Chosen by the Beast Alpha

Chapter 166: Chapter 166

Anna’s POV

I flipped up my collar, shoved the ring into my pocket, and went to work.

I’d been at my desk for less than twenty minutes when a coworker leaned over the partition. "Anna, your parents are at reception."

My head went light on the spot. I honestly hadn’t thought they would take it this far.

Three days ago, they’d shown up at Daniel’s apartment out of nowhere. I’d been staying there alone that night.

I was still half asleep when the pounding started on the door.

The second I opened it, Mom shoved past me. Her eyes swept across Daniel’s apartment, and her face twisted with disgust. "So this is the life the Bloodmoon Pack’s beta gives you? I expected better."

It was actually insane. When Daniel and I first formed our bond, my parents had been over the moon.

Their daughter was mated to the Bloodmoon Pack’s beta. They bragged about it to basically everyone they knew.

Then they met Lena.

They found out Lena was Dominic Voss’s mate.

And just like that, everything flipped.

My daughter’s best friend is with an alpha. My daughter is with a beta. In her eyes, that meant I’d settled. That I aimed too low. That I could’ve had more.

She’d already tried this once before. She dragged me back home, locked me inside, and tried to force me to meet some alpha from a small pack.

Daniel came for me. Before we left, he marked me. That should’ve ended it. It didn’t.

That morning at Daniel’s apartment, my mother saw the mark on my neck and went dead quiet. That silence scared me way more than yelling ever could. Then she sat down on the couch and laid it out like she’d already decided everything.

"I found someone. An alpha. From Richwater Pack. Good bloodline, real authority, not somebody else’s beta. You’ll come home, meet him, and if it works, we’ll make it official before winter."

I told her no.

She said she wasn’t asking.

Dad stood behind her without saying a word, looking torn up inside. I knew he loved me. But when it really mattered, he never went against her.

In the end, she started screaming. I locked myself in the bedroom, and when I left for work, both of them were still sitting in the living room. I hadn’t eaten. I didn’t dare look back. I turned off my phone, because every notification made me feel like the walls were closing in.

That was three days ago. Since then, they hadn’t contacted her once. Anna had honestly thought they’d gone back home.

They hadn’t.

She hurried across the lobby, trying to get to them before they caused a scene. Her mother’s face was already set like stone.

Her father stood just behind her, both hands shoved into his pockets, looking like he hadn’t slept all night.

Coworkers passed by with easy smiles and cheerful good mornings, and Anna had no choice but to smile back like everything was normal.

“Mom. Dad.” She kept her voice low. “Can we please talk after I get off work? Please.”

“No.” Her mother didn’t care who heard. “I want your answer today.”

Anna forced herself to breathe evenly. She’d dealt with difficult clients before—plenty of them—but none of that came close to this. Standing in front of her mother felt like standing under a boulder she couldn’t lift, couldn’t carry, and definitely couldn’t run from.

“Break your bond with Daniel. Come home with us.” Her mother said it as casually as if she were ordering coffee.

Anna clenched her fists so hard her knuckles cracked. “That’s not happening. You know what breaking a mark does. It could kill both of us.”

“Then maybe you should’ve thought of that before letting a beta mark you. Your friend Lena is mated to an alpha already. An alpha, Anna. And you chose that beta?”

Her stomach twisted so hard it hurt. That was the real knife right there. Her mother had taken her best friend’s happiness and turned it into a weapon.

“This has nothing to do with Lena.”

“It has everything to do with her. If she can end up with an alpha, why can’t you? What is wrong with you?”

Anna was shaking now, head to toe. “Daniel is my mate. I chose him.”

“You chose badly.” Her mother’s eyes went flat, cold, empty. “Either you fix this, or I’ll walk straight into your manager’s office and tell them exactly what kind of family their employee comes from.”

Anna had spent her whole life trying to get out from under her. She’d run away from home, built a career with her own hands, fallen in love with a wolf who saw every broken part of her and stayed anyway. She’d thought she was finally free.

She wasn’t.

Her mother was everywhere. She could find her, track her down, smash everything Anna had built, and still call it love with a straight face.

“You’re pushing me into a corner,” Anna said, her voice breaking. “If you keep doing this, I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

Her father shifted slightly. “Anna, we’re not trying to hurt you. We just want what’s best for you—”

"Then why does it feel like I’m dying?"

