All Chapters of His Substitute Mate Is the Alpha’s Daughter: Chapter 1 - Chapter 8

8 Chapters

Chapter 1

"I'll have the mating dissolution papers drawn up," my father says. "All Elias has to do is sign."He agrees to help me."The plane will be there on the third," he continues. "Be ready."The third of next month.I hang up and let my back slide down the cold stone wall. The hallway is empty. I sit on the floor, drained.After a long moment, I push myself up. Then I call Ivy Donovan and a few other friends. We head straight to a bar.The bar is loud and dark. Ivy slides into the booth across from me, her dark eyes scanning my face."Wren," she says carefully. "The Blackwood pack has so many rules. You haven't been out like this in months. If Margaret finds out you're acting so wild..."I throw back my drink in one burning gulp."She won't find out," I say. "Because I'm leaving Elias. I'm ending the mating bond."Ivy's glass nearly slips from her hand. "What? You... you've loved him most. How hard you worked to chase him. How can you just--""I don't love him anymore." I cut her off. "And

Chapter 2

The door opens.Elias walks in. His face is calm. Unreadable. As if the gentle man I just saw in the hallway was never there."You're awake. How do you feel?"Chloe follows behind him, carrying a thermos. Her cheeks are still damp from crying."Wren." She approaches the bed carefully, voice sweet and apologetic. "I'm glad you're awake. I heard you were hurt, so I made some pigeon soup. To help you heal."I don't want to see her. I want her gone.But my eyes catch the thermos.My heart stops."That pigeon..." My voice shakes. "Where did it come from?"Chloe blinks. "After I heard you were hurt, I wanted to make you soup. But the market was closed. I couldn't buy a fresh pigeon. Then I saw one in the back garden. It was beautiful, so I..." She hesitates. "I had the cooks catch it."The back garden.The pigeon I raised for ten years. The one that sat with me through every lonely night. My mother's gift.They killed my pigeon.Rage explodes through my chest. It burns away every last shred

Chapter 3

Compensate me?Ice floods my veins. My whole body shakes with rage and despair."Get out." I point at the door. My voice is shrill. Broken. "All of you, get out. You want me to give her my skin? Over my dead body."Elias's jaw tightens. "Wren. Don't be difficult.""I'm difficult?" I laugh--a horrible, hollow sound. Tears spill down my face. "Elias. My feelings. My pain. The things that matter to me. Are they really worth nothing to you? Can you just sacrifice anything of mine whenever you want?"I try to move. To run.He catches my wrist. Holds it in an iron grip."Stop this." His eyes are cold. Commanding. "Dr. Vance. Prepare the sedative."I struggle. Scream. Fight with everything I have.But I can't break free.He looks down at me--at the eyes that used to be so bright, so full of life. Now they hold only shattered despair and deep, burning hatred.Something flickers in his expression. A strange pain. An unfamiliar panic.Almost without thinking, he raises his free hand and covers m

Chapter 4

Days later, at a pack gathering filled with perfume and expensive liquor, word reached me through Ivy.I was three territories away, in a hotel room with thin walls. But pack gossip travels fast."You won't believe this," Ivy said."Tell me.""Marcus Webb. You know him. Alpha of that tiny coastal territory. Always running his mouth."I knew Marcus. Loud. Crude. The kind of wolf who thought every woman was fair game."He walked up to Elias at the gathering," Ivy continued. "Had a drink in his hand. And he said--I'm quoting--'I heard your Luna ran off. What a shame. I always liked her fire. If you're done with her, I wouldn't mind taking her off your hands.'"My stomach turned."Elias didn't say a word," Ivy said. "He just punched Marcus in the face. Broke his nose. Then he kept hitting him. Glass shattered. Marcus was screaming. It took four enforcers to pull Elias off."I said nothing."He looked insane, Wren. Red eyes. Veins popping. They'd never seen him like that."The old Wren woul

Chapter 5

I wasn't there when he kicked the door open. But Ivy told me everything later--pieced together from witnesses, from pack gossip, from the enforcers who saw it happen.Chloe was sitting at her vanity, touching the scar on her arm. The scar from the burn. The scar made from my skin.She heard the crash and turned.Elias stood in the doorway. His eyes were red. His wolf was so close to the surface that his fangs had dropped."Elias?" Her voice was soft. Confused. That same sweet voice that had fooled everyone for years. "What's wrong?"He crossed the room in three strides.Before she could scream, his hand closed around her throat.He lifted her off the ground."You lied to me," he snarled.Chloe clawed at his hand. Her face turned red, then purple. Tears streamed down her cheeks."You've been lying to me this whole time," he said, each word a blade. "All the things she was accused of--the fire, the poison, the broken heirloom. Was it you?""Yes," she choked out. "Yes, it was me. I did it

Chapter 6

The search didn't stop.I heard about it through the pack grapevine, through Ivy, through the occasional message from someone who still remembered me. Elias Blackwood had turned finding me into his only reason for existing.He followed every lead. Every rumor. Every ghost.The first real trace came from Paris.Someone sent him a photograph--a grainy street shot, taken from across a boulevard. A woman in a trench coat and a wide-brimmed hat, walking a small dog under the bare branches of autumn trees.Just a back. Just the way I walked.But Ivy told me he knew it was me before he even opened the full image. He said my posture was carved into his bones.He canceled a territory summit--the most important meeting of the year--and flew to Paris on his private jet.He went to a gallery. The one I had mentioned once, years ago, during a rare moment when he actually listened to me talk about something I loved. The owner remembered me. Said I had just left. Said I mentioned something about a bo

Chapter 7

I heard about it weeks later, through Ivy, who heard it from a cousin, who heard it from a Beta who worked with the rescue team.A German polar expedition team had been mapping a remote section of the Icelandic highlands when they spotted something half-buried in the snow.A man.Blue. Still. Almost dead.They dug him out. Checked for a pulse. Found one--so faint they almost missed it.They airlifted him to the nearest hospital in Reykjavik.It took them hours to identify him. No wallet. No phone. Just frozen clothes and a face barely recognizable under the frostbite.Someone finally matched his fingerprints to an international database.Elias Blackwood.Alpha of the Blackwood pack.The wolf who had spent months hunting me across the globe had almost died doing it.The doctors worked on him for two days.They saved his life.But his legs--the ones that had knelt in the frozen mud, that had refused to carry him after me--were too damaged. The tissue had died. The nerves had frozen solid

Chapter 8

I didn't see it happen.But Ivy told me. And later, I read the reports. The private nurses talked. The orderlies talked. The story leaked, because stories like that always leak.This is what I learned.Elias Blackwood had been living in a private care facility for months.Not a hospital anymore. A peaceful place in the countryside, far from pack politics, far from the manor, far from everything he had once been.He was in a wheelchair now. Both legs gone below the knee. His body had healed, but his mind had not.He didn't speak.Didn't eat much. Didn't engage with the nurses. Didn't respond when his mother called or when former pack members came to visit.He just sat.In his room. By the window. In the garden when the weather was good.His eyes were open but empty. Like the wolf inside him had curled up and died.The nurses learned to work around him. They changed his bandages. Brought his meals. Wheeled him outside when the sun was warm.He never thanked them. Never complained. Never

SCAN CODE TO READ ON APP