Samiya’s POV

Sometimes it felt as though everyone in the pack thought with what was in between their legs rather than the brains that they just so happened to be born with.

Although I could tell that the guard would have willingly taken a night with me rather than my money, he took the money regardless and when I told him that the alpha and I had a special ritual we did, every night we met, the fool didn’t bother to ask any questions and did exactly as I needed him to.

This plan was absolutely crazy.

Scarlet made it her sole mission to inform me of every possible event that could make this entire plan go wrong and while she made a few solid points, I was determined to get the job done. Plus, I had gotten some kind of protection just in case anything went wrong. It wasn’t foolproof, but it would just have to work.

“When did my intuition ever fail me?” I mindlinked Scarlet in a snarky tone.

“When our mate rejected us,” she snorted.

“Just shut the fuck up!”

The guard had led me to the royal kitchen and, apparently, the alpha had a special Shilajit tea that he had taken to his room every night and I of course, had to pretend that I already knew that. When the guard mentioned it, a crazy idea popped up in my head that had a few kitchen staff as well as the guard helping me, offer me a look that let me know that they were questioning my sanity.

“Alpha Zain has gotten used to all my crazy ideas and if you don’t believe me, you should trust that the Alpha himself would punish me if he sees a stranger in his room. I also promise not to mention your involvement in this with anyone,” I told the guard and the female staff, staring at me with incredulous looks.

They all gave each other looks and that was when I chipped in again before they got a chance to register how truly crazy all of this was. “And besides, if anything goes wrong who are people most likely going to believe? The wench of Etrana? Or a few loyal staff of the alpha with clean records?”

“Fine,” one of the female staff sighed.

She lifted the white cloth covering the trolley and gestured for me to go in. “If you get the Alpha angry, then it’s your funeral.”

“Thank you. I assure you that the alpha will be pleased,” I told them all with a smile before preparing to get in. However, a small but slightly deep voice stopped me.

“Promise me that we will still see each other after this?” I turned to find the guard that had led me to the kitchen looking at me with sympathetic eyes and a hopeful smile.

“Just how delusional is this man?”

“Very,” Scarlet answered in a heartbeat.

I forced a smile. “I will try to,” was the only thing I said to him before hiding myself in the trolley.

From my experience, a delightful surprise could act as a perfect form of seduction. I had spent the last two years gathering all the details I could possibly get about the alpha and one of them just happened to be that he had been a closed-off person ever since his fated mate, Esmeralda, a powerful witch, turned against him and almost destroyed our pack.

I had heard that before that, the alpha was a man who enjoyed all the joyful things that life had to offer, but he had distanced himself from all of that ever since he got his heart broken in the worst way possible and tonight, I planned to offer him a taste of what he had lost in the past.

Not long after I had hidden inside the serving trolley, it began to move and the moment it stopped, I felt my heart skip a beat.

I felt someone kick the trolley and I took in a deep breath. “We’re here. You can come out now.”

Running over the plan in my head again, I pushed the white cloth in front of me aside and stepped out of my hiding place. Finally standing again, I straightened my back and then took the time to study my new surroundings.

In one word, I could describe the alpha’s room as simply beautiful. Arched windows lined the walls, bathing the room in a soft moonlight glow accompanied by the dozens of lights from the grand chandelier above our heads. Heavy white drapes of rich fabric cascaded from the ceiling, their folds capturing the light in a way that made them glow as well.

A golden harp about my height sat in one of the corners of the room and its strings seemed to call to me, but I resisted the urge to play. In the middle of the room sat what had to be the biggest bed I had ever seen, accompanied by a headboard with delicate carvings of wild roses. It felt as though I had somehow slipped into one of the fairytales my mother would read to me when I was a pup.

“We will be leaving now. Please try not to die,” one of the female staff said, pulling me out of my trance.

I only nodded with a small smile and waved the two women goodbye.

