All Chapters of Traded For The Ruthless Alpha: Chapter 1 - Chapter 8

The floor of the packhouse kitchen was cold under Elara's knees, and the scrub brush had worn a raw line across her palm. She kept scrubbing anyway. Down the hall, the laughter of the pack's elite rolled toward her like a wave. Somewhere in it was her husband's voice, warm and easy, the voice that used to whisper her name against her hair. Now he used it for someone else. "Elara." The click of heels stopped at the edge of the tile. "You missed a spot." Elara didn't look up. She knew who it was by the scent alone: jasmine and arrogance. Seraphine, the she-wolf Alpha Dorian had declared his fated mate three months ago, in front of the whole pack, while Elara stood beside him wearing the ring he'd given her a year before. "I'll fix it, Luna," Elara said quietly. The title tasted like ash. Seraphine was Luna now. Elara was only the woman who shared the Alpha's name on paper. "See that you do." Seraphine's laugh was light and cruel. "Honestly, I don't know how you stand it. Pale, t

Move. Now. That was the last thing Elara remembered, a man's voice, cold as a blade, and then a long, swaying dark. She woke to the smell of cedar and woodsmoke. For a moment she lay perfectly still, afraid to open her eyes. The blankets were thick. The bed was warm. There was no stone under her cheek and no lock turning in the dark. Lyra? Nothing. Just a faint flutter at the back of her mind, like a moth against a window. It was there, and then it wasn't. "She's awake," someone whispered. Elara's eyes flew open. A thin, nervous woman in a healer's gray apron hovered at the bedside. Behind her, filling the doorway like a wall, stood Kaelen Blackthorn. The sight of him went through her like ice water. She knew that face. She knew those storm-gray eyes. The man from the dining hall. The man who had broken the cellar door with one hand while four Silverpine guards knelt in the gravel. The man who had given Dorian one day, and then came back and taken his pack apart. He bought

Kaelen Kaelen Blackthorn had not slept in three nights, and he did not mind. He stood at the window of his study with his hands braced on the sill, watching the courtyard go gray with the first light, and listened to the slow, steady pulse of one particular heartbeat two floors above him. He had been listening to it for three days. It was fainter than it should have been. It still flinched whenever a door opened. Mate, said his wolf. I know, Kaelen answered. Dray had said the word forty times since the dining hall. He said it the way another animal might howl, with no sense of what it cost. Mate. Ours. Hurt. His wolf wanted to tear down Silverpine's walls stone by stone. His wolf wanted to walk up the stairs, take her in his arms, and never let anyone near her again. Kaelen had spent twenty-seven years learning to cage that kind of want. He did not intend to lose the habit now. *She is afraid of us,* he told Dray. *Did you see her hands?* Dray went silent. It was the closest

Elara did not eat. She sat by the window all morning with a cup of tea going cold in her hands, counting the hours by the shadows on the courtyard stones. Hesta tried broth, then bread, then a story about a goat she had once owned. Elara nodded at all of it and swallowed none. By midday, the packhouse had gone quiet, the way a house does when everyone in it is waiting for the same news. Nobody said Dorian's name. Nobody said hers. Kaelen The Silverpine hall had not changed. The same long table. The same banner of green and silver. The same smell of beeswax and old stone. Kaelen had stood in this room four days ago and heard a woman's name spoken like an insult. Now he walked through the doors with Bren at his shoulder and ten warriors behind him, and every wolf in the hall went still. Dorian sat at the head of the table with Seraphine at his right hand and six Silverpine elders on either side. A sheet of parchment lay in front of him, weighted at the corners with silver. Beside