Mark of Sin: Bound to the Cruel Alpha

The restroom door groaned as I nudged it open with my shoulder.

Annie was already waiting for me in the hallway—my personal lightning rod and a constant source of commentary about my life. She was also my best friend.

She leaned against the wall with her arms crossed, her perfectly styled hair catching the dim light. A black skirt, a white blouse, and the faint, expensive scent of designer perfume. She looked like a walking billboard for the "Perfect Breeder."

"Jane, what took you so long?" She stepped forward, narrowing her eyes. "Did a bathroom genie grab you by the ass and threaten to bite off the last remnants of your former glory? You were nesting in there forever."

I winced. That was exactly why I... loved her? Annie just couldn’t let the weight thing go. Ever. To her, I was permanently frozen as the chubby first-year Jane, even though I hadn’t looked like a blimp in ages.

"Annie, please, not right now," I sighed, nervously tugging my sleeve lower, as if I could hide the whole problem along with the rose.

She arched a brow but stayed quiet. For a split second, her eyes flicked toward my arm, and my heart plummeted into my stomach. But Annie just scoffed and waved it off.

"Fine, we’ll discuss your secret bathroom rituals later. Let’s move, before Lina throws us a public execution complete with crucifixions and personal humiliations."

We took off almost simultaneously. The hallway reeked of a mixture of cheap coffee, paper, and various scents. Students scurried back and forth—some lugged stacks of folders, others stood pressed against the walls, frantically rehearsing their speeches for upcoming credits.

Lina, the head of the Omega Committee, could deliver a reprimand for being late that would make you wish you’d just been expelled on the spot. She was obsessed with order and her own ego, and she harbored a physical hatred for anyone who disrupted her meticulously crafted schedule.

I, for one, had no desire to piss Lina off.

Annie, naturally, didn’t share my anxiety.

"Last one there is a blind ferret and has to mop the dorm floor for a week!" she yelled, giving my leg a sharp smack as she shoved me aside.

"I hope you trip," I wheezed, but I started running after her anyway.

She bolted forward, the hem of her skirt flashing in my line of sight before vanishing. I heard her laughter—bright, reckless—and then it cut off abruptly. I didn’t even have time to register that it was strange before everything happened at once.

Annie slammed to a stop at the exit of our wing and ducked into a room by the door. I didn’t notice in time. I was too busy trying not to trip, not to collide with someone, and not to drop my folder of drafts.

And then, I flew right into it.

Straight into something solid. Hot. As unyielding as a concrete wall, but definitely not a wall.

The impact was hard enough to knock the wind right out of me. My folder nearly slipped from my grip. In my head, I could already see myself flying backward and slamming onto the floor, likely letting loose a string of choice profanities on the way down.

But the fall never came.

A hand—large and powerful—clamped down on me, locking me in place. His fingers easily curled around my waist as if I weighed absolutely nothing. The body I was pressed against was hot, solid, and terrifyingly steady.

"Oh! I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to!" I stammered, looking up.

The entire world shrank down to that single point of contact—the heat of his palm against my waist and the shock wave of adrenaline sending sharp goosebumps down my spine.

Then, my eyes met a pair of eyes as gray as a stormy sky.

He towered over me. Sharp cheekbones, a straight nose, and lips pressed into a thin line. White hair. His face was grim, his gaze cutting like a knife, making it immediately clear that any word out of his mouth would sound like a death sentence.

But that wasn’t even the main thing.

The main thing was the way he looked at me.

It wasn’t how you’d look at a girl who had just blindsided you at full speed. It wasn’t how you’d look at a clumsy student. His gaze held a brief assessment, a cold curiosity, and something else entirely—something my brain flat-out refused to put a name to.

I inhaled.

The scent hit me like a tidal wave.

Expensive tobacco—sharp, slightly sweet. Something woody and deeply spiced with a heavy, dark undertone. And beneath all of it was a predatory, pure note of raw power that was impossible to mistake for anything else.

An Alpha.

