CLAIMED BY THE ENEMY ALPHA

The ballroom was too bright, too loud to be perfect.Katya stood at the edge of the crowd, her fingers gripping the silver fabric of her gown. The gown hugged her waist so tight she could barely breathe. She told herself it was the gown. Not the nerves twisting in her stomach like snakes.Around her, couples spun across the polished floor. Laughter echoed off the high ceilings. Ice sculptures shaped like wolves glittered under the crystal chandeliers, slowly melting in the warmth of too many bodies pressed together. The air smelled like pine branches and expensive wine, mixed with something else, something wild that human guests would never notice. Hundreds of them, dressed in silk and diamonds, pretending to be civilized.Katya scanned the crowd again, searching for one face. Aleksei. Her fiance. The man who was supposed to mark her tonight in front of everyone.But he wasn't here.Her heart hammered against her ribs. She smoothed her hands down the front of her dress, trying to calm

Pain woke her,Katya opened her eyes to grey dawn light filtering through broken windows. Her head pounded like someone was hammering nails into her skull. Her mouth tasted like metal and something bitter she couldn't name.Everything hurts.She tried to sit up and gasped. Her body ached in places she'd never felt before deep, intimate places that made her freeze in confusion and growing horror.Where was she?The bell tower. She was still in the bell tower.Katya pushed herself up slowly, her arms shaking. A man's coat slid off her shoulders heavy, black, smelling like pine and smoke and something else. Something masculine and familiar that made her stomach twist.She looked down at herself.Her silver dress was torn. The delicate fabric ripped along the side seam, hanging loose around her waist. Her stockings were gone. Her shoes were somewhere on the floor.And there was blood.Dark red stains on her inner thighs, dried and flaking.Katya's breath caught in her throat. Her hands tre

Katya stared at the pregnancy test in her shaking hand.Two pink lines,No….That couldn't be right.She dropped it in the sink and ripped open another box with trembling fingers. Her hands were so unsteady she almost dropped the second test. She forced herself to breathe, to follow the instructions, to wait the longest three minutes of her life.Two pink lines."No," she whispered to the empty bathroom. "No, no, no."She took a third test. Then a fourth. All the same.Positive. Positive. Positive. *Positive.*Katya's legs gave out. She sank to the cold tile floor, her back against the bathtub, staring at the row of tests lined up on the counter. All of them showing the same damning result.She was pregnant,Her stomach churned .She barely made it to the toilet before she threw up a lot, heaving retches that left her gasping and sweating. When there was nothing left, she slumped against the wall, her whole body shaking.This couldn't be happening.Six weeks. It had been six weeks since t

Seven months pregnant and Katya's lower back had been screaming since Tuesday.She shifted in her office chair, pressing one hand against the curve of her spine, and kept drawing with the other. The theater proposal was due Monday. Her lines were getting messier as the evening wore on, the pencil not quite doing what her brain told it to, but she didn't stop. Stopping felt like losing.Outside the office window, St. Krest was grey and frozen. Snow on the pavement. A tram grinding past on the tracks. The city had no idea what it was hosting one very stubborn, very tired, very pregnant wolf who had no business still being at work at nine in the evening."Go home, Morozova."Pavel's voice from the doorway. He had his coat on, keys in hand, already done for the night."Five more minutes," she said."You said that an hour ago." He looked at the scattered blueprints and the cold cup of tea at her elbow and made the face he always made when she pushed too hard — somewhere between annoyed and

Eight months and Katya had a system.Six-fifteen: wake up before the boys, shower in under four minutes, coffee on. Six-thirty: get two extremely opinionated toddlers dressed — Niko fought every item of clothing like it had personally wronged him; Ivan cooperated but required narration of every step or he'd get distracted and wander off. Seven: drop them at Yaroslava's, the small daycare two blocks from the office where the woman in charge had the calming authority of someone who had clearly survived much worse than two wolf-blooded four-year-olds. Seven-twenty: at her desk. Work until six. Pick up the boys. Feed them. Bath. Bed.Then work again from nine until she couldn't see straight.She ran this schedule like a machine. It was the only way everything got done.Niko was fearless and physical, throwing himself off every surface he could climb, landing on his feet every time with a huge grin, then immediately looking for something higher. Yaroslava said he'd already started organizi