Promised to the Wrong Alpha
Louisa Forge didn’t choose this.
She was handed over like a bargaining chip — marked by an Alpha she despises, installed in a pack house that doesn’t want her, bound to a man who locks her in her room and calls it mercy. Kaelen is everything a wolf shouldn’t be: cruel, reckless, and hungry for a power he hasn’t earned.
But the pack house has another occupant.
Julian — former Alpha, widower, a man who has been quietly starving himself to death since the loss of his mate — is supposed to be irrelevant. A ghost in the east wing. Instead he’s the one who checks on her in the night, who brings her sedatives for the pain, who laughs with her over terrible soup until the whole dining room forgets to be miserable.
He’s also the one who tells her, very clearly, that what happened between them during her heat meant nothing.
He’s lying. They both know it.
Caught between a mate bond she never consented to and a connection she can’t name, Louisa is doing what she does best — surviving. She’s building alliances in quiet corners, winning loyalty one small kindness at a time, and carrying a secret that could burn everything to the ground.
Because the heir Kaelen is so desperate to claim?
It isn’t his.
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Chapter: EpilogueJulian“I f.ucking hate you, Julian McKnight!”I ducked just in time as a book on pregnancy sailed past my ear and down the hallway. Louisa’s aim was deadly. Sweat was popping out along my upper lip, and I watched helplessly, unable to comfort my laboring mate. She was waddling up and down the hallway in her bare feet, one of my old t-shirts stretched over her gorgeous round belly, and her wild hair piled up on top of her head. She had never looked more beautiful.Or more dangerous.“Now, now,” Elara rubbed her sister’s back and shot me a merciless grin. “Let’s think positive thoughts, right? We’re having a baby.”“Ow!” Louisa grunted and stopped her waddle to hold her belly. “I’m having a baby, I don’t know what the hell the rest of you are doing here!” She growled when she could speak again.“Emotional support!” Mandi piped up. She was sitting i
Last Updated: 2026-04-26
Chapter: Chapter Seventy-Nine: The Weaver's DesignLouisaI never saw it coming.My sweet, shy, sheltered baby sister stepped out onto that platform as a strong, confident young woman — and as I sat with my father on one side and Julian on the other, I could suddenly see how all the intricate pieces had been arranged by something far larger and more patient than any of us.Elara needed me to leave her behind so she could find her own voice. I needed to enter the contracted mating with Kaelen in order to find Julian. And Mandi needed me to send her to Elara. All of it — every terrible, chaotic, painful piece of it — had been in service of something that turned out to be exactly right.Because in the end, we all had a choice. And we each made ours.The crusty old Silvercrest council had tried to raise a fuss, of course. They had even attempted to rally the military into a revolt, but without my father’s backing they couldn’t scrape together more than a handful of
Last Updated: 2026-04-24
Chapter: Chapter Seventy-Eight: The New AlphasLouisaFootsteps thundered toward the mill, and ten of my father’s guards came running in. Someone hit the lights, and the scene was suddenly fully illuminated under flickering fluorescents — just in time for Kaelen’s head to slide backward off his neck, opening his throat like a book. The weight of it threw his whole body off balance, and he toppled over backwards onto the cement floor.“Are you okay, Miss Louisa?” one of the soldiers asked.“I’m fine.” I looked around at their faces, recognizing them. “Why are you here?”“Your father sent us to keep an eye on Kaelen.” He cast a look of undisguised disgust at the body bleeding out across the floor. “Alpha Forge said we were to protect you and Elara, come what may.”“Well, you are a little late for that!” I growled — but somewhere underneath the frustration, something small and warm stirred
Last Updated: 2026-04-23
Chapter: Chapter Seventy-Seven: The Scrimtana's JusticeChapter 77: The Scrimtana’s JusticeKaelenI wasn’t counting on my mate stabbing me in the goddamn chest.It hurt like a motherfker, and the burning alone nearly dropped me, but somehow the bch had managed to slide the blade between my ribs without finding my heart. Pretty sure she punctured my lung. But she had stupidly forgotten that we were a marked pair, and she was already on her knees, gasping and crying.I’d been willing to make her my queen. After this, I’d keep her on her knees for the rest of her life — however long that turned out to be. Louisa was pulling her into her arms, and it was almost too easy to level the pistol at both of them. I paused for a moment, genuinely considering whether I could place the shot precisely enough t
