The Rogue's Reluctant Mate

“I’ll come with you,” Mama said immediately.“No Juliet. You stay here with Selena. It’s better this way.” His eyes met mine, a silent instruction. ’Stay with your mother. Keep her safe.’I hated it. Hated feeling so helpless. I was twenty years old, an Omega wolf, yes, but not weak. Not inside. Inside, I was a storm of things I couldn't show.Papa left. Mama and I sat in silence for a long time. The only sound was the crackle of the small fire and the wind whistling through the cracks in the walls. I picked at a loose thread on my tunic. Every minute that passed felt like an hour.“He’ll be alright Selena,” Mama said, trying to sound reassuring. But I saw the fear in her eyes. We both knew what Alpha Henry was capable of. He wasn’t like his father, Vorlag, who was a calculating tyrant. Henry was just a brute, cruel for the sake of it. He’d inherited his Alpha position from his father, after Vorlag died some years back. Austin, Vorlag’s other son, the dangerous one, had been exil

My arms were yanked behind me, rough hands binding my wrists. The rope bit into my skin, raw and biting. I didn’t fight them anymore. What was the use? Mama and Papa.... they were gone. The images seared into my brain. Mama falling, the dark stain.. Papa slumping, so quiet. The cold rage I’d felt moments before was still there, a hard, sharp stone in my chest, but a chilling numbness was creeping over me too. It was like watching things happen to someone else. “Move ! traitor scum,” one of the guards snarled, shoving me forward. I stumbled, my legs barely holding me. They were dragging me away from the clearing, away from… from them. I couldn’t even look back. Alpha Henry’s voice boomed again, addressing the silent, watching pack. “This is what happens to traitors!! This is what happens to those who defile the pack with impure blood and deceit!” His words were for them, but his eyes, cold and hard, found mine. “Your daughter, Alfred and Juliet, was a mistake. A stain. And s

AUSTIN_____The hum of the servers in my basement was usually a comforting sound. Predictable. Controllable. Unlike the restlessness that had been chewing at me for weeks. I, Alexander Thorne — or Austin Kaelen, if you wanted to dig up ancient history I’d buried deep , didn’t do restlessness. I did calculated moves, quiet domination of my little kingdom here in Havenwood Creek. This town was mine, even if its inhabitants didn’t fully grasp the extent of it. They saw the wealthy, reclusive businessman. They didn’t see the wolf.But the itch persisted.An old, stupid habit, one I’d mostly kicked: checking the borders. The BlackClaw Pack — or Kaelen Pack, as it was still pathetically called by my idiot brother Henry — was a lifetime ago. Eighteen years since my father, Vorlag, that paranoid bastard, had thrown me out. Eighteen years of building this new life, this fortress of solitude and power. Still, sometimes, the damn wolf in me got antsy. A flicker, like a premonition I couldn’

The word wasn’t mine. It was my wolf’s, a roar of triumph and recognition that echoed in the hollows of my soul, a place I thought long dead. I felt a phantom echo of her shock, her fear, but also a bewildering undercurrent of...something else. Something that felt like a frayed rope finding an anchor.My carefully constructed walls, the ones I’d spent eighteen years building, brick by painstaking brick, didn’t just crack. They fucking shattered.At least momentarily.I stumbled back a step, my own breath catching. My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped animal. This couldn’t be. No. Fucking. Way. Mates were myths, sentimental annoyances for pack bound fools. And even if they weren’t, HER??This half drowned, terrified Omega girl? My mate? The universe had a sick sense of humor.Her eyes were locked on mine, wide with a dawning horror that mirrored my own. The connection, the bond, thrummed between us, an invisible, unbreakable tether, humming with an energy that made the a

He didn’t answer immediately, just continued to study me, his green eyes missing nothing. It felt like he could see right through me, to the fear and the grief and the tiny, flickering ember of rage. “You’re in my house.” he said finally, his voice deep and smooth, with an edge to it, like a perfectly sharpened blade. “In Havenwood Creek. A long way from your pack.” Havenwood Creek? I’d heard of it. “why did you save me?” I asked, the question bursting out of me. “They were going to... they threw me in the river.” A flicker of something unreadable crossed his face. Annoyance? “An impulse,” he said, his tone dismissive. Like saving someone’s life was a minor inconvenience. “An impulse?” I repeated, bewildered. He pushed himself off the post and started to climb the stairs slowly, deliberately. I instinctively backed away a step. He stopped a few feet below me, close enough that I could smell that faint metallic scent again, mixed with something woodsy and clean. It was unsettlin