The word flared in my mind instantly. It didn’t require any logic or analysis; I felt it in my skin, my bones, my every cell. The very air around him seemed denser, heavier.

Suddenly, the wrist beneath my sleeve erupted in pain. It was so sudden that I gasped and flinched. It felt as though the rose had come alive, driving white-hot needles deep into my skin. I barely managed to stop myself from grabbing my wrist with my other hand.

Instead, I white-knuckled my folder like a lifeline.

"Careful," his voice said. It was low, deep, and laced with a gravelly edge. For a split second, the sound vibrated straight down my spine like an electric shock.

I swallowed hard.

"I’m sorry... I wasn’t looking where I was going."

Brilliant, Jane. Standing ovation.

He studied me for a beat longer than was strictly polite. His gaze lingered on my face, my neck, and then down to my lowered hands.

Somewhere close by, a girl’s voice whispered, thick with awe:

"Did you see that? It’s him..."

I didn’t focus on the whisper; I couldn’t afford to. Something was happening inside me that I couldn’t even begin to articulate.

My heart was hammering. The blood thrummed in my temples, and my throat felt painfully parched. His scent hung so heavily in the air that I simultaneously wanted to inhale deeper and choke. It coated my tongue and weighed on my lungs like thick, expensive smoke, crowding out all the oxygen.

And all of this just because I had accidentally run into him.

"It’s fine," he added, finally releasing his grip on my waist.

As he pulled his hand away, the heat went with it. I felt the chill so abruptly that it was like being yanked from a warm bath into freezing winter air. My body gave a protesting shiver, though I fought with everything I had not to show it.

"Thank you," I managed to squeeze out.

He gave a short, almost lazy nod. For a split second, the corner of his mouth twitched—whether in amusement or boredom, I couldn’t tell. And that was it. No unnecessary words. No ’watch where you’re going’ or ’eyes forward.’

He simply stepped aside, brushing past me, and continued down the hallway as if the entire interaction meant absolutely nothing.

I was left standing in the middle of the hallway like an idiot, my wrist burning and my heart racing. It wasn’t until a hand painfully jabbed me in the ribs that I snapped out of it.

"Did you see him?!" Annie hissed, materializing from her niche. "Jane, that was... that was him!"

"Who is ’him’?" I asked, though I already knew that, in her mind, ’him’ had to be someone monumental.

"Are you serious? Do you live under a rock? That’s Magnus Rainn, from the Blackthorne Pack! You really have dropped off the grid. The way he looks..." She gave an expressive shudder of her shoulders.

"I thought he was going to paint the wall with you. He’s a reckless, sexy bastard. And he smells so good it’s illegal. A textbook Alpha wolf. If you ever awaken your breeder pheromones, you’ll get exactly what I mean. He’s pure sex on legs, but bastards like him are strictly look-don’t-touch."

Something jolted inside me at the mention of that pack. Blackthorne. It wasn’t that I knew a lot about the packs, but that name surfaced constantly—in the news, in lecture-hall whispers, in overheard conversations.

Wealth. Power. He was one of the alphas you didn’t cross if you valued your life.

I glanced back in the direction he’d gone. He had already nearly vanished around the corner, leaving behind nothing but the fading trace of his heavy scent and a strange sense of emptiness.

My wrist throbbed again. I looked down at the rose hidden beneath the fabric, a cold chill rippling down my spine.

"Let’s just go," I muttered, adjusting my sleeve. "Lina really will kill us."

"Oh, she’ll kill us, resurrect us, and kill us again," Annie agreed, though she kept eyeing me with a strange glint in her eyes.

We hurried down the hallway, the noise from the auditorium where our group was gathering growing louder. I tried to force my mind onto my thesis, and onto a furious Lina Morrow throwing a tantrum about what an absolute honor she was doing us by personally escorting us to the inspection.

But beneath all those frantic thoughts, one terrifying question pulsed relentlessly:

What if it wasn’t just a coincidence?

I clenched my fist, feeling the skin tighten over the contours of the rose.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!