Last Updated: 2026-04-22
Chapter: Chapter Seventy-Six: The Poisoned HeartMandi“You know this is a setup, right? He only came and said all that to make you follow him.” I was jogging to keep up with Elara as she strode down the hallway, her steps long and deliberate. I didn’t know where she was headed until she turned down the corridor toward the gym.Elara didn’t stop until she reached the heavy door. She turned with her hand on the handle and looked back at me. “Yeah, I know.”“But you’re going anyway?”“Well, yeah.” She flashed me that c.ocky grin before she pushed the door open and hit the lights.She was so beautiful in her confidence. It also terrified me. Kaelen might be her fated mate, but I had known him for most of my life. I knew exactly what a sick f**k he was, and how cruel he could be when he felt like it. My blood ran hot and cold at the same time — desire and dread, right next to each other. I loved Elara. The thought of her g
Last Updated: 2026-04-21
Chapter: Seventy Five: The Bait and the TrapKaelenElara thought she had me by the short hairs. She had absolutely no idea what I was capable of.I shrugged my jacket over my new fatigues and went to her room. Even before I reached the white door I could hear voices on the other side. Mandi was in there. I couldn’t help but smile.It just kept getting better.I knocked firmly. A moment later Elara yanked the door open, her lovely face flushed with annoyance. One look at her and I felt desire coil deep in my gut.“What do you want now?” she snapped.I looked past her into the pink and white bedroom. Mandi was on the bed, leaning against the headboard. If it hadn’t been for her scent, I might have doubted it was the same person I had known almost my entire life. She had cut her hair short, and she was wearing black leather shorts and a tight halter top. Surprisingly sexy. The Mandi I remembered would never have dressed that way. More than the clothes, though
Last Updated: 2026-04-20
Chapter: Chapter Thirty-ThreeHonor lay perfectly still on the mattress and listened to the Blazer's engine fade away down the track. She waited until she couldn't hear it at all. Then she waited another full minute, just to be sure.Then she sat up and went to work.She looked down at her bound wrists and shook her head. What kind of idiot kidnapper tied his prisoner's hands in front? Even she knew you were supposed to tie them behind the back, and she'd never committed a crime in her life. She'd seen it in about a hundred movies. Apparently Carl Duprey had not.She raised her hands to her mouth and started on the knots with her teeth. But the silver cord was maddening — thin as kite string and somehow strong as steel, and the knots had been yanked so tight they'd fused into hard little lumps. She worried at them until her jaw ached. She could probably pick them loose eventually, if she had all day.She didn't have all day. She had however long it took Duprey to drive to whatever passed for a store out here and c
Last Updated: 2026-10-22
Chapter: Chapter Thirty-TwoHonor sprinted through the dream toward the clearing."Grandmother!" Her voice rang out across the empty wood. "Grandmother!"Something had changed. Winter had come to Vermont while she was away. The grass of the clearing was stiff and white with frost and crunched beneath her bare feet, and the birches stood stripped of every leaf, pale and bony against a grey sky like a ring of skeletons keeping watch. Her breath smoked in the air."Gabriel!" She spun in a circle, searching the tree line. Nothing. Nobody. "Gabriel!""I'm here, my child."Her grandmother came slowly out of the trees, bundled in heavy furs, her white hair tucked under a hood, her breath rising in soft white puffs. She looked smaller than she had before. Frailer. But she opened her arms, and Honor ran straight into them and held on tight.She smelled of clean, cold air and woodsmoke. Of every good winter morning Honor had ever spent alone in the forest. For a moment Honor just stood there with her face pressed into the
Last Updated: 2026-10-14
Chapter: Chapter Thirty-OneDuprey grinned at her like the Cheshire cat, holding the coil of silver cord up between his gloved hands so she could see it.Honor gave him a small, syrupy-sweet smile and held her wrists out in front of her, side by side, like a child offering her hands to be washed.He grabbed them roughly and wound the cord around them, tight and tighter, cinching each loop until it bit. Then he stepped back and waited, watching her face with avid interest for the moment the silver started to burn.And waited.Nothing happened.His mouth slowly fell open beneath his mustache. The cord lay against her skin without so much as reddening it. No blistering, no smoke, no smell of scorched flesh. Not even a pink mark on her honey-gold wrists. He leaned in, frowning, and put his nose to the side of her neck and sniffed hard. Her scent was faint — fainter than any wolf's he'd ever smelled — but it was there. She was a were. She had to be a were. So why wasn't the silver touching her?Honor lifted her bound
