All Chapters of Married To My Enemy's Pack : Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

My name was being called, and I could not move my legs. "Helena." Jason would not even look at me directly. His eyes were fixed somewhere over my shoulder, like meeting my gaze might make this harder than he wanted it to be. "I think we both know this isn't working." I stood in the middle of the Ashwood Pack hall, my hands shaking at my sides. Everyone was watching. My aunt was watching. The elders were also watching. Even the little kids who were supposed to be asleep by now had crept out from the back rooms, their small faces peeking around the legs of the adults. "Jason, please," I whispered. "Not here. We can talk about this somewhere else." "There's nothing to talk about." He finally looked at me, and there was no softness left in his face at all, only impatience, like I was a decision he had already made and was simply announcing out loud. "The moon bond gave me to you, but it did not ask if I wanted a mate who could not even shift into her own wolf. I have given this two ye

"No." The word came out of me before I understood I was saying it. "You cannot decide this for me.""I am not deciding. I am asking," Felix said, stepping down from the podium, lowering his voice like that would make it less cruel."You are not asking. You are standing in front of over two hundred people and telling them that I am the price for peace, then waiting for me to agree in front of all of them."Whispers filled the hall, sharp and afraid this time, not mocking like they had been the night before. "If you say no," Felix said quietly, "Kingston attacks within the week. And we do not have the numbers to survive that, Helena. You know this.""So my life is worth less than everyone else's.""That is not what I meant.""It is exactly what you said." My voice cracked. