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I.O PIETRO
I.O PIETRO
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Novels by I.O PIETRO

HIS SURROGATE, HER ALPHA KING

HIS SURROGATE, HER ALPHA KING

I never wanted a man. I wanted a baby. After years of failed treatments, a cheating fiancé, and a body that kept betraying me, I made a decision. I would do this alone. No man, no heartbreak, no complications. Just me, a clinic, and a dream I refused to let die. Except the clinic made a mistake. One catastrophic, life-altering mistake. The sample I was inseminated with didn't belong to the anonymous donor I selected. It belonged to Dominic Sinclair, billionaire, ruthless businessman, and the most terrifyingly beautiful man I have ever seen in my life. And now I'm carrying his child. He finds out before I've even processed the shock myself. I expect lawyers. Paperwork. A cold corporate transaction. What I don't expect is him standing in my apartment doorway, silver eyes burning with something that looks nothing like indifference telling me that no child of his will be born outside his pack's territory. Pack. That's when I realized Dominic Sinclair isn't just any billionaire. He's a werewolf. Campaigning to be Alpha King of the entire North American packs. And I, a human, broke, still-heartbroken, carrying his heir, have just become the most dangerous variable in his entire political rise. He says he wants to protect me. His wolf says something else entirely. And the way he looks at me, like I'm something he wants to consume slowly, makes me terrified of one thing above all else. That I might let him.
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Chapter: Dara
I played the voicemail for Cael at six thirty in the morning, standing in the kitchen with my coat still on from the cold corridor and my hair not yet done and a cup of tea going untouched on the counter.He listened with his eyes on me instead of the phone, which I had learned was how he received serious information. Not the source. The person it affected.When it finished he said nothing for a moment.He knows about the hearing, I said. Which means either he has access to information inside Aldric's operation or someone got a message to him from outside. I picked up my tea. Either way he's more aware of the situation than I expected. He's not broken.No, Cael said. He's not.He told me not to come before the hearing. He said it's what Aldric wants. I held the mug in both hands and felt the warmth of it against my palms. He's been held for sixteen years and his first move was a tactical instruction.He's his daughter's father, Cael said.I looked at him.You do the same thing, he sai
Last Updated: 2026-04-27
Chapter: North
Cael was already in the corridor when I opened my door.He had his phone in his hand and Lena's update on the screen and the expression of a man who had read it thirty seconds before I had.You saw, I said.Yes.They're moving him north. Toward Portland. I kept my voice low. The house was asleep around us. If they're bringing him closer it's because Aldric wants him accessible. Either as a live threat he can produce at the hearing or as insurance against what I might do in that room.Or both, Cael said.Can Lena's contact follow the vehicles?They're already on it. Two cars on the highway, maintaining distance. He looked at his phone. The last update puts them on the 97 heading northwest.Northwest from Bend on the 97 came straight toward Portland. Two hours, maybe less depending on where they turned off.He's bringing my father into the city, I said.Or near it.I stood in the corridor in the dark and thought about the shape of what Aldric was doing. The photograph was taken at midni
Last Updated: 2026-04-25
Chapter: The photograph