Once the two women had left, I grabbed the small cushioned seat close to where the harp was situated and, although there was still a tempting voice that told me to at least run my hands through the strings of the instrument, I ignored the voice and focused on the task I had at hand.

Untying my robe so that it flowed freely by my sides and showed the black lingerie I wore inside, I took out the flute and blindfold I hid inside of it.

“It’s now or never,” I told Scarlet.

“I trust you, but please don’t get us killed,” she replied softly.

“Not encouraging, Scarlet, but believe me, I won’t.”

Sitting on the cushioned chair, I put on the blindfold and began to wait for my queue. Using Scarlet’s super senses, I listened closely for any sign of movement, and it was only when I heard faint footsteps at the beginning of the hallways that I began to play the flute.

Notes from Lakme’s The Flower Duet escaped my lips and ran through the hollow wood that was my flute. If everything worked right this night, then it could only mean that my intuition was right, and I had chosen the perfect piece to play.

There wasn’t a moment where I stopped playing my flute. I played the instrument until the moment the footsteps got so loud to the point where I could feel them and I heard the bedroom doors open and close.

It was him. It was Alpha Zain Shuzen. The one Alpha in all of Etrana’s history to ever fall for a witch and choose to isolate himself from members of his pack right after. I could feel his powerful aura. I could feel his presence enter and take up all the space in the room to the point where it almost choked me, but what I couldn’t understand was why he hadn’t stopped me or said anything.

His footsteps grew even closer until he was right in front of me and, although I was blindfolded, I knew that he was staring. I felt his eyes all over me. It was hard to ignore, but still, I kept playing. That was until I heard his voice.

“Who are you?”

It was a simple question and his tone was soft, yet the force in his voice made me stop in an instant.

Zain’s POV

I made a mental note in my head to thank whoever made me make the wise decision of taking concubines in the first place.

Today, like most others, felt haunting, mundane, and maddening. Ever since I had made the stupid decision of leaving my fate up to the moon goddess and trusting my emotions, my life had begun to go downhill and now, I had to spend every waking day to stop it from plunging into total darkness.

Drowning my sorrows with alcohol had seemed like a good idea at first, but it failed to fully numb and quiet down the demons in my head. What I needed was my Shilajit tea.

From the middle of the hallway that led to my room, I could already hear the haunting tune. If the alcohol I had taken hadn’t completely messed up my senses, the tune coming from my room was Lakme’s The Flower Duet. It was the same classical piece that my mother would play in the palace garden when she was still alive.

Whoever played that tune was either ready to die by my hand or suffer dire consequences for taking me back to the past.

A sense of nostalgia wafted through my senses, increasing my urge to get to my Shilajit tea even faster so that I could end the day already.

Opening the door to my bedroom, what I least expected was to find a blindfolded, half-naked woman with a wooden flute glued to her mouth. All my thoughts went dull for a few moments until I could feel my wolf stirring in me.

A subtle wave of jasmine and vanilla curled up in the air and attacked my olfactory system, making both Ralph and I almost fall off the thin line known as self-control.

Ever since our fated mate betrayed us in the gruesome way she did, my wolf, Ralph, had gone silent on me. He only ever awoke when it was time for battle and bloodshed, yet in the midst of a strange woman who had resurfaced such a repressed figment of our past, he chose to finally resurface.

The redhead never stopped playing her flute even when I shut my doors and stood in front of her.

Her confidence intrigued me.

None of my concubines in the past had ever been this bold. Not even my beta was this bold to approach me like this.

She had to be new.

I made a mental note to thank Meidran for his selection later.

Her ginger red hair flowed down to her back and, oddly enough, I had a strange urge to run my hand through it and maybe even sniff it. Not only had the woman decided that playing the flute in my room blindfolded was the best idea, but she had also decided to tempt my ears as well. The woman wore a long black robe which remained open in the front, revealing to me a lacy black lingerie that helped in pushing out her breasts forward.

