Chapter 5 A Marriage Without Love

HASSAN

Some marriages begin with love. Mine began with negotiation.

I stared down at the fierce, stunning woman clutching the lapel of my jacket. Her silver-gray eyes were ablaze, radiating a terrifyingly beautiful mixture of raw trauma and absolute conviction.

But beneath her explosive demands, something far more dangerous was happening inside my own chest. The very second I had walked into this room, my inner wolf had slammed against the walls of my consciousness, letting out a deafening, proprietary roar that nearly fractured my composure.

Mate. She is our mate.

The revelation was a violent shock to my system. I had spent twenty-nine years believing the Moon Goddess had bypassed me entirely, leaving me to rule the Blackthorn pack with nothing but cold logic. Yet here she was.

But as I looked down at Katniss, searching for the answering glow in her eyes, I felt a chilling emptiness. Her wolf was dead silent. It wasn’t rejecting me; it was completely dormant, locked away behind a wall of heavy, phantom pain. Something was profoundly wrong with her beast, but I kept my face an unreadable mask. I said nothing.

"Marry you?" I repeated, my voice a low, dangerous purr as I gently but firmly detached her fingers from my suit. I took a step back, studying her like a general assessing a sudden change on the battlefield. "You are three days away from walking down the aisle with Damien Ravenscar. A man you have publicly doted on for a year. Now you are offering your hand to his greatest rival?"

"Damien is a fraud," Katniss snapped, her fists clenching at her sides, her breathing ragged with a deep-seated fury that didn't match the timeline of a simple lover's quarrel. "And I don't dote on vipers anymore."

"A sudden change of heart," I mocked softly, crossing my arms over my chest. "Why the sudden refusal, Katniss? Yesterday, the Council was whispering about your perfect alliance. Today, you're acting like he's holding a gun to your head. What did he do?"

She couldn't tell me the full truth; I could see it in the frantic, guarded shift of her eyes. She was hiding a massive secret.

"I intercepted an encrypted communication between his Beta and the Dreadmoor pack last night," Katniss lied, though the sheer venom in her voice made the deception feel incredibly real. "He’s planning a hostile annexation of the Ashbourne territory. He’s going to strip my father of his title and isolate our enforcers the moment the ink dries on the wedding certificates. I am not going to be a sacrificial lamb for his empire."

I tilted my head, tracking the frantic beat of her pulse. "A clever story. But a marriage of convenience to me is a different kind of cage, Lady Katniss. Why me?"

"Because you're the only monster big enough to scare him away," she said bluntly, her words cutting through the air with a brutal honesty that actually amused me. "You hate the Ravenscar pack. You want them contained. A contract marriage between us gives you legal jurisdiction over our borders, completely neutralizing his advance. We protect each other's territories. We strengthen our political influence."

"And what are the terms of this little arrangement?" I asked, leaning against the edge of my father's mahogany desk, watching her closely.

"Total independence," she demanded, taking a step closer, her silver eyes locking onto mine with absolute intensity. "We keep emotions completely out of this. No feelings. No romantic expectations. You rule the Blackthorn territory, I govern the Ashbourne affairs. We operate as a unified front to the Council, but behind closed doors, there is no interference in each other’s lives."

"A marriage without love," I murmured, the word mate heavy on my tongue, though I forced it down. If her wolf was broken, forcing a fated bond on her now would only make her flee. She needed a shield, not a pursuer. "A purely political transaction."

"Exactly," Katniss said, her voice dripping with a cold, protective instinct for her pack. "Do we have a deal, Alpha Blackthorn? Or do I need to find another way to destroy him?"

A slow, ruthless smile pulled at the corner of my lips. She was magnificent. She was playing a high-stakes game of chess while her hands were shaking from whatever trauma she was suppressing. She thought she was using me as a shield, completely unaware that she was walking straight into the arms of her fated mate.

"I don't leave things to chance," I said, reaching into the inner pocket of my suit jacket and pulling out a heavy, platinum fountain pen. "If we do this, we do it legally. Right now."

Katniss didn't hesitate. She whipped a blank sheet of official Ashbourne parchment from her father’s desk organizer, her fingers moving with a frantic, desperate speed. Using a drafting pen, she hastily but flawlessly scribbled out the core tenets of our verbal agreement—the mutual protection clauses, the non-interference pact, and the clear definition of a contract marriage.

"I'll have Orion print a formalized, multi-page copy later for the Council," she said, her voice breathless as she slid the handwritten document across the desk toward me. "But this binds us under pack law for tonight. Sign it."

Her sheer audacity amused me, a deep, rumbling warmth blooming in my chest that my wolf eagerly matched. She was entirely operating on adrenaline and survival instincts.

I picked up the paper, scanning her elegant handwriting. It was an absolute farce of a contract compared to the standard legal drafts my lawyers compiled, but under ancient werewolf law, a handwritten intent signed by two ruling alphas or heirs was entirely binding.

Without a word, I pressed the nib of my pen to the paper, signing my heavy, authoritative signature at the bottom. I slid the pen toward her.

Katniss grabbed it, her hand trembling slightly as she signed her own name right beside mine. The second the ink dried, a faint, golden shimmer of magic flared over the paper—a spiritual acknowledgment of the contract by the laws of our society.

She let out a long, shuddering breath, her shoulders sagging slightly as if an immense, suffocating weight had just been lifted from her chest. She reached out, her fingers trembling as she went to pick up the paper, a victorious, relieved smile beginning to touch her lips.

But before her fingers could touch the parchment, I placed my large hand firmly over the center of the document, trapping it against the desk.

Katniss froze, her silver-gray eyes snapping up to meet mine, her defensive instincts instantly flaring. "What are you doing? We signed it."

I leaned in, shadowing her completely, my dark gray eyes burning with an intense, unreadable fire. The scent of ozone flared between us, heavy and intoxicating. She thought she had just bought herself freedom. She thought she was playing a game of pure logic.

"We did," I whispered, my baritone voice vibrating through her skin, making her breath hitch in her throat. I slowly lifted my hand, letting her pull the paper away, but my gaze never left hers. "But you have no idea what you’ve just agreed to."