Claimed as the Ruthless Alpha's Fake Luna

Seraphina POV:

Panic seized my throat. I was pinned to the door by a wall of muscle, the man's body blazing like a furnace, and no matter how I struggled, it was like a mouse battling a mountain lion — utterly useless.

He reeked of pine and winter frost, mingled with something that stirred the very depths of my soul — something I felt I recognized.

The inner wolf that had slept for years stirred in that moment, surging with a terrible hunger. My heartbeat was no longer fear, but a crackling resonance between us; where our bodies pressed together, my skin stung with a thousand tiny sparks. It was a physical urge I couldn't control.

He bent down, burying his face in the curve of my neck, his ragged breath scorching my skin. "Finally..." he rasped, his voice dripping with pure agony and relief.

Strangely, the chaos in my soul stilled in that instant.

The pain of Hayden's betrayal, the fury, the humiliation — all of it receded, replaced by an impossible sense of belonging — as if the missing piece had finally clicked into place.

Then a growl rose from within me, familiar yet foreign, brimming with possession and power: Mine!

It was mate recognition, confirmed through all five senses, indisputable.

The Moon Goddess — the deity my pack revered — had a cruelly ironic sense of humor: on the worst night of my life, she thrust my fated mate at me — a beast barely in control, savage in the dark.

He suddenly went rigid, groaned, and shoved me away, stumbling back into the darkness.

"Get out," he rasped.

Moonlight slipped through the gap in the curtains, limning his silhouette: massive, radiating an aura that suffocated, an Alpha among Alphas.

"This scent... it's too strong." The words were ground out between clenched teeth — that wasn't passion, it was genuine pain.

This wasn't a normal mate recognition. He was suffering. He was cursed. He collapsed onto the bed, breathing hard, his heat unmistakable even across the room.

I should run. But his desperate, agonized gasps pinned me in place.

The fledgling mate bond was a chain, dragging me toward him, commanding me to soothe his pain.

"Are you... okay?" The question was absurd. I asked it anyway.

He didn't answer. Driven by some impulse, I edged closer — a foolish instinct to help overpowering my fear. The moment my fingertips met his arm, a bolt of current exploded between us — fast, hot, like lightning, impossible to say whether it was pleasure or terror.

He jerked his head up sharply, breath catching, his eyes finding mine in the darkness — those glacier-blue pupils gleaming with a predator's light. Yet the trembling... was easing under my hand, little by little. I froze — my touch was helping him.

Before I could pull away, he seized my wrist, faster than I could blink, with a grip like iron. "Don't... leave." His words came out shattered by ragged breath, laced with desperate pleading.

He dragged me down onto the edge of the bed beside him. I fell with a soft thud, body rigid. He made no further move — just held my wrist, his thumb pressing rhythmically against my pulse point, as if drawing strength from it. Gradually, his breathing steadied, his trembling stopped — he was falling asleep. My closeness was his medicine.

I lay there for what felt like hours, a prisoner of his need. I had bonded myself to a monster, and I was his cure.

Finally, his grip loosened. I eased my wrist free, slipped off the bed, and landed soundlessly on the floor.

In the dim light, I studied him for a moment — and finally recognized the man.

He was Damien Sinclair, the feared Alpha of the Sinclair Pack, the wealthiest and most powerful wolf pack in the country.

I had apparently provoked the one man I should never have crossed. I scrambled out of the room and didn't look back.

The next morning, I was packing my bags to leave my father's house for good.

My father came in without knocking. In eleven years, he had never once knocked.

"You'll sign before you go." He set a folder on the bed without looking at me.

Two documents. The first struck my name from the Silvercrest pack registry. The second took my breath for a moment: the transfer deed for my mother's orchard house at the edge of the territory — the little estate she had carried into this marriage, the only place I had ever been happy — signed over to Hayden's pack.

"Compensation," my father said, in the voice he used for settling invoices. "They were owed an apology for the embarrassment."

"It was my mother's."

"Your mother has been dead eleven years, and the house has stood empty. Sentiment doesn't pay debts." He held out the pen and, for the first time that morning, actually looked at me.

I signed. They were paying for my freedom with the last thing my mother owned.

Collect it later, I told myself, watching his back disappear down the corridor. The orchard. The name. Every glass raised last night — with interest.

I had just zipped the suitcase when my phone buzzed. An unknown number: "Celestial Hotel. Penthouse Suite. Now."

I ignored it.

A second text arrived. It was a photo of my mother's crescent moon pendant, the one I was wearing right now, taken from a security camera angle in the hotel hallway. The threat was clear. He knew who I was.

The cold walked up my spine — and beneath it, treacherous as a struck bell, the bond pulled toward that hotel. Toward him.

A third text: "Don't make me come get you."

I could run. Eleven years of practice had made me very good at being invisible. But I looked at the pendant photo, and I did the arithmetic my father had taught me without ever meaning to: an Alpha's reach was a weapon, and I had just been discarded by lesser men. If the world only dealt in monsters, then I would take the strongest one I could find.

The Moon Goddess had thrown me to a beast on the worst night of my life. Fine. I had nothing left to lose but a pendant and a grudge — and I intended to keep both.

I went.

By the time I reached the penthouse suite, he was standing at the floor-to-ceiling window, impeccably dressed in his suit — the beast of last night tucked into this restrained shell, only a sliver of cold showing through his eyes. He turned, and those ice-blue eyes pinned me in place — the possessiveness still there, low and burning.

He offered no greeting, no apology. From a few steps away, his voice was low: "I need you."

Then he walked toward me. Not the crush of footsteps closing in — a composure that made you forget to breathe. He stopped in front of me, gaze dropping, sliding over the delicate chain at my throat, then suddenly leaned down. "Afraid of me?" A pause, and his tone carried something almost like genuine bewilderment. "You were bold enough last night."