The curiosity I felt earlier still remained present, only that some of that energy had morphed into something stronger that traveled head-first to my groin.

After taking my time to study this woman, I finally asked, “Who are you?”

Perhaps my voice had broken her out of a trance because, in an instant, she stopped playing that haunting tune and dropped the wooden flute on the floor right by her side, right before standing up.

She dipped in a low curtsy. “Good evening, Alpha.” Her voice was soft, yet it had a bit of edge, as though my presence hardly did a thing to her.

Who exactly was this woman?

“I asked for your identity and not your greeting,” I snorted.

Once again, the woman went silent, and I began to reconsider if my presence truly didn’t affect her or if she was using a tactic on me. Still slightly puzzled by the woman, I walked around her, studying each part of her body to the best of my ability and as I did so, I felt the presence of my wolf increase even more.

There definitely had to be something special about this woman.

I was done with waiting or guessing, so I made a move I felt would calm both me and my wolf. Letting my hand roam, I reached up to the skin right next to her collar bone and almost immediately the sound of her hitched breathing met my ears. It only propelled me even more. I let my hand move to the edge of her robe and took it off, leaving her exposed in only her lingerie.

An ache began to blossom in my lower body, letting me know that I would need more than just Shilajit tea tonight.

“Take off your blindfold,” I ordered, and she complied almost immediately.

If I thought that the woman was tempting before, then words could not describe when her defiant emerald green eyes met my blue eyes. There had only been a few people to stare at me so openly before and a concubine was most definitely not one of them.

“Does the Alpha enjoy what he sees?” she cooed, making my lips draw into a smirk.

Taking a step forward, I caressed her cheek, and the strange woman before me melted into my touch. Her sweet scent invaded my senses, but this time it wasn’t just a blend of jasmine and vanilla that I could smell. There was also the tempting scent of her arousal.

Had she been waiting for me all this while?

To answer her question, I placed my hands on her waist, pushing her close to me and I heard a soft gasp escape her lips. I could tell that she could feel my erection. “Does that answer your question?”

“Perfectly,” her soft voice answered back.

I wanted to take this slowly. I wanted to know who this strange woman was who entered my room and decided to haunt me with a wooden flute and her intoxicating scent, but my wolf wouldn’t let me. My heartbeats thundered in my chest and I could feel my wolf threatening to come out at any moment if I didn’t take this woman right now.

On instinct, I buried my head in her neck and inhaled more of her scent. I didn’t feel like I could ever get enough of it. I didn’t feel like Ralph would even let me.

Peppering hot kisses on my redhead’s neck, I nibbled on her neck softly until I was sure that it would leave a mark. Tilting her head slightly, the strange woman allowed me to perfectly continue my assault until my mission was completed.

I wanted to tease her even more. Maybe even get to study her body entirely. Each curve, edge, perfection, and imperfection until my wolf and I got tired of her, but Ralph was persistent and the last thing I wanted to happen was to completely surrender all control to Ralph and have him take this redhead himself.

Lifting my redhead up so that her legs were wrapped around my waist, I carried her to my bed and placed her on it gently.

“I’m going to be rough and fast, but I promise that next time I’ll be gentler,” I told her, lying on top of her while one of my hands fisted the sheets beside us.

She nodded. “I can take it rough and fast.”

I never explained myself to any of my concubines, yet I found myself explaining things to her. Although I didn’t know what pushed me to do it, I was grateful for it because her response, if anything, made more blood rush to my eagerly growing member.

With one swift motion, I ripped the lacy black lingerie she had on, leaving her body fully exposed to me.

Taking a few seconds to fully register the image of her nude in my head, I let my hands roam around her soft and tender flesh.

It was only when my hands found the two bountiful mounds of flesh that she began to arch her back slightly. Unable to control myself, I wrapped my fingers around a nipple, gently squeezing and tugging on it.

I did the same to the other nipple before taking her breasts in my mouth and letting my tongue trace, lick and caress every single corner of it.

Her soft moans met her ears and I wished that I could take the rest of my time studying the rest of her body the way I was now, but control was a battle that I had unknowingly gotten into with my wolf, and I was losing terribly.

Reluctantly, I got up and got rid of my clothes. I could feel her eyes on me as I took each clothing off, but there was somewhere that her eyes seemed to linger on the most.

Noticing her intrigue, I looked up. “Don’t tell me that you’re thinking of chickening out now, are you?”

I could hear her heartbeat quicken as she swallowed and shook her head no. “I was only wondering how long I would wait before you fucked me already.”

Once again, I was happy that I bothered talking to her again, because her responses always found a way to send a new wave of erotic energy straight to my cock.

Settling above her again, I parted her legs and ran a finger across her wet folds. “You weren’t lying when you said you were waiting, alright,” I panted.

A small moan escaped her lips, and it sounded almost as melodic as the piece she had been playing earlier.

Before she could offer me any responses, I entered her in one sharp thrust, hoping that I would be getting more visits from my mysterious redhead.

Samiya’s POV

Leaving the alpha’s chambers was not as tricky as I initially thought it would be. By the time I had woken up, his side of the bed was empty.

Standing up from the alpha’s bed, I rushed to pick up my robe and thanked the moon goddess that the little fabric hadn’t gotten torn in the process of my little escapade with the alpha. I also made sure to pick up my little wooden flute as well.

It was clearly still dark outside, and while the fact that the alpha had rushed out so early did have me thinking a lot longer than I should have, I brushed all thoughts aside and stepped out of his room. Now that stage one of my plan had been completed, I focused my mind on the contest that I still had to participate in.

There were only a few guards who stood by the hallways seeing as it was still nighttime and as I walked past them, I caught the majority of them staring at me. They could smell the Alpha’s scent on me. It could be the only reason why they looked at me with curious eyes. The thought alone brought a smile to my face and a warm feeling to my heart.

I had a good feeling that I was pretty much close to winning this contest already.

Slipping inside my room, I locked the door behind me and began to go through my things to find a gown beautiful enough to walk in for the first official day of the contest.

“Maybe you were right,” I heard Scarlet say, interrupting my search.

I rolled my eyes, knowing perfectly what she was trying to say. “That Alpha Zain would make a much better mate for us, both?! Of course, I was right! Did you see the size of that thing!” I mindlinked her, laughing.

“I did. Trust me, I did. But it’s not just the size of his manhood, Miya. It’s his wolf too. He wanted us. I could see he wanted us.” I could feel Scarlet’s energy bubbling inside of me, and honestly, it warmed my heart. I had never seen her this excited about anything ever since Meidran rejected us.

“Of course he did. I played one of his dead mother’s favorite songs. Haven’t you heard the saying that men are more attracted to women who remind them of their mothers? I told you that I could handle things perfectly.”

A small scoff resounded in my head and I stopped for a moment. “Wait… weren’t you the one repeatedly saying that you trusted me?”

“I only said that because I knew that I had no choice.”

“Scarlet,” I called out in a warning tone.

“Just don’t ruin this for us,” was the last thing I heard from her before she went completely silent.

With a small laugh, I continued sorting through my clothes until I found the perfect red dress.

After arranging my dress along with some jewelry, perfume, and the perfect purse on my bed, I stepped into the shower and washed myself. Careful enough to not overpower the alpha’s scent but mindful enough to take all the grime off of my body.

Once that was done and the first signs of dawn began to peek through my window, I got dressed. For my jewelry, I opted for gold, and for my hair, I chose to let it down. Today, I wanted my dress to speak for me before I even got a chance to open my mouth. Like most of my other dresses, this dress had a dangerously deep vee-line that showed a good amount of my bosom while the rest of the dress flowed freely to the floor giving a mermaid illusion.

What I happened to love the most about this dress was the fact that it left my neck exposed just for everyone to see how much Alpha Zain appreciated my neck last night.

Stepping out of my room, I saw a few other women heading toward the room where Meidran addressed us yesterday. Like the guards from earlier, most of the women I passed stared at me with a slight hint of confusion. My guess was that they could either smell Alpha Zain’s scent on me, or they could see the love bruises on my neck, or maybe it was both. Either way, it didn’t matter much.

We all had to wait for about ten minutes for Meidran to show up.

The moment my eyes caught sight of his silver blond hair, the first image that came to my mind was the one of the bimbo from yesterday and how he mindlessly fucked her. I knew that I wasn’t supposed to feel anything, yet I couldn’t stop the rage from boiling through my veins.

As though my emotions were loud enough to call out to the man, Meidran turned to face me and our eyes locked. For those few moments, it felt as though it was just us in the room and there was no one else.

But the feeling did eventually fade when he began to approach me.

My first instinct was to run or avoid him somehow, but my feet remained glued to the ground. The man needed to see just how much I had grown to despise him. The man needed to see that I wasn’t the same helpless omega I was when we were kids or the weak whore he left in the market square two years ago.

So, I squared my shoulders and stood up straight.

A few feet away from me, Meidran paused. His nose twitched, and his nostrils visibly flared up.

He could smell it.

The expression on his face morphed from a mild shock to that of fear as his legs took flight, and he walked towards me even faster. Standing in front of me, he took my hand, shoving me close to him. His eyes searched mine and his brows furrowed. “Zain? Seriously? You spend one night here, and you choose to spend it in the alpha’s bed?” he spat.

Wrenching my hand free from Meidran’s grasp, I felt my anger take a new dimension. “You have no right to approach me or speak to me whatsoever! Last I remember, you ridiculed me for opening my legs, for just anyone, so this shouldn’t come as a surprise to you,” I fired back, making sure that my voice was low so no one else could easily hear us.

My outburst seemed to annoy Meidran even more because his eyes narrowed further and just when I felt he was seconds from boiling over, a loud voice put an end to our quarrel.

“Meidran, are these all the women that would be competing this year?”

I knew that voice. It was the same voice that could bring just anyone in the Etrana pack to their knees, and it was also the same voice that echoed in my ears as I reached orgasm after orgasm last night. Alpha Zain.

Meidran took a step away from me and spun so quickly that one would even wonder if he had ever been standing a hair’s breadth away from me only seconds ago. “Yes, Zain. These are all the women that applied to compete for the position of your chosen mate this year,” he informed him, stretching his hands.

Alpha Zain nodded and took only one step forward before his nose crinkled. He raised his head further into the air before he began scanning each face in the room. When his eyes landed on me, my heart stopped beating for a split second before I was able to regulate it again.

His eyes remained on me and looked at him with as much intrigue as he did me. Scarlet tried to will me to bow my head or at least avert my eyes, but I refused her with all the strength I had in me. I wasn’t going to back down. Not when I had come this far.

“I hear that you have come to win my heart, yet some of you couldn’t wait to compete and just had to get your action elsewhere, so it seems.” His words bounced off of the walls as he dragged his words lazily like he had been forced to come here.

For a fraction of a moment, I thought that he was referring to me and my heartbeats picked up in their rhythm once again, but when his head finally turned to another contestant, I let out a small breath.

“You slept with my Beta,” Alpha Zain said, pointing at the brunette I had caught fucking Meidran last night. Her lips formed an ‘O’ and her eyes widened as though she was being falsely accused.

Didn’t the fool remember that we werewolves could easily trace scents, especially the Alpha?

Before the woman had a chance to defend herself, Alpha Zain continued. “Congratulations! You have officially failed the first challenge. Guards get her out of my sight.”

Two of the Alpha’s men stepped forward, ready to escort the brunette away from the castle. Just as we were all registering what had just happened, the alpha’s voice clouded my senses once more.

“Redhead, step out. We need to talk.”