I knocked on Cael's door at eleven forty-three at night.He opened it in thirty seconds, which meant he hadn't been asleep. He was still dressed, shirt untucked, phone in his hand, and the expression he had when he was mid-thought. He took one look at my face and stepped back without asking.I handed him my phone.He looked at the photograph. Something moved through his face that was not the usual controlled stillness, something with heat underneath it, brief and then gone, replaced by the particular focus he used when something required immediate clear thinking."Sit down," he said.I'm fine standing.Ella. He said it quietly. Sit down.I sat on the edge of the chair near the window and held my own hands in my lap because they were trying to shake again and I was not going to let them.He sat across from me and looked at the photo again.The jaw, I said. The way he holds his hands. I don't have memories of him exactly, I was four, but I have a photograph my mother kept in a box under
Last Updated: 2026-04-25
Chapter: Closer
You pulled again, Vera said.I know. It happened before I caught it.Tell me what triggered it.I opened my eyes. The library was warm, fire going, Cael in the chair across from me with his forearms resting on his knees, watching me with the focused patience he brought to these sessions. I had been finding the thread faster each time, and losing control of it faster too.I was holding it steady, I said. And then something shifted in it. Like a pulse. I reached for it before I thought about it.Vera looked at Cael. What were you thinking about when it shifted?He was quiet for a moment. Bend.Vera wrote something. Strong emotional state in the bond-holder translates through the thread to the carrier. At this stage of training, that can trigger a reflexive reach. She looked at me. Your instinct is to respond to distress in the bond. That's consistent with the bloodline function. It's also the most dangerous tendency to leave unmanaged.Because an unmanaged response to distress could act
Last Updated: 2026-04-22
Chapter: Bend
We can't go before the hearing, l Cael said.I know that, I said.Ella.I know, Cael. I set my phone down on the table and pressed both palms flat against the surface and breathed. I'm not suggesting we go today. I'm saying we know where he might be and that changes the shape of everything after the hearing.He watched me for a moment and then pulled out the chair beside me and sat. Not across, beside, which was different and I registered it without commenting.Tell me what you're thinking, he said.I'm thinking that if my father is in Bend and the hearing goes the way we need it to go, Aldric loses his political base. His packs dissolve from him. His ability to maintain a secure facility with loyal staff disappears. I looked at Cael. Which means after the hearing, assuming it goes our way, whatever infrastructure he's been using to hold my father starts to collapse. We have a window. A short one.And if we move on the Bend property before the hearing, we tip him off and he moves your
Last Updated: 2026-04-22
Chapter: Piper
"She can't stay at her building," I said. And the daughter needs to be pulled from school before the end of first period.Cael was back in the kitchen. He had come in the moment he heard my voice change, which I was starting to understand was something he did, tracked the temperature of a room from a distance and arrived before being called.Where's the school? he asked.I relayed the question to Piper, still on the line. She gave me the name, a primary school twelve minutes from her apartment. Cael was already texting before I finished saying it.I have someone six minutes from the school, he said. Female. She'll identify herself to the office as a family emergency contact. What's the daughter's name?"Piper," I said into the phone. Your daughter's name."Clara," she said. Her voice had steadied slightly, the way people do when they are given something practical to hold onto. She's eight.I told Cael. He relayed it. Then he looked at me. What about Cross herself?"Piper," I said into
Last Updated: 2026-04-05
PREGNANT WITH THE ALPHA'S UNWANTED HEIR

