The Billionaire Alpha's Wolfless Fated Mate

Annette POV:

The blinding halogen glare burned my retinas, turning the world into a wash of white.

The roar of that massive engine shook the very air in my lungs. In a fraction of a second, my mind screamed that I was dead, but my body moved on pure, unadulterated instinct.

I threw myself sideways toward the raised concrete curb.

Tires shrieked in agony as the heavy beast slammed its brakes, rubber smoking against the flooded pavement. The vehicle skidded sideways, stopping mere inches from where I had been standing.

I hit the rough sidewalk hard, the gravel tearing through my coat sleeve and shredding the skin on my elbow. Muddy water splashed over my face as I rolled onto my hands and knees, gasping for air.

My heart battered against my ribs like a caged bird.

The heavy, reinforced door of the vehicle swung open with a hydraulic hiss.

A pair of bespoke black leather combat boots stepped down into the rising water.

The rain around us seemed to slow down. An overwhelming, suffocating scent cut through the damp exhaust and the smell of wet pavement—a rich, dark blend of crisp mountain cedarwood and warm, golden amber.

The moment that scent hit my nostrils, every nerve ending in my body caught fire.

A violent shudder rippled down my spine. My blood surged hot through my veins, my skin prickling with electric sparks so intense that my thighs felt completely numb.

I looked up through the rain.

Standing over me was a man of towering height, his broad shoulders practically blocking the flickering streetlamp behind him. Water dripped from his ink-black hair, tracing the sharp, aristocratic contours of his jawline.

He wasn't wearing a coat. His tailored black shirt clung to a muscular frame that radiated an aura of lethal, terrifying dominance—the undeniable, suffocating pressure of a supreme Alpha.

His eyes were a striking, piercing ice-blue, fixed entirely on me.

Deep inside my chest, in the empty void where my defective, non-existent inner wolf was supposed to sleep, something stirred. A tiny, desperate whimper rose in my throat.

Mine.

The word echoed in my mind like a phantom hallucination, so clear it terrified me.

The man took a single step toward me. On his right hand, a heavy black obsidian signet ring gleamed under the streetlamp. The cedarwood aroma thickened, wrapping around my throat like a velvet noose.

"Are you..." His voice was a low, gravelly baritone that vibrated straight through my sternum, carrying a raw magnetic pull that made my knees tremble.

He slowly reached his large, scarred hand down toward me.

Panic slammed into my chest.

In our world, an Alpha of this caliber didn't stop for stray Wolfless females in the gutter unless they were hunting. The sheer intensity of the physiological reaction racking my body terrified me to my core.

I scrambled backward on my palms, grabbed the strap of my soaked backpack, and surged to my feet.

I didn't take his hand. I didn't even look into those ice-blue eyes again.

I spun around and bolted into the narrow, unlit alleyway between two brick warehouses.

My boots splashed wildly through the puddles as I ran as fast as my burning lungs would allow. The heavy cedar scent seemed to cling to my hair, refusing to wash away in the downpour.

I didn't stop running until I spilled out onto the main boulevard three blocks away, collapsing against the damp exterior wall of a dilapidated motor inn.

The faded neon sign above the door read Starlight Motel, with half the letters buzzing and dead.

I pushed open the peeling wooden door of the lobby, paid the night clerk my last remaining cash for a basement room, and took the rusted brass key.

The basement room smelled of mold and industrial bleach.

I locked the deadbolt, slumped against the wood, and slid down to the cold linoleum floor, burying my face in my knees as my whole body shook with tremors of cold and shock.

After twenty minutes of shivering, I forced myself to stand. I stripped off my soaked clothes, stepped into the cramped shower stall, and let the lukewarm water wash the grime and blood from my scraped elbow.

I pulled on a dry gray sweater and dark slacks from my backpack, then sat down at the small laminate desk where an old desktop computer was provided for guests.

I booted up the machine and logged into my secure cloud storage, hoping to find an uncorrupted backup of my earlier draft files.

My inbox was dead silent. The colleagues who usually praised my structural drawings had completely ignored the emergency messages I had sent earlier. In the face of corporate catastrophe, everyone had closed ranks.

Suddenly, a system notification popped up in the bottom right corner of the screen.

An anonymous email had just landed in my secondary inbox.

The subject line was simply: Audio Recording: Glass Household Transaction.

My brow furrowed. I clicked the attachment.

The crackle of cheap recording software filled the tiny room, followed by the muffled voices of Erlinda and Karmen, recorded right after I had slammed the front door an hour ago.

"Mom, she actually walked out." Karmen's whiny voice came through the speakers. "What about the closing costs on the estate? We can't clear the deed without the rest of the funds!"

"Calm down, you fool." Erlinda's raspy laugh crackled through the audio. "That girl cares more about her design career than her own life. Once Stone Architecture ruins her reputation and blacklists her tomorrow morning, she'll have nowhere else to crawl. She'll bring the apartment deed to our feet and beg us to take her back."

The audio cut off with a click.

I stared at the glowing monitor, my fingernails digging so deeply into the edge of the desk that the laminate cracked under my thumbs.

They had planned to break me completely just to harvest my last asset.