeshift moonstone mortar. Someone had ground those herbs into a precise, intuitive antidote in the pitch black of the night. I traced the rim of the mortar. Creating a formula this complex in the field took more than just basic medicinal knowledge. It required a master healer’s touch to balance the ratios without killing the patient.

Then, the scent hit my nose.

A delicate, overwhelming fragrance drifted through the clearing. Soothing chamomile and crisp sweet apples. It flooded my senses, washing over me like a tidal wave. It bypassed my logic, striking straight at the core of my soul. It felt exactly like walking through the front door of my home after a brutal, endless war.

Mate.

The realization slammed into my chest like a physical blow. Inside my mind, Varg erupted. My inner wolf exploded with a thunderous, uncontainable roar of joy that nearly dropped me back onto the moss. We had shared this headspace since my first shift at sixteen, fighting and leading as one unified entity, but I had never felt him like this.

"MATE!" Varg screamed in my head. "Finally! We have waited for thirteen years! Thirteen years of watching other wolves find their pairs. Thirteen years of empty beds and cold nights. She's perfect. Her scent. Her touch. She's OURS!"

He was wild, pacing within my consciousness, his claws scraping against the walls of my mind. He demanded we shift right now. He wanted to put his nose to the dirt, track her down, and claim her in the daylight.

I looked down. Beside the spot where my head had rested lay a worn, small denim jacket. The fabric looked faded, frayed at the cuffs. She had left it behind. I snatched the thin garment from the damp earth and pressed it tightly against my bare chest. The contact briefly quieted Varg's roaring. He let out a deep, satisfied rumble, reveling in the proximity to her lingering warmth. I buried my nose in the collar, breathing her in.

But as I inhaled the intoxicating aroma clinging to the collar, other scents broke through the chamomile and apples. Sour traces clung to the threads.

I detected the lingering traces of fear, deep confusion, and profound shame.

My throat constricted. Varg surged forward with a possessive, roaring fury. His canines lengthened against my gums. He wanted to hunt down whoever had terrified our mate. He wanted to protect her from whatever had caused that fear.

I shoved him back down. I clamped down on his wild instincts with sheer Alpha willpower, refusing to let him take the reins.

"We don't even know her name!" I yelled back at my wolf through gritted teeth. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to calm my racing heart. "We don't know who she is. We don't know what terrified her."

The shout echoed off the standing stones. Silence followed, heavy and suffocating. Then, fragments of Varg's blurred memories from the night before crashed over me like a tidal wave.

The shadow poison had dragged me into a dark void, but Varg had fought to stay conscious. Through his eyes, the hazy images snapped into focus.

I remembered her small, gentle hands working over my ruined flesh. She coaxed bitter, glowing herbs down my burning throat. Her intense healing energy flowed from her palms into my body, burning away the shadow poison like pure sunlight.

I remembered involuntarily shifting back to my human form. The magic of her healing and the exhaustion in my bones had forced me out of my wolf form. I remembered the sensation of her covering my naked body with her jacket. Her hands moved quickly, checking my pulse while her own heart hammered a frantic rhythm in her chest.

Then came the devastating memory of snapping my eyes open.

I saw her face. I remembered grabbing her delicate wrist as she tried to pull away. I remembered pulling her down into my arms, trapping her against my chest.

The word tore from my throat with a feral growl. "Mine."

I remembered kissing her. Her lips parted, and her initial gasp melted against my mouth. I drove my tongue past her teeth, tasting the remnants of the bitter herbs she had fed me. Her small fingers dug into the hard muscles of my naked shoulders. She didn't push me away. She held on. The connection between us burned hot and undeniable. My hands mapped the soft curves of her waist and hips, pulling her tighter against my groin, driven by an ancient, primal need to bind her to me.

I remembered the feverish heat of the poison burning in my brain. My fangs extended, aching with the instinct to claim. I remembered dragging my open mouth down her jaw. I remembered burying my face in the crook of her neck, inhaling the intoxicating scent of chamomile and apples directly from her skin. I remembered my jaws opening wide.

And then, I remembered the crunch.

I remembered sinking my teeth deep into the sensitive flesh of her throat. I felt her blood well up on my tongue, hot and metallic. I held her there, locking my jaw as the mate bond snapped into place, fusing our souls together in the darkness.

I opened my eyes to the present. My breathing turned shallow. Slowly, with trembling fingers, I reached up and touched my own mouth. I ran my thumb over my sharp canines.

The lingering, copper-sweet tang of her fresh blood still coated my teeth.

Absolute horror washed over me, chilling the blood in my veins. The air vanished from my lungs.

I had marked her.

Driven by raw feral instinct and hallucinating from the dark poison, I had claimed her. I had sunken my teeth into her flesh and forged a life-altering mate bond. I did it while barely conscious, overriding a lifetime of strict disciplined Alpha control. I had staked my claim in the most primal way possible.

"She didn't reject the bond," Varg pleaded in my mind, fighting against my rising horror. His tone shifted to justification. "You remember her response. She wanted it. Her body said yes. Her wolf would have agreed."

"Stop," I growled aloud.

"Her wolf would have accepted us," Varg pushed. "We belong together."

I cut Varg off. The devastating realization hit me with sickening finality, dropping like a boulder into my gut.

"She doesn't have a wolf," I told him.

Varg froze. The silence in my mind became deafening.

If she had a wolf, I would have sensed its presence during the mating bite. I would have felt the answering spark of her inner beast rushing forward to meet mine. I would have felt the shift in her aura, the surge of supernatural strength in her blood. But there had been nothing. Just the raw, human fragility of her soul yielding to my jaws.

She was wolfless.

And I, Ryker Vane, the proud heir to an ancient, respected Alpha bloodline, had marked her as my mate. I had bound her to me forever without her sober, conscious consent.

Wolfless members of our kind already faced brutal lives. They were ostracized, looked down upon, treated as burdens by their packs. And I had just forced an Alpha mate bond onto a wolfless girl who had only been trying to save my life.

The intense, sickening shame of what I had done burned like corrosive acid deep in my gut. It consumed me, eating away at my pride, leaving behind nothing but the horrifying truth of my lack of control.