PREGNANT WITH THE ALPHA'S UNWANTED HEIR

I was born cursed. A Volana wolf, the rarest, most hunted bloodline in existence. My blood grants eternal life, which means I've spent every day since I was ten locked away by the one man who was supposed to protect me. My father didn't raise a daughter. He raised a weapon. He killed my wolf, stole my wolf, and when I had nothing left to give, he sold me. Not to a mate. To a contract. Bastien Voss Rourke doesn't do love. The most feared Alpha billionaire in the Northern Territories does deals. Clean. Calculated. Final. Three years as his contract mate in exchange for my freedom when the contract expires. No feelings. No bond. No future. I told myself I could survive it. I was wrong. Because somewhere between his cold commands and the rare, unguarded moments he forgot to be ruthless, I fell. Hard. Stupidly. Completely. Now the contract is ending. I'm standing in his penthouse with a pregnancy test in my hand and a smile I can't contain — and he's about to sign the rejection papers. He doesn't want me. He never did. But the heir growing inside me? That belongs to both of us. And when the truth about my blood, my lineage, and what I really am detonates across the pack world — Bastien will realize he didn't just reject a contract mate. He rejected his true fated bond. And some mistakes cannot be undone with paperwork.
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Chapter: The anchor holds
Soren's voice comes through the door before he does. "The building is locked. Every exit is covered. Nadia is not inside."Bastien does not relax. "Not inside yet.""Marta," I say. "Where is she now?"A pause, keys somewhere on her end. "Her last registered location was a clinic two towns north, forty minutes ago. I am pulling current transit records.""Forty minutes is nothing," Bastien says."Forty minutes is enough for us to be ready instead of surprised," I say, and I hear how steady my own voice sounds, which surprises me more than it should. River is warm against my chest, gold eyes open, watching the ceiling the way she always watches things no one else can see.Wolfe's voice comes through the phone, quieter than before. "If I can help, I want to. Whatever this costs me with my own people.""Then tell us what she would need to do it," Bastien says. "If Nadia's plan requires separating Lena from River convincingly enough for the field to register it as loss, what would that look
Last Updated: 2026-07-14
Chapter: Eleven months
"Marta," Bastien says. "Identify the fourth request. Now. Whatever resources you need, use them.""I am already working on it," Marta says. "Eleven months places the request before River's birth, before her existence was public, which narrows the field of who could have known to ask. I need time I do not currently have.""We do not have time either," I say.Bastien's hand is still around mine, tight enough that I can feel his pulse through it, faster than I have felt it in a long while."Wolfe," he says. "You have read further into this than any of us. If someone wanted to remove an anchor, deliberately, without triggering an immediate response from the pack around her, how would they do it."Wolfe is quiet for a moment. "The account I found does not detail methods. But logically, an anchor removal would not need to be violent to be effective. It would only need to be permanent, or perceived as permanent by the child's field. Distance. Estrangement. A convincing severing of the bond,
Last Updated: 2026-07-14
Chapter: The mechanism
Nobody answers Bastien's question. It sits in the room the way certain things sit, too heavy to pick up right away."We need Wolfe," I say. "Not Marta's guesses about Wolfe. Wolfe himself, in front of us, answering directly.""He signed an agreement to stay away," Soren says."Then we invite him," Bastien says. "The agreement does not prohibit that."Marta clears her throat on the line. "I would advise caution. If my reading on his motives is wrong, bringing him into direct contact with River again is a risk we cannot undo.""If your reading is right," I say, "then he is the only person alive who knows what we need to know. We cannot protect her from a mechanism none of us understand."Bastien is already moving toward the desk, already reaching for his phone. "I will call him myself. Not through an intermediary. He answers to me directly or he does not answer at all.""Bastien," I say.He looks at me."If he says yes," I say, "we do this on our terms. Neutral ground. Ivy and Soren pre
Last Updated: 2026-07-14
Chapter: What the agreement does not says
River does not cry.She goes still, and the stillness is worse than crying. Her gold eyes are fixed on the ceiling and her small body has gone rigid in the bassinet, and for three full seconds nobody in the library moves either."Lena," Bastien says.I am already crossing the room. I lift her out of the bassinet and she is warm and stiff in my arms, not seizing, not distressed in any way I recognize, just utterly still, and her field is doing something I have never felt it do before. It is not reaching outward the way it always reaches. It is pulled in tight, close to her body, like a hand closing around something it does not want to drop."What is she doing," Soren says."I do not know," I say."Marta," Bastien says into the phone. "Say the name again.""Wolfe," Marta says. "Cassian Wolfe."River's field pulls tighter. I feel it against my own, a pressure that is almost physical, and I understand with a certainty that has no evidence behind it and does not need any that she recognize
Last Updated: 2026-07-14
Chapter: What Gregor knew
"Eight years ago," Bastien says.He says it the way he says things that are restructuring something significant, quietly, with the specific stillness of a man who is recalculating a position he thought he understood.Marta is still on the line."The request was denied," she says. "The archivist at the time did not grant access to founding-period documents for individuals without direct lineage connection to the relevant pack. Your father has no Iron Fang lineage. His request was refused on those grounds." A pause. "But the request itself tells us he was looking. Eight years ago he was searching specifically for information about gold-eyed children in the Iron Fang founding period.""How did he know to look," I say."That is the question I have been sitting with since I identified the request two months ago," Marta says. "The Founder's Mark is not widely documented. The Iron Fang founding texts are not public documents. The council parallel record is restricted. For your father to have
Last Updated: 2026-07-14
Chapter: Marta speaks
"I have been waiting for you to work it out," Marta says.She says it before I have said a word, which tells me she knew the call was coming and has been sitting with her phone in her hand for some amount of time, which is consistent with everything I know about how Marta operates, thirty years of watching and waiting and being precisely where she needs to be when the moment requires it."You submitted the archive request," I say."Six months ago," she says. "When Nadia's quarterly report to the inter-pack medical registry noted an active Volana wolf in her second pregnancy with an Iron Fang Alpha. The report was anonymized but the field signature is distinctive and I have known your field since your emergence." A pause. "I submitted the request the same week.""You read the council parallel record," I say."I read Sorel's account," she says. "The full version, which the council archivist was able to provide because my credentials as the Crest Pack's heritage representative are suffic
Last Updated: 2026-07-13
SEVEN YEARS, ONE CROWN

SEVEN YEARS, ONE CROWN

Seven years. No mark. No title. No truth. I gave Damon Voss everything and he gave me a lie so carefully built I almost died inside it. Then one letter changed everything. I am not his patient wife. I am not his Luna in waiting. I am the long-missing Lycan Princess, heir to a throne, and mother to a son I was told did not survive. He took everything from me. My identity. My child. My seven years. Now I have fifteen days, one dangerous alliance, and a crown with my name on it. Damon should have made sure I never found out. He did not.
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Chapter: The boy with my eyes
"His name is Finn," Caden said. He is four years old. He has been with a family in the Greywood territory since three weeks after he was born.I sat down.Not because I chose to. My legs made the decision without asking me.Four years old. The same age as Luca. Which meant that while I was raising a child that was not mine, my actual son was growing up in a house with strangers who knew exactly who he belonged to and said nothing.Who placed him there, I said.Elder Theron.I looked up.Caden was watching me with that steady, careful attention he gave everything. Not cold. Just controlled, the way a person gets controlled when they have learned that showing too much too fast costs them.Theron knew who I was, I said.He has known since before you were born. He served your father's council. When King Aldric died and the bloodline was hidden for your protection, Theron was one of three people who knew where you were placed. Caden pulled a folder from the desk drawer and set it in front
Last Updated: 2026-04-29
Chapter: Dated three days ago
I brought the filing receipt to Caden's study at eleven o'clock at night.I did not knock softly. I knocked the way you knock when you are not asking permission.He opened the door himself. No jacket, shirt collar open, a glass of something dark in his hand. He looked at me and then at the paper in my hand and something behind his eyes said he had been expecting this visit.That made it worse.I held the receipt up. Explain this.He stepped back to let me in. I walked past him and turned around in the middle of the room and waited.He closed the door. Set his glass down. Looked at the paper without taking it.The council filing for your lineage claim, he said.Dated three days ago, I said. My name. My bloodline details. My father's seal reference. All of it, filed and stamped before I ever walked through your gate. I let the paper drop to his desk. I came to you this morning. I came to you like it was my idea. Like I was the one making a move. And you already had this sitting in a roo
Last Updated: 2026-04-29
Chapter: The man who already knew
Caden Rhys was not what I expected.I do not know what I expected exactly. Someone louder, maybe. Someone who filled a room with noise the way powerful men usually do, who needed you to feel their size before they spoke.He was sitting behind a large desk when the guard brought me in, and he did not stand up. He just looked at me.Grey eyes. Still. The kind of still that is not passive but is actually the opposite of passive. The kind that means he had already assessed everything about me before I crossed the threshold and was simply waiting to see if I would confirm what he already thought.He was younger than his reputation made him sound. Early thirties. Dark hair, jaw set, shoulders relaxed in the way that only people who are never genuinely threatened manage to be relaxed.I did not let myself be impressed.I walked to the chair across from his desk and sat down without being invited.One corner of his mouth moved. Not quite a smile.Sera Calloway, he said.You already know who I
Last Updated: 2026-04-29
Chapter: The only name worth calling
"Tell me you did not just leave," Mira said.I left.Silence on the line. Then a sharp breath. Sera.I need you to meet me outside the east gate. Bring my bag. You know the one.She did not ask questions. That was the thing about Mira. Seven years of watching me live inside that house and she had been packed and ready before I ever was.I hung up and kept walking.The pack grounds were quiet at that hour. A few wolves doing perimeter checks in the distance. No one stopped me. No one ever paid that much attention to me inside Voss territory, which was ironic, because I had kept more of this pack running than Damon ever acknowledged.I did not look back at the house.My wolf was fully awake now and she did not want to look back either.Mira was already at the gate when I got there. She had my black duffel over one shoulder and her jaw tight and her eyes moving over my face the way they did when she was reading damage.How bad, she said.Celeste, I said.Her mouth opened. Closed.Years,
Last Updated: 2026-04-29
Chapter: Seven years of nothing
You are the long-missing Lycan Princess. Daughter of the late King Aldric. Rightful heir to the Lycan throne.I read the line three times.Then I read it again.The letter was printed on heavy cream paper with the royal council's seal pressed into the top corner. Official. Real. Not a mistake.My name is Sera Calloway. I have been married to Alpha Damon Voss for seven years. I manage his household, attend his functions, raise his son, and smile at his pack members like I belong here.I have never been made Luna.I always told myself it was coming. That the mark was coming. That Damon was simply cautious, that the council was difficult, that the timing was never right.The letter said something different.It said I was never just a pack wife waiting for her turn. It said my blood was older than this house, older than Damon's title, older than anything he had ever built. It said the Lycan King election closes in fifteen days and as the only surviving heir of King Aldric, I had the right
Last Updated: 2026-04-29
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