Hot tears came fast and hard. Anna choked on a sob and clapped a hand over her mouth.

"Listen to me." Her mother jabbed a finger at her, eyes sharp and wild. "Everything I’ve done my whole life was to give you more. More chances, more status, more everything. And this is how you pay me back? By sticking yourself to a man who will always be under an alpha?"

"He’s not—"

"If you don’t come home, I’ll make sure everyone at your company knows all about you." Her mother’s voice dropped, cold and vicious. "Let’s see if that precious career of yours can survive that."

Anna turned and walked out of the building.

The city slammed into her all at once. Engines. Wind. Voices. A wall of noise. She crossed the street without even looking. Horns exploded around her one after another, but it was like she couldn’t hear any of it.

She just kept walking.

Step after step, like she was moving on pure instinct, until she reached the pedestrian overpass. She climbed the stairs, went to the middle of the bridge, and grabbed the railing with both hands so hard her fingers hurt.

Below her, traffic streamed past in endless lines.

She stared at the river of cars and thought, dimly, that her life had been exactly like that—always moving, never stopping, never getting better.

"Get away from that railing!" her mother shouted from behind her, breathless now, panic cracking through her voice. "Anna, get down from there. Right now."

"Anna, please." Her father’s voice broke on her name. "It’s dangerous. Step back."

The wind slapped against her face, freezing and cruel. She turned to look at them.

Their faces were full of fear.

She couldn’t tell if they were scared for her... or scared of what this would look like.

"Why are you doing this?" Her voice shook so badly it barely sounded like her own. "My whole life, I’ve done everything you told me to do. Every single thing." Why was it still never enough?

Everyone always said she was lucky.

All the attention. All the resources. All the love, poured into one only daughter. She was supposed to feel blessed. Supposed to be grateful. Supposed to know how good she had it.

But she never had.

She remembered being little, pressing her ear to the bedroom wall, hearing her mother tell someone how badly she wished she’d had a son.

They had wanted a second pup, but the pregnancy ended in miscarriage. After that, they never tried again. They never said any of it to Anna’s face, not once, but kids heard everything. Kids always did.

And she had never forgotten.

They loved her. She believed that much.

But their love came with terms and conditions, like some cruel contract she had been born already failing. No matter how hard she tried, she could never meet every demand.

She had never felt this worn out in her life.

Every brick she’d used to build herself up, her mother had torn down with bare hands, like wrecking her was the easiest thing in the world.

"No one’s forcing you, sweetheart. Just come down. We can talk." Her father reached a trembling hand toward her.

"Let her jump." Her mother’s fear curdled into rage in a second. "If she wants to jump, then let her. If she dies, we’ll just pretend we never had a daughter."

My father spun around so fast it looked like he might snap something. "Can you just stop talking? Are you seriously trying to kill her?"

My mother let out a sharp, bitter laugh. "This is what your soft-hearted parenting got us. She let some beta mark her, and now she’s acting like we’re the villains. She has zero shame."

"No."

That one word barely left Anna’s lips, but every syllable around her felt like a sledgehammer slamming straight into her skull. She clutched the railing so hard her fingers ached.

A crowd had already gathered below. Some people were pointing. Someone had their phone out, calling for help. In the distance, sirens were rising, getting closer, louder, slicing through the air.

She looked down at the cars below, their roofs glinting coldly. Then she turned and looked back at the people.

And then she saw Daniel.

He was standing at the bottom of the stairs, staring up at her. His face was ghost-pale, and there was raw fear in his eyes, the kind she had never seen on him before.

He had felt all of it through their bond. Every crack. Every stab of pain. Every wave of despair had rushed through that connection between them and dragged him here like a hook sunk deep in his chest.

Seeing him only made everything worse.

Because now he was seeing her like this—at her ugliest, her most shattered—and there was no fixing it, no taking it back, no undo button.

"Anna, come down." His voice was steady, almost too steady, but his chest was heaving hard. "Walk down the stairs. Come to me."

She shook her head slowly. Her knuckles had gone completely white around the rail.

"Daniel... I’m sorry." Her chin trembled so badly she could barely get the words out. "I dragged you into my mess. I made you see all of this. I’m so, so sorry."

Something changed in his expression.

She saw the exact second he understood.

Anna didn’t wait.

She swung one leg over the railing, then the other, and let go.

"Anna!"

"Anna—!"

The screams exploded from every direction at once.

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