Last Updated: 2026-10-14
Chapter: Chapter ThirtyGabriel paced the length of the office and back again, glass crunching under his boots with every turn. He dragged his hands through his hair for what had to be the hundredth time, until it stood up in wild, ragged spikes and he looked every inch the madman he was very close to becoming."I can't believe I just sat there." His voice was raw. "I sat there on the floor and I let her walk out that door with him. I should have done something. I should have killed that son of a bitch where he stood." He spun on his heel and paced back. "I'm a trained assassin. Ten years. Ten years of doing this for a living, and I let some puffed-up greenhorn with a push-broom mustache walk off with my mate."Elena sat in the desk chair, absently rubbing at the gauze wrapped around her wrists. Duprey's silver cord had left all three of them with raw, angry burns where it had bitten into their skin, and they would take days to heal properly. But she counted herself lucky. A few burns were nothing. They coul
Last Updated: 2026-10-14
Chapter: Chapter Twenty-Nine"We need to get out of here," Gabriel said urgently, struggling to get his feet under him with Honor's dead weight in his arms.He was too late.The smell hit him first — rank and sour, unmistakable. Rogue. A wolf with no pack and no rules, the stink of it rolling ahead of him up the stairwell. Then the man himself appeared in the shattered doorway and stepped through it like he owned the place, a rifle cradled easily in his arms."Well, damn." He looked around the wrecked office, at the glass and the blood and the overturned chair, and spat on the floor. "That was altogether too easy. The great Gabriel Shepherd has fallen."He was not an impressive man to look at. Medium height, barrel-chested, with a ridiculous bushy mustache that sat beneath his oversized nose like a push broom someone had glued there. But he held the rifle with the casual ease of someone who'd used one many times, and his eyes were small and bright and pleased with themselves.Jasmin moved without a word. Naked as
Last Updated: 2026-10-14
Chapter: Chapter Twenty-EightGabriel was at his computer in the office above the restaurant, composing an encrypted email to an old friend from King's. He'd been at it for hours — reaching out to every contact he'd made in ten years of work, calling in every favor he was owed, looking for any whisper about the rogue who had picked up the new contract on Honor. Somebody knew something. Somebody always did.He felt a new urgency now, sharper than before. He was tired of waiting. Tired of living with one eye on the door. He wanted this finished so he could start the life he'd spent a decade believing he would never have. He would take the Alpha's mantle from his father, the way he'd always been meant to — but only with Honor at his side as his Luna, and only once she was safe.He hadn't even introduced her to the pack yet. That bothered him more than he'd expected. Two hundred people who would love her the moment they met her, and she'd spent her first weeks here hiding in his family's kitchen and his family's woods
Last Updated: 2026-10-14
Chapter: Chapter Fifty-Two: Natural PhenomenonSarahI couldn’t hide in the bedroom forever.I found my clothes, dressed carefully, and stood in front of the small mirror on the back of the door. The mark on my shoulder was visible above the neckline of my shirt — a small, precise wound, the bruise already fading at the edges the way wolf wounds did. But the scar would last forever. I pulled my collar aside and looked at it for a moment.Then I left it exactly as it was and went to face the kitchen.All three were at the table. Kevin was eating porridge with focused efficiency, going through it like he had somewhere to be. Malachi had his hands around his coffee mug and was looking out the window with an expression of elaborate innocence. Jareth also gripped a coffee cup, but I noticed he wasn’t drinking it. It looked extra black this morning.My heart warmed when I looked at them, and I thought in some strange way the four of us had become a family.I hadn’t had a real family since my mother died.Jareth looked up as I entered th
Last Updated: 2026-04-08
Chapter: Chapter Fifty-One: Being SensibleSarahI woke before dawn.For a moment I lay still, orienting myself. The room was the same room it always was — the crack in the ceiling, the thin curtain moving in the summer air, the familiar smell of the cottage. But the arm across my waist was not familiar, and the warm solidity of the body behind me was not familiar, and the tender ache in my shoulder where he had—I reached up and touched it. The mark. Slightly raised, already healing the way wolf wounds did, but unmistakably there.I lay still and thought about what I had done.No. That wasn’t right. I thought about what we had done. I had not been a passive participant by any measure and the man currently asleep behind me knew that better than anyone. I pulled his head down. I made the choice with full knowledge of what it meant.I also thought about the fact that Jasper and I had been together for months, doing the deed on a regular basis, but he had never marked me. He always had an excuse. Wait for the ceremony, wait until
Last Updated: 2026-04-08
Chapter: Chapter Fifty: MineJarethI found Kevin in the barn with Malachi, the two of them engaged in what appeared to be a serious strategic discussion about the best placement of a chicken roost they were building out of some slender pine boughs. Kevin was holding the hammer and giving directions while Malachi listened with the gravity they apparently deserved.“Keep Kevin with you tonight,” I told Malachi.He looked at me. One look, brief, amused, and entirely too perceptive. “Sure,” he said, and went back to the chicken roost discussion without another word.I walked back to the cottage.The kitchen was clean, the dinner things washed and put away, the beans that Sarah and Malachi had shelled were now simmering on the back of the stove. It was remarkable how she had somehow turned the ramshackle cottage into a proper home.No light showed under Sarah’s door.I stood outside the closed door for a moment.Fifteen years of discipline. The mission first, always the mission. No time to worry about finding a mate
Last Updated: 2026-03-26
Chapter: Chapter Forty-Nine: UnbelievableSarahMalachi had been helping me shell beans for the better part of an hour. He sat with his elbows propped on the table, splitting the pods with his thumb nails like he was the most domestic man in the world.But deep down I knew there wasn’t a domesticated bone in his body.I hadn’t asked for his help.. I had come in from the garden with a full basket and he had simply sat down across from me and started helping, without asking, without ceremony.The nice thing about Malachi - he was easy company. No undercurrents, no careful weight to every word. He just talked. He had opinions about everything and a dry humor that made it hard not to smile and he asked questions like he actually wanted the answers.“Those chickens,” he said. “I heard Jareth brought them home for supper.”“That’s true,” I said.“And yet here they are, still roosting on my cot.”“They lay eggs,” I pointed out. “And they have personalities.”He looked at me. “I’m aware,” he said, with feeling. “The fat one likes to
Last Updated: 2026-03-26
Chapter: Chapter Forty-Eight: A Different StoryJarethThe drop point was a hollow in the base of a split oak half a mile north of the cottage, on the edge of Broken Arrow territory where the tree line thinned and the ground rose toward the mountains. I had used it twice before—once to send a report out, once to receive a supply package that Malachi had retrieved before Sarah was awake. This time I went myself.The package was there. Small, wrapped in oilcloth, wedged into the hollow with the particular neatness that was Brennan’s signature. I checked the seal before I opened it. The seal was intact.I tucked it inside my jacket and walked back.The cottage felt different when I came through the door. It took me a moment to identify why. Sarah was at the tavern, Kevin was with her, and Malachi was watching them both. The cottage was simply empty. I had lived alone my whole life and had never once noticed the quality of an empty room. I noticed it now. The kitchen still smelled of the breakfast she had made—eggs and fried potato and
Last Updated: 2026-03-17
Chapter: Chapter Forty-Seven: The LetterSarahJareth had been up before me, which wasn’t unusual. What was unusual was that he was already deep in quiet conversation with Malachi at the kitchen table when I came out, a map spread between them that they folded away with practiced casualness the moment I appeared.I made coffee for everyone without being asked, because it was something to do with my hands while I absorbed the fact that Malachi seemed to be a new fixture in our house.Kevin appeared in the doorway a few minutes later, hair disordered from sleep, and climbed into his chair with the focused purposefulness of a child who had learned that breakfast didn’t make itself. I scrambled eggs and fried the leftover potato from last night and cut bread and set it all on the table and the four of us ate together in the particular comfortable quiet that had become the shape of mornings in the cottage.After breakfast Jareth and Malachi took their coffee outside. I washed the dishes and swept the kitchen floor and went to che
Last Updated: 2026-03-17
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