The Supreme Alpha's Secret Fated Mate

KIRA BEAUMONT POV

The freezing winter air bit into my bare feet as the heavy oak door of the Hicks residence slammed shut, rattling the frost on the porch railings.

A split second later, a torn black trash bag landed heavily at my feet with a wet thud. Worn flannel shirts, fraying denim, and a few faded thrift-store sweaters spilled into the icy sludge covering the driveway.

"Pick up your garbage and get the hell off my property!" Deidre Hicks's shrill voice cut through the stillness of the suburban night.

She stood on the porch, wrapped in a thick shearling coat, her breath puffing in angry white clouds. Her face was twisted into a mask of pure venom.

I didn't bend down to pick up the clothes, nor did I give any emotion. I simply stood straight, my spine rigid, and looked at her with cold, indifferent eyes.

I had known this day was coming for eighteen years.

"Look at you," Deidre sneered, leaning over the wooden railing, her knuckles white with malice. "Eighteen years of feeding you, clothing you, keeping a roof over your head. And what are you? A useless, scentless stray. A wolfless freak."

Behind the sheer curtains of the neighboring houses, shadows flickered. The whispers of the lower-tier shifters in our suburban pack territory were almost audible in the biting wind. They loved a spectacle, especially when it involved the Hicks family casting out their disgraced ward.

"You really thought we took you in out of the kindness of our hearts?" Deidre let out a harsh, rasping cackle that sent shivers down the quiet street. "You were nothing more than a spiritual shield. A sacrificial blood-sponge to absorb every curse, every hex, and every ounce of bad luck meant for my precious Brenda!"

My pulse remained steady, though a phantom ache throbbed in my chest. It wasn't heartbreak-it was disgust. The ugly truth, stripped bare of eighteen years of calculated lies.

Deidre reached into her pocket and pulled out a tarnished silver pendant carved with jagged, crude binding runes. It was the amulet she had forced me to wear around my neck since the day I could walk, claiming it was an heirloom meant to "stabilize my weak constitution."

"The shaman said its binding power is finally spent," Deidre hissed, throwing the silver chain into the mud right before my toes. "Brenda is turning eighteen next week. Her wolf is primed to awaken as a pure high-Beta warrior, while you... you don't even have a faint scent to your name. Your very existence is dead weight."

She stepped off the porch, raising her hand as if to shove me down into the mud.

I didn't flinch. I took a single, deliberate step back, effortlessly evading her reach.

I didn't care about that cursed piece of metal in the mud. Beneath the collar of my thin canvas coat, my fingers brushed against my collarbone, feeling the faint, reassuring weight of the real necklace I had kept hidden from them for eighteen years. Thanks to their constant mistreatment, I was still using my baby blanket when I was seven years old. That year, I found it sewn deep inside the blanket-a teardrop of pure lunar platinum. From the moment I discovered it, I had an instinct that this thing was important and must not be known to anyone else. So for all these years, they never knew it existed.

When I raised my chin and locked my gaze onto hers, the sheer, icy stillness in my eyes struck her like a physical blow.

Deidre froze mid-stride, her hand hovering in mid-air. For a brief moment, raw, instinctual dread flickered across her features. She had never seen this look on my face. For eighteen years, I had played the silent, submissive orphan, quietly enduring the silver-laced water they gave me, the subtle punishments, the calculated emotional starvation.

They thought they had broken me.

They had no idea that beneath the layers of silver toxicity suppressing my spirit, I was slowly dissecting every binding spell they had ever laid upon my soul.

Kira, I told myself, feeling the faint, rhythmic hum of ancient knowledge pulsing beneath my ribs. The debt is paid. The cage is broken. Every ounce of agony they inflicted on you will be returned tenfold.

"Keep the clothes, Deidre," I said softly, my voice cutting through the wind with razor-sharp clarity. "You'll need the rags when the debt comes due."

"You arrogant little bitch!" she shrieked, recovering from her momentary stupor as her face mottled with rage. "Get out! You have no wolf, no pack, and no name! You'll freeze to death in a ditch or get torn apart by rogues before sunrise!"

I turned my back on her without another word.

My bare feet pressed against the frozen earth, the sharp gravel biting into my skin, but I didn't feel the cold. Deep within my core, a tiny, golden-white spark of lunar warmth flared to life, pushing back against the silver poison that had coated my meridians for eighteen long years.

Ancient Moon Runes. The sacred glyphs my true instincts had whispered to me in dreams since childhood.

Every night, while the Hicks family slept, I had secretly drawn those unseen runes across my skin, neutralizing just enough silver to keep my soul intact. It was a agonizingly slow process-like scrubbing away lead with a silk cloth-but tonight, the severing of our household bond had shattered the final spiritual tether holding the curse in place.

I walked until the streetlights of the suburban subdivision faded into the dark treeline at the edge of the county road.

Standing beneath the bare branches of an ancient oak, I reached into the pocket of my thin canvas coat and pulled out an ancient, battered flip phone.

The device vibrated once.

I opened the cracked screen. A notification displayed an incoming encrypted text from an unlisted, high-tier satellite frequency.

I didn't need a numeric password. I pressed my right index finger against the glass, tracing an intricate crescent rune of unveiling.

The screen flashed pure white, and the garbled code rearranged itself into a single, crystal-clear message:

We found you, Kira Beaumont. Prepare to come home.

Beaumont.

The name struck my mind like a crack of thunder.

For years, I had spent countless nights in the municipal library, secretly hacking into locked supernatural archives to trace the origins of this mysterious pendant in my hand and the Moon Runes in my blood. My research always pointed to one impossible truth-a truth I had just finally confirmed.

My pendant was indeed no ordinary pendant-it was the Valerius Locket. Only their royal bloodline could possess this pendant and bear the primordial lunar magic of the Valerius seal. I wasn't just a stray. I was the missing princess of the continent's most powerful empire.