Caged By The Cruel Alpha

“Get up, runt. Now.”

The boot connected with Wren’s ribs before she could move. Pain exploded through her side, sharp and familiar, and she bit down on her tongue hard enough to taste copper. She didn’t cry out. She’d learned that lesson years ago—tears only made them hit harder.

“I said get up.”

Wren pushed herself off the cold stone floor, keeping her eyes down as Mara, the head omega, loomed over her. The older woman’s lip curled in disgust. “Alpha Kaine wants every female in the great hall. Every female. Even worthless half-breeds like you.”

Wren’s hands were still raw from scrubbing the kennels, her knees bruised from six hours on stone. But she nodded, tucking a strand of dark hair behind her ear. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Clean yourself up. You smell like dog shit.” Mara’s nose wrinkled. “Not that it matters. No wolf would look twice at something like you.”

She swept out, leaving Wren alone in the servants’ quarters—a windowless room barely larger than a closet, with a thin mat on the floor and nothing else. Home, for the past five years. Prison, for every single day of it.

Wren allowed herself three seconds to press her hand against her throbbing ribs. Nothing broken. Probably. She’d had enough broken bones to know the difference between bruised and fractured, and this was just bruised. She’d survive.

Three more weeks, she reminded herself, the same words she’d been chanting for months. Three more weeks until the supply run. Three more weeks until I’m gone.

She’d been planning her escape for two years. Stealing coins when she could—a penny here, a dropped quarter there, nothing anyone would notice. Memorizing the guard rotations. Learning which wolves drank too much on which nights. The supply run to the human town happened once a month, and the drivers always stopped at the same bar for exactly two hours. That was her window. That was her freedom.

She just had to survive three more weeks.

Wren splashed water on her face from the cracked basin in the corner and changed into her least-stained dress—a grey thing that hung off her thin frame like a sack. She didn’t own a mirror, which was probably a mercy. She knew what she looked like: too thin, too pale, with shadows under her eyes that never faded and a permanent hunch in her shoulders. Five years of surviving on scraps and sleeping on stone had carved away anything soft she’d once had.

Good. Let them see nothing when they looked at her. Let them see a ghost.

The great hall was already packed when she slipped through the servants’ entrance. Wren pressed herself against the back wall, making herself as small as possible while she scanned the room. Every unmated female in the pack had been gathered—some dressed in their finest silks, others in simple cotton, all of them buzzing with nervous energy.

“Did you hear?” a young omega whispered to her friend. “Alpha Cain Voss is coming. He’s choosing a tribute bride.”

The other girl went pale. “The Butcher of Black Hollow? That Cain Voss?”

“Is there another one?”

Wren’s blood chilled. She’d heard stories about Alpha Cain Voss—everyone had. They said he’d killed his first man at twelve. That he’d taken his pack from his father by ripping out his throat. That he collected the teeth of his enemies and wore them on a necklace. That he’d never lost a battle, never shown mercy, never let anyone who crossed him live to tell the tale.

They said a lot of things about Cain Voss. All of them terrifying.

“Why would he come here?” someone else muttered. “The Blood Moon Pack isn’t exactly—”

“Shut up,” another voice hissed. “Alpha Kaine is looking.”

Silence fell over the room like a blade. Alpha Kaine stood on the raised platform at the front of the hall, his cold eyes sweeping over the gathered females like a farmer inspecting livestock. He was a large man, grey-streaked and hard-faced, with a cruelty that had only sharpened with age.

Wren hated him. She hated him with every fiber of her being. But she kept her eyes down and her face blank, because Kaine was not the wolf who had killed her family.

That wolf was dead. She’d watched him die six months after the massacre, killed in a border skirmish. It should have given her closure. Instead, it had left her with a rage that had nowhere to go—a fire burning in her chest with no target, no outlet, no release.

“Alpha Voss has honored us with a visit,” Kaine announced, his voice booming through the hall. “He seeks a tribute bride—a female to strengthen the alliance between our packs. You will show him respect. You will show him obedience. And whoever he chooses will accept her duty with grace.”

Duty. Wren almost laughed. As if any of these women had a choice. As if any of them could say no to an Alpha—especially that Alpha.

The doors at the far end of the hall swung open, and everything changed.

He walked in like he owned the place—because in a way, he did. Cain Voss was taller than any wolf Wren had ever seen, broad-shouldered and built like a weapon, all hard muscle and barely contained violence. His dark hair was cropped short, his jaw sharp enough to cut glass, and his eyes—

Moon above, his eyes.

They were pale grey, almost silver, and utterly devoid of warmth. Cold. Dead. Like looking into the eyes of a wolf that had forgotten how to be anything but a predator.

He didn’t smile. He didn’t acknowledge the nervous females or the simpering Alpha or the tense silence that had fallen over the room. He simply walked forward, two warriors flanking him like shadows, and stopped in the center of the hall.

“Show me,” he said.

His voice was low and rough, like gravel scraping over stone. It sent a shiver down Wren’s spine—and not entirely from fear.

Alpha Kaine snapped his fingers, and the females began to parade forward, one by one. The daughters of high-ranking wolves went first, of course—pretty girls in fine dresses, hair carefully arranged, each one trying to catch the visiting Alpha’s eye. Cain Voss watched them pass with the same expression he might wear watching grass grow.

“Beta’s daughter,” Kaine said, gesturing to a red-haired beauty. “Strong bloodline. Good hips.”

The girl’s cheeks flushed with humiliation, but she lifted her chin. Cain barely glanced at her.

“No.”

On it went. Girl after girl, “no” after “no.” Kaine’s face grew tighter with each rejection, his smile more strained. Wren pressed herself further into the shadows, grateful to be invisible, counting down the minutes until she could slip away and—

Those silver eyes found her.

Wren froze. Her heart stuttered, then stopped, then slammed against her ribs like it was trying to escape. He was looking at her. At her. Not through her, not past her—at her.

And then he moved.

The crowd parted before him like water before a ship. Wren’s instincts screamed at her to run, but her body wouldn’t obey. She could only watch, paralyzed, as the most dangerous Alpha in the region walked straight toward her.

He stopped three feet away. Up close, he was even more terrifying—she could see the faint scars that crossed his face, the old wounds that mapped a history of violence. He smelled like pine and blood and something darker, something that made her wolf stir uneasily in the back of her mind.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

Wren couldn’t speak. Her throat had closed up, her voice stolen by sheer, primal fear.

“That’s no one,” Kaine said quickly, appearing at Cain’s side with an oily smile. “Just a servant. Surely you’d prefer—”

“I asked her.” Cain didn’t look at Kaine. His eyes never left Wren’s face. “Your name.”

“Wren,” she whispered. “Wren Ashford.”

Something flickered in those cold grey eyes. Recognition? Interest? She couldn’t tell. But whatever it was, it made her stomach drop.

“Ashford,” he repeated. The word hung in the air between them. Then: “She’ll do.”

The hall erupted into chaos.

“Alpha Voss, surely you can’t be serious—” Kaine spluttered. “She’s nothing, a mongrel, the last of a dead line—”

“Are you questioning my choice?”

The words were quiet, but they silenced the room instantly. Kaine went pale.

“No, Alpha. Of course not. I simply meant—”

“Then it’s settled.” Cain turned back to Wren, and for the first time, something like amusement crossed his face. It didn’t make him look friendlier. It made him look like a wolf that had just spotted its next meal. “We leave at dawn. Pack your things.”

What things? Wren thought hysterically. I own nothing. I am nothing.

But she didn’t say that. She couldn’t say anything. She could only stand there, numb with shock, as her carefully constructed plans crumbled to dust around her.

Three weeks. She’d needed three more weeks.

Cain Voss turned and walked toward the doors, clearly done with the proceedings. But just before he crossed the threshold, he paused. Looked back at her over his shoulder.

“Don’t try to run,” he said. “I’ll find you. And you won’t like what happens when I do.”

Then he was gone, and Wren was left standing in the ruins of her future, with one terrible truth ringing in her ears:

He knew her name. He knew Ashford.

And that meant he knew exactly what she was.