Oupter 2
Kaela’s POV
I didn’t expect Sorento pick me up the next day
The moment I stepped outside, his eyes went straight to my wrist. Only after spotting the wolf
bracelet did his shoulders relax
In the past, I would’ve been all over him–clinging to his arm, breathing in his scent, desperate for any scrap of attention from my intended mate
Today, I just got in the car. No words. No langering looks. Nothing
His eyebrows drew together, but he didn’t say anything. Just slid behind the wheel and started driving (
I kept my face turned to the window as we headed toward the auction house. No chattering, no asking about his day at the clinic, none of the desperate small talk I used to fill our silences with
The quiet stretched between us, thick and uncomfortable. I could bear his steady heartbeat, could smell that familar cedar scent that used to make me feel safe. Now it just made me sick
My mind drifted back, like it always did when I tried to stay quiet. Back to when everything started falling apart.]
I was six when the rogues took me a pack of feral wolves who’d lost their territory and turned to trafficking pack children for profit. Ten years I spent bouncing between their safe houses and black market contacts, learning to survive in places where shoving weakness meant death.
When the Duskrend pack finally tracked me down, I thought I was coming home. What I found was that I’d been replaced.]
Ophelia wasn’t even born pack. My parents had adopted her from a human orphanage after I disappeared because they “couldn’t bear the emptiness.” She was everything they’d molded while I was gone–refined, educated, the perfect future Alpha.
Me? I was the embarrassment. The daughter who flinched at loud noises and knew more about street fighting than pack politics. Who spoke with a rough edge from years of keeping my head down and my mouth shal
At first, I tried so damn hard to be what they wanted. Tried to boud with Ophelia, thinking maybe we could share the burden of being Alpha heirs. Maybe even be sisters.
But
of the saw me as a threat from day one. Everything I louched, she’d take. My old room? She convinced Moms and Dad I’d be “more comfortable” in the converted garage since I was “used to rougher conditions.” Friends I tried to make? She’d whisper poison until they wouldn’t look at me
The worst part was how perfectly she played victim. She’d spend all day making my life hell, then run home crying about how the “damaged foster kid” was unstable and dangerous. My parents are it up
They pulled me from school, Said I was embarrassing the family name. Kept me locked up like some dirty secret they couldn’t quite throw away]
I remember the day I collapsed from hunger–Ophelia had convinced the house staff i was “detoxing and shouldn’t be fed. When I woke up in the pack hospital, Suren was standing over my bed.
God, he was beautiful. Those dark eyes, the way he moved with absolute confidence. When he checked my pulse, his touch was the first gentle contact I had in months]
I fell for him like a stone dropped in deep water. Completely. Desperately
I threw myself at him every chance I got. Showed up at the clinic with coffee, found excuses to need medical attention, even tried seducing han a few times. He never gave me more than professional courtesy
Then Ophelia found out about my crush||
The “suicide attempt” came out of nowhere. One day she was fine, the next she was in a coma with a note claiming I’d been threatening to have her seid to reformation camps.
The note painted me as a psychopath who couldn’t handle losing my “rightful place in the pack bucrarchy Said I’d been systematically breaking ber
doven for months
My parents read that note and looked at me like I was something diseased ||
“Ungrateful little bitch,” Dad snarled, grabbing me by the threat. “After everything we’ve done for you.”
They made me kneel beside Ophelia’s hed and apologize. Over and over until my voice gave out and my knees bled through my jeans.
But that wasn’t enough for them.]
They wanted me gone. So they handed me over to contact
in the Shadowlands–that lawless stretch of territory where rogue wolves, exile packs, and
worse things gathered. Told them I was “disowned and they could do whatever they wanted.
The Shadowlands don’t follow pack law. Don’t follow any law. The things I saw there, the hands on me, the way they talked about breaking me in properly…
I was ready to shift and fight my way out, even if it killed me, when Soren appeared.[]
Turns out the Blackvein family had reach everywhere–ald bloodlines, political connections, the kind of influence that could make entire packs disappear
He got me out of there. Brought me home. Announced to my parents that I was going to be his mate.
Just like that, lavent from pack disgrace to untouchable. Nobody dared cross Soren Blackvein’s mate–to–be
That’s when he put the bracelet on my wrist. Called it a bonding gift, something to mark our connection until the full mating ceremony
I was so grateful, so desperately in love, I never questioned why it felt cold against my skin. Why it never warmed to my body heat like jewelry should
Three years. He’d been planning to kill me for three fucking years.
“You look like you’re about to be sick,” Soren said, his voice cutting through my spiral “We’re here.”
I blinked, realizing we’d stopped outside the auction house. My hands were shaking, and I could taste blood from biting my tongue too hard.
Instead of answering, I got out and started walking. Fast.
He didn’t wait for me. Those long legs ate up the distance while I struggled to keep up, just like always. Just like I’d been doing my whole life.
My chest felt like it was caving in, but I forced myself to smile. To keep walking. To pretend I wasn’t dying inside.
We’d barely sat down when the auctioneer’s voice boomed through the hal
“Our first item tonight comes from an anonymous donor–a collection of photographs with a starting hid of one hundred thousand dollars.”
The images flashed on the massive screen, and the entire auction hall erupted into chaos.
