All Chapters of The Crippled Masked Alpha : Chapter 1 - Chapter 5

​[Anya’s POV]​The great hall was silent, thick with the smell of old cedar and expensive cologne. Today wasn’t just the Succession Ceremony, where I would finally be named the Shadow Pack’s Beta. Today was the day Caleb was supposed to seal it.​Just get through the speech, I told myself, clutching my hands behind my back. Then the proposal.​For six years, I had stood beside Caleb, managing the pack’s difficult supply routes and doing the grunt work my father and stepmother, Elara, never bothered with. Today was my reward: the title, the wedding, the life I’d earned.​"Anya, dear, try to smile," Elara hissed from the front row. Her red lipstick looked like a freshly painted slash of disapproval. "You look like you’re about to fight a bear, not marry a Beta."​I ignored her. Elara and her daughter, Seraphina, who stood preening beside her, always treated me like a poorly trained servant. They hated my silver-grey eyes, the mark of my true mother's lineage and they certainly hated my

​[Anya’s POV]​Alaric’s glare was like a physical push, driving me toward the drawing room. My father and Elara were already there, trying to look important but failing miserably. They stood beside a massive, high-tech wheelchair, waiting for the man who sat in it to move.​And there he was. Alpha Ronan Thorne.​The rumors were right about his size. He was huge, even sitting down. His shoulders strained the dark fabric of his expensive suit. He sat perfectly still, but every line of his body screamed power.​He wore a polished silver mask that covered the left half of his face, where the worst injuries were rumored to be. The mask was cracked in one place, giving it a brutal, shattered look. His visible features were sharp: a strong jawline, and one eye deep, icy black that was currently fixed on the patterns in the carpet. He looked like a fallen king, ruined but still terrifying.​"Anya," my father mumbled, shoving me forward. "Meet Alpha Ronan."​"No need for introductions," Ronan'

​[Anya’s POV]​The small, elegant drawing room at Thorne Manor was not the setting for a quiet wedding; it was a stage for a political show. There were only about twenty people present, but every face was important, high-ranking Alpha representatives, solemn pack officials, and the nervous-looking King's envoy, who was seated right in the front row.​I gripped my bouquet so hard the petals cracked. He’s lying. He’s not crippled. This entire wedding is a trap. The chilling realization from the car ride was my only comfort now. I wasn't marrying a victim; I was marrying a mastermind.​My father, now pale and sweating, played the role of the proud patriarch, walking me down the short aisle. He kept his eyes fixed on the King's envoy, clearly desperate to look deserving of the reward.​Ronan waited at the front, sitting in his wheelchair. He looked powerful and tragic, the picture of a man broken by war. But I saw the tension in his shoulders, the stillness that was too perfect, too pract