The Alpha's Bond: Forbidden But Wanted

"Stand still and stop looking at the floor," my father hissed into my ear. I shifted my weight and gripped my champagne glass until my knuckles turned white.

He thinks I am a prop, so I will act like one. We stood at the entrance of the Castellanos great hall.

The room smelled of expensive leather, wood smoke, and the heavy scent of fifty wolves. I followed him into the crowd and prepared to be ignored.

"Smile for the cameras, Elena," he commanded without looking at me. I stretched my lips into a fake grin.

This is going to be a long night. I moved toward the back wall of the hall. I wanted to stay away from the candlelight and the noise.

The most powerful bloodlines in Spain were currently performing their rituals. They circled each other with careful greetings and deliberate posturing.

These families have hated each other for centuries. I watched them from the shadows like I always do.

"You look bored," a voice said from my left. I turned to see Marcus, a sub-Alpha from a minor pack. He leaned against the stone pillar and smirked.

"I am just appreciating the architecture," I replied. He let out a dry laugh and took a drink.

You are a terrible liar, Elena.

"Your father is looking for a match for you tonight," Marcus whispered. He leaned closer and his breath smelled of bitter gin. I stepped back and put more space between us.

"He will be disappointed when he finds nothing," I said. No one wants an unmarked woman of twenty-one. I am a glitch in the bloodline. The burn started at my left wrist.

It was sharp and sudden, pressing into the inside of my skin. I looked down at my arm out of habit.

There has never been anything there my entire life. I waited for the sensation to fade, but it grew stronger. My skin began to glow with a faint light.

"Are you okay?" Marcus asked, his smile fading. I did not answer him because I could not breathe. Something is happening to me. A gold pattern began to trace itself up my forearm.

It moved slow and deliberate, cutting through my skin like a hot blade. I recognized the shape immediately. I had seen that pattern on the news and in history books.

It was the crest of the most dangerous man in the country. This cannot be happening. The pain shifted from a low burn to an absolute fire. It felt like my bones were breaking and knitting back together.

The mark wrote itself across my chest and down my thigh. My knees gave out before I could decide to fall. The glass in my hand hit the stone floor and shattered.

The sound of breaking crystal cut the hall into a dead silence. Every wolf in the room turned toward me at once. Fifty pairs of eyes watched as I collapsed.

I am the center of attention for the first time in my life. The gold light crawled up my neck and pulsed with heat. No one moved toward me to help. They just stood there and watched me scream.

"She is manifesting," a woman shouted from the front of the room. The words moved through the crowd like a physical wave. I pressed my hands flat against the floor to stay upright.

"The Vinculo Primordial," an old man whispered near the stage. He sounded terrified, which made my own fear grow. I am shaking so hard I might break.

The mark finished its work and the heat peaked. The name it put on me was not Castellanos. The gold light was not the color of my family.

The bond had chosen Bastian Valdemar as my mate. He is the Alpha who has spent three years destroying my father's business. He is our greatest living enemy.

I heard his name move through the room in thirty different tones. Some people sounded disbelieving and others sounded hungry. They knew the world had just shifted.

My father's boots appeared in front of my hands. I recognized the expensive leather and the silver buckles. I raised my eyes to meet his.

Don Rodrigo Castellanos stood over me with his hands behind his back. He looked down at the gold light on my skin. He is calculating my value.

"Papa," I said, my voice cracking. I wanted him to pick me up and take me home. I wanted him to tell me this was a mistake. He did not answer me or offer a hand. He crouched in front of me and grabbed my glowing wrist. He turned it over to examine the crest.

"Does it hurt?" he asked in a low voice. He sounded like he was asking about a broken piece of furniture. I nodded and tried to pull away.

"Yes," I gasped out. The fire was still humming in my veins. I need it to stop.

"Good," he said with a cold smile. "Pain means it is real." He released my wrist and stood back up. He turned to face the fifty guests of the Sangre Antigua. He was already performing for them.

He looked down at me one more time. His eyes were bright with a dark kind of energy. He is not worried about me at all.

"Finally," he said, his voice quiet and certain. "A use for you."

I tried to stand up but my legs were still weak. I leaned against the cold stone wall and gripped my arm. What is he going to do?

"Get her cleaned up," my father told two of his guards. They grabbed my elbows and hauled me to my feet. You are hurting me, I thought.

"Where are we going?" I asked as they dragged me toward the side door. My father didn't even turn around to look at me. He was busy talking to a group of Alphas.

"To the border," the guard on my right said. He had a grip like a vice. I struggled against him but it was useless.

"Why are we going to the border?" I asked. I felt a sick feeling in my stomach. The gold mark on my arm pulsed in response to my panic.

"Because the Valdemar Alpha is already waiting for you," the guard replied.

My father did not look at me once as we left the grand hall. He walked ahead of me through the dim corridor with his hands clasped firmly at his back.

His pace was unhurried and steady, showing no sign of the chaos that had just unfolded in front of the bloodlines.

The two wolves flanking us kept exactly three steps behind. They moved like they already knew they were not supposed to hear what happened next.

I followed the rhythm of my father's heels on the stone floor because I had no other choice. He pushed open the heavy door to his private study and held it.

I walked through the threshold and felt the sudden shift in atmosphere. The door clicked shut behind me and the guards stayed outside to watch the hallway.

The study remained dark except for the low orange glow of the fireplace. My father walked to the side table and poured himself a glass of dark liquid. He took one slow sip and set the glass down with a heavy thud. He turned and looked at me for what might have been the first time in years.

It was not a comfortable sensation to be seen by him so clearly. His eyes moved over my face the way a general examines a map of hostile terrain.

"Sit down, Ximena," he said. I do not like the way he says my name. It sounds like a command instead of a greeting. I sat in the stiff leather chair across from his desk.

He did not join me but stood at the edge of the firelight with his drink. He began to talk in the same level voice he used for council meetings.

He explained what the mark on my arm meant and what he intended to do with it. He laid out the details with the same precision he used for territory agreements.

To him, I am just another contract that needs to be signed.

"You will go to Bastian Valdemar," he said. I feel my heart drop into my stomach at the mention of that name. This is a death sentence.

"You are not going as my daughter," he continued. "You will go as a wolf seeking refuge from a broken pack." He wants me to be unnamed and unaffiliated so nothing can be traced back to this house.

"You will get close to him and you will use the bond to do it," he added. I looked down at the gold crest still glowing against my skin. The heat from it is starting to make me feel sick.

"The bond does not work like that," I said. My voice was higher than I wanted it to be. "It is not a weapon and it does not give me any control over him."

"No," he agreed without showing any interest in the technicalities. "But it gives him a compulsion he will not be able to explain." He thinks he can outsmart the oldest magic in our world. "He will feel a pull toward you and he will want to keep you close," my father explained.

He paced in front of the fire like a predator. An Alpha with an unidentified bonded is an Alpha whose instincts are working against him.

"You are going to stand in the middle of that distraction and let it happen," he said. I watched him take another sip of his drink. The fire popped loudly in the silence that followed.

"And when I am close enough?" I asked. I already know the answer but I want to hear him say it. I want to know exactly how much I am worth to him.

"You will learn everything," he said. He wants his alliances, his security protocols, and every weakness in the Valdemar structure. He wants me to bring it all back so we can take what was stolen.

He said it simply like he was explaining a grocery list. I sat there and absorbed the full shape of the plan.

It is a suicide mission dressed up as pack strategy. He wants me to walk into the den of the most dangerous Alpha in Spain. He wants me to get close enough to destroy him and then hand the knife to my father. This is not a mission for a daughter.

"He will know," I said. "Bastian Valdemar does not get to his position by trusting every stranger who walks through his door." I know the stories about what he does to spies.

"Then do not be a stranger," my father replied. "Be useful to him and be good at it." He looked at me with cold eyes that showed no flickering of doubt. "You have spent twenty-one years watching this family from the edges," he reminded me.

"You know how power moves and how wolves read each other." He thinks my invisibility is a skill. He is not wrong and that is the worst part of this entire conversation.

I have spent my whole life watching and learning things no one bothered to teach me. He has known it all along and stored the information away.

Now he has decided my small and powerless existence has finally produced something worth spending. I am a coin he has been saving for a rainy day. I wonder if he even knows how much I hate him.

"What if the bond locks before I can get what you need?" I asked. "What if it pulls me toward him in ways I cannot control?" I am afraid of what my own body might do.

"That is a risk I am willing to take," he said.

I notice he did not say it was a risk we are taking. He is risking my life and my soul for a few miles of territory. He finished his drink and set the glass on the desk. He straightened his cuffs in a small and familiar gesture. It is the same thing he does at the end of every business meeting.

I understood then that this was a briefing and not a conversation. He has not asked me a single question about how I feel. He told me the plan and explained my role.

"Papa," I said. He stopped near the door and looked back at me. "Did you know?"

"Did you know the bond could manifest in me before tonight?" I asked. The silence that followed was long enough to provide the answer before he spoke. I feel a cold chill run down my spine.

"I had reason to believe it was possible," he admitted. "The old texts were not specific about bloodline requirements." He thought it was worth waiting to see if I would become useful.

"You waited," I said. My voice was flat and empty. "You waited to see if I would finally have a use."

"And here we are," he said. He crossed to the door and opened it for me to leave. He paused with his hand on the frame and looked at the gold mark on my skin.

"Get some rest," he told me. "We have arrangements to make in the morning."

The door closed behind him and I was left alone in the quiet study. I looked at the fire and felt a cold clarity settle into my bones.

He has never looked at me and seen a daughter in twenty-one years. Tonight he finally looked at me and saw a blade. He is not walking me into danger to protect me. He is throwing me at his enemy to see what breaks first.

I stood up and felt the weight of the gold crest pulling at my arm. I walked over to his desk and saw a small black envelope tucked under his empty glass. It was not there when we entered the room.

I picked it up and saw my name written in a handwriting that was not my father's. Inside was a single key and a set of coordinates that led to the middle of the Valdemar forest.

There was no signature but the paper smelled of ozone and expensive cologne. Someone else is already expecting me.

"Drive faster or they will catch us," I muttered to the empty passenger seat. My eyes flickered to the rearview mirror as I pushed the accelerator toward the floor. The road behind me remained an empty ribbon of black asphalt.

I had taken nothing that belonged to Ximena Castellanos. I left the bags and the money with the family seal behind in my bedroom. I did not want anything that could be tracked or used to follow me north.

I wore a set of plain clothes and kept a small knife tucked under my mattress since I was fourteen. It was now strapped to my calf beneath my trousers.

This car was the only thing my father gave me that was actually mine. The road ran out just before two in the morning at a stretch of cliffside.

I knew this cove from the summers we spent here as children. That was before the feud with the Valdemars made leisure a forgotten memory.

The drop was clean and the water below moved fast around the base of the rocks. There were no lights from any houses for at least a kilometer in either direction.

I chose this spot because my father taught me to be thorough. I sat in the car for a moment with the engine idling. The headlights cut through the darkness and hovered over the edge of the abyss. It is far enough, I thought as I gripped the steering wheel.

I put the car in neutral and stepped out onto the narrow cliff road. I moved to the back of the vehicle and pressed my palms against the cold metal. I threw my whole weight into the boot and felt my boots skid.

The ground sloped just enough that the car began to moan against the gravel. I shoved again and felt my muscles burn with the effort. Move, I commanded as the tires finally began to rotate.

The car rolled slowly at first and then gathered a sudden, violent momentum. It yanked itself out from under my hands and vanished over the ledge.

The sound of the impact was a heavy, swallowing crash that shook the stone. I watched the car sink into the deep, dark belly of the Mediterranean. The headlights remained on underwater for a few seconds like pale gold ghosts.

Then the light vanished and there was nothing but the sound of the sea. I gave myself thirty seconds to breathe before I began the descent.

The east face of the cliff was accessible if you knew where to put your feet. I had known the path since I was twelve years old. The rock was cold and wet, biting into my fingertips as I climbed down.

My hands were shaking by the time I reached the bottom of the cove. I stripped down to the thin layers I had worn for the swim. The water hit me like a solid wall of ice when I stepped in.

The sea was not the warm thing it appeared to be during the summer months. It was sharp and black and it pulled at my legs immediately.

The current dragged me sideways along the base of the cliff. It knocked the breath out of me and I struggled to keep my head up. I am not going to drown here, I told myself. I swam hard and low, keeping my strokes silent against the waves.

I did not look back at the place where my car had disappeared. I focused only on the rhythm of my arms cutting through the salt. I had gone perhaps two hundred meters when I heard the first of the torches. I went still in the water and treaded just enough to stay afloat.

Lights appeared at the top of the cliff above the cove. Two of them moved in a wide-sweeping pattern across the rocks. My father's wolves were already searching for me. He watches every road that leads away from his house and he always has.

A torch swept down across the water's surface and I ducked my head. I let my dark hair float flat against the waterline to hide my silhouette. The light passed two meters to my left and kept moving.

"She went in," one of the scouts called out to the men on the road. His voice carried clearly across the water in the cold night air.

"The car is in the cove and there is nothing on the surface." There was a long pause as the second voice spoke from the cliff top.

"Any sign of her?" he asked with a tone that was flat and bored. He did not sound like he cared if I lived or died.

"None," the scout replied. "The current is running east and it is moving fast." He did not need to finish the sentence to make his point. If I had gone in with the car, my body would be kilometers away by now.

They know this coastline as well as I do. They are already calculating the report they will give to my father.

"Report it to Don Rodrigo," the second voice said. "Tell him the girl is gone."

I watched the torches move back along the cliff road until the light faded. I floated in the black water and listened to the silence return to the night.

The cold worked its way into my hands and feet until I couldn't feel them. The mark on my wrist went quiet as if the sea had extinguished the fire. The car was forty feet below me in the dark with every record of my life.

Ximena Castellanos had driven off a cliff and the current had taken her. I am no one now, I thought as I turned toward the shore. I have no name and no papers and nothing but a knife and my fury.

Let the daughter die so the blade can live. I swam toward the distant lights of the coast without looking back. I reached the shore an hour later and dragged my body onto the sand.

My limbs felt like lead and my skin was blue from the freezing temperatures. I crawled toward a thicket of trees to find cover. I reached for the knife on my calf to make sure it was still there.

My fingers brushed against the leather sheath and I felt a small surge of heat. The mark was starting to glow again through my wet clothes. I looked up and saw a pair of boots standing just a few feet away.

They were not my father's boots and they did not belong to his scouts. They were heavy, military-grade leather covered in fresh mud.

"You took a very long time to get here," a voice rumbled from above. I looked up and saw a man with a jagged scar across his throat. He held a heavy coat in one hand and a silenced pistol in the other.

"Who are you?" I asked, my voice barely a whisper. He stepped into the moonlight and I saw the Valdemar crest pinned to his lapel. He didn't answer me but he didn't raise the gun either.

"Bastian is waiting," he said, throwing the coat over my shivering shoulders. He turned and started walking toward a path hidden in the brush.

I realized then that my father wasn't the only one who had been watching the roads.