SOLD TO THE WEREWOLF KING

The pen felt like a lead weight in my hand, an instrument of my own damnation.

I stared at the crisp vellum contract on the polished obsidian desk. The words "Matrimonial Agreement" were printed in a severe, unforgiving font. My future, my freedom, my body—all reduced to a few pages of legalese.

"Sign here, Miss Vance."

The voice that spoke was not warm, nor was it cold. It was simply… absolute. It was the voice of a man who had never been told no.

I forced my gaze from the paper to the man sitting across from me. Kaelen Grant. Even seated, he dominated the sterile, modern office, a predator temporarily contained by glass and steel. He was younger than I’d expected, with sharp, aristocratic features that looked like they’d been carved from marble. His hair was the color of raven wings, and his eyes… his eyes were the pale, sharp grey of a winter storm. He watched me, utterly still, his fingers steepled under his chin. He was dressed in a suit that probably cost more than my entire life, but it couldn't disguise the raw, untamed power that radiated from him. This was no corporate CEO. This was an Alpha.

"My sister," I said, my voice barely a whisper. I cleared my throat, forcing strength into it. "The treatment begins the moment I sign?"

"Within the hour," he confirmed, his tone devoid of any emotion. "The finest specialists in the world are on retainer. She will want for nothing."

That was all that mattered. Lillian’s face, pale against the hospital pillows, flashed behind my eyes. Her weak smile, her insistence that I not worry. This was for her. Everything was for her.

I took a shuddering breath, the air tasting of expensive cologne and impending doom. I lowered the pen.

The moment the nib touched the paper, a jolt, like a static shock but a thousand times stronger, erupted from my hand and shot straight up my arm. I gasped, my head snapping up.

Kaelen had frozen. His steepled fingers had slammed down onto the desk, his knuckles white. His stormy eyes were wide, locked on our hands, and for a single, terrifying second, they flashed with a brilliant, feral gold.

The color of a wolf’s eyes.

He snatched his hand back as if my mere proximity had burned him. The air crackled with a tension so thick I could barely breathe. The scent of him—bergamot, cedar, and something wild, something purely animal—invaded my senses.

"What was that?" I whispered, my heart hammering against my ribs.

"Nothing," he bit out, the word a low growl that vibrated in my bones. The gold in his eyes was gone, replaced by a glacial cold that was somehow more frightening. "A trick of the light. Sign the contract."

It wasn't nothing. My entire body was humming, every nerve ending screaming in recognition of… something. Something in him. But I was in too deep. I thought of Lillian, and I scrawled my name at the bottom of the page—Elara Vance—the signature a messy testament to my despair.

The moment I finished, he stood, the movement so fluid and swift it was unnerving. He loomed over me, all restrained power and simmering fury.

"The car will take you to the penthouse. Your belongings have already been moved." He turned his back to me, dismissing me as if I were a servant. "You will have your own room. You will not enter mine. You will not touch my things. You will speak only when spoken to. Is that clear?"

Tears of humiliation and rage pricked at my eyes, but I forced them down. I would not let him see me break. "Crystal."

I stood on shaky legs and walked toward the door, the world tilting on its axis. As my hand touched the cool metal of the doorknob, I heard his voice again, lower now, a venomous whisper meant for someone else. I glanced back.

He was turned toward the floor-to-ceiling window, his back rigid, his fists clenched at his sides. His Beta, a severe-looking man who had been silent throughout the meeting, stood nearby.

"The bond is… incendiary," Kaelen snarled, his voice thick with a rage I couldn't comprehend. "It changes nothing. She is a transaction. A means to an end. Control yourself."

The Beta nodded, his face grim.

My blood ran cold. The bond? What bond? I slipped out the door, his words echoing in my mind. I was a transaction. A thing to be controlled.

But as the elevator descended, carrying me down from his sky-high prison, the memory of that electric jolt and the flash of gold in his eyes haunted me. He had called me a transaction, but his reaction, his raw, panicked fury, had spoken a different, more terrifying truth.

Something had happened in that room. Something he never intended.

And I was just a pawn in a game whose rules I didn't understand