Claimed by the Alpha I Hate – Episode 16
Nolan Fenrir. The name struck Daisy harder than any staff could have. She stood in the center of the gym while the mate bond pulled her toward the man she had spent months blaming for her mother’s death. The stranger who had protected her, walked her home, and kissed her beneath the moon had never been a stranger at all.
Every conversation rearranged itself around the revelation. He had listened while she called Alpha Nolan a monster. He had asked whether she possessed proof, knowing he was defending himself. Even his unexplained freedom after curfew now seemed obvious. Daisy’s humiliation sharpened into fury as she realized how easily he had allowed her to trust him.
“You lied to me.” Her voice carried across the silent training floor. Around them, Eastwind and Blackwood wolves watched their Alpha’s newly revealed mate raise a weapon against him. Nolan did not correct her, because withholding his identity had been a deception whether or not he had spoken a false name.
“I should have told you sooner,” he said. His calm answer only deepened her anger. An apology delivered before an audience could not return the choice he had taken from her the night before.
Daisy remembered his mouth on hers and wanted to tear the memory out. “You let me kiss you.” Heat flooded her face, but she refused to lower her voice. “You knew exactly who I thought you were, and you let me believe it.”
A few trainees glanced at one another. Nolan’s expression hardened, warning the room against reacting, though his attention never left Daisy. “What happened between us was real. My name doesn’t change the bond.”
“It changes everything.” Daisy’s grip tightened around the staff. “You’re the Alpha who invaded my home. You’re the man responsible for my mother’s death.” The accusation landed in front of both packs, stripping their conflict of any romantic secrecy.
Nolan stepped closer. “I did not kill Vera Storm.” He spoke with the authority of an Alpha, but Daisy heard only another claim unsupported by truth. “I’ve reopened the investigation. Until we know what happened, you cannot condemn me on rumors.”
He wanted to tell her that Vera’s unresolved death had begun to trouble him long before sunrise, but explanations sounded self-serving in the crowded gym. Nolan had invaded Eastwind because its leaders endangered every nearby pack, not because he hungered for another territory. That distinction could not comfort a daughter standing over her mother’s grave.
“How generous of you to investigate yourself.” Grief transformed every measured word from him into manipulation. Her mother had died during his takeover, and now Nolan expected patience because fate had attached them to one another.
Mila watched from the edge of the floor, her earlier amusement replaced by disbelief. Daisy—wolfless, rejected Daisy—had somehow become the new Alpha’s mate. The realization made her stare at Nolan with wounded entitlement, as though the position of Luna should naturally have passed to her after Scott fled.
Daisy caught Mila’s expression and felt another layer of exposure. The same people who had photographed her humiliation at the solstice now knew she had kissed their conqueror. If she retreated, they would call her weak; if she accepted Nolan, they would say she had traded one Alpha for another. The only choice that still felt like hers was the staff in her hands.
Elias moved as if to clear the gym, but Nolan stopped him with a small gesture. Sending everyone away would look like an attempt to silence Daisy. She deserved to challenge him, even if each accusation scraped against the bond.
“You wanted a sparring partner,” Nolan reminded her, lifting his staff. “You have one.” He could not solve her grief in front of the pack, but he could give her a safe target for the anger shaking through her.
Daisy stared at the weapon in his hands. “You think this is a game?” She had wanted answers from the nameless man. From Alpha Nolan, she wanted justice—and some proof that the strength built at her grandfather’s cabin meant she would never again beg an Alpha for mercy.
“No,” Nolan said. “I think you came here to prove you can stand on your own. So prove it.” His challenge was deliberate, aimed past her fear and directly at her pride.
The words were not gentle, but gentleness would have insulted her in front of the pack. Nolan understood that much about Daisy already. She carried pain like armor, and every attempt to remove it by force only convinced her that another person wanted control.
The trainees backed away from the mat. Elias warned them to give the pair room, while Mila whispered that Daisy would be flat on the floor within seconds. Daisy heard her and set her feet more firmly.
Nolan took a guarded stance, holding his strength in check. The mate bond urged him to soothe Daisy, but instinct also recognized what she needed: not pity, not protection, and certainly not another man deciding she was too weak to face him.
Daisy rolled her shoulders and remembered every fall on the cabin’s hard ground. Her grandfather had never helped her up unless she truly could not rise. He had taught her that strength was not the absence of pain, but the refusal to let pain choose the next move.
Daisy raised the staff her grandfather had taught her to wield. Anger steadied her breathing and narrowed the crowded gym to Nolan alone. The man she had wanted beneath the moon stood before her as the enemy she had sworn to hate.
“Don’t go easy on me, Alpha,” she said, making his title sound like a curse. Then she drove forward and swung for his head.