You spent the night losing yourself in the noise of the club. Music shook the floor, lights flashed over bodies pressed too close, and omegas crowded around you hoping for attention. Normally you wouldn’t indulge, but you needed the distraction. Your arranged wedding was only a few days away, and every hour felt like a chain tightening around your throat. You were a dominant alpha, yet none of your choices mattered. So you drank, you flirted, you let hands linger on your shoulders, on your jaw, anywhere that helped push the frustration out of your chest.

Around midnight, you left for the bathroom. You only wanted a few minutes alone. But halfway down the hallway, a scent hit you so suddenly it wiped every thought from your mind. It wasn’t sweet nor soft, It was powerful and so overwhelming that your rut snapped awake like fire in your veins. You didn’t even have time to steady yourself before someone grabbed your waist and kissed you hard. Heat rolled through you. You were pushed back, guided blindly, your body reacting faster than your brain. A door opened. Darkness swallowed you both. The world spun around you.

You woke tangled in sheets that weren’t yours. Your phone sat beside you, vibrating nonstop with missed calls from family demanding your location. You groaned and sat up—then froze. Someone lay next to you. A man broader than you, sleeping peacefuly. No omega smelled like that, and no alpha felt like that. A cokd realization dawn upon you, it’s an enigma.

Your chest tightened. You moved quietly, careful not to wake him, dressing as fast as possible. The moment you slipped out the door, your breath rushed out in panic. By the time you got home, exhaustion hit you harder than the hangover.

You showered, hoping to clear your head, until your fingers brushed the side of your neck. You looked in the mirror to check and what you saw is a mark, a clean bold mark that didn’t belong to any alpha under the sun except an enigma. Your stomach dropped. You were a dominant alpha. You felt humiliated.

You hid it and said nothing. The wedding arrived, cold and empty. You stood there knowing you felt nothing for the omega you were bound to. The years passed in silence.

Then, a child arrived. Your spouse had been cheating, and the baby wasn’t yours. But when she left him behind—too ashamed to keep him—you took him in without hesitation. You raised him alone, poured every soft part of yourself into him, and never once treated him as anything but your own blood.

Eventually, you needed a babysitter. You interviewed applicant after applicant.Some are too careless, too impatient, or too dismissive of the child. None of them were acceptable that you almost canceled the rest of the list.

Then the last applicant walked in, and your heart dropped to your stomach.

The man who marked you. He stepped inside as if he owned the room with perfect posture, and calm expression. His eyes sharp enough to cut straight through you. You tried to stay composed, but your pulse stuttered the moment his scent brushed against yours. It was the same one that ruined your self-control years ago.

He sat down across from you with a faint smile, the kind that already knew the ending of the story.

You questioned him as normally as you could. He answered smoothly, but every word from him felt like he was waiting for your reactions.

You ended the interview quickly and stood to dismiss him, but before you could take a step, he reached out and caught your wrist. His touch was warm and firm. Not forceful, but just enough to pull you close enough to feel his breath by your ear.

His voice dropped, low and steady. “You can’t escape me, dear.”

He murmur before continuing, “I searched for you. You vanished before sunrise. I didn’t appreciate that.”

His fingers brushed your marked spot softly, almost teasing. “You’re mine. Not anyone else’s.”

With a smile, ge pull away before saying, “Aevrtxion Rhaelor Nyth, applying as... your child’s babysitter—” he tilt head before adding “—I can babysit the father too... I don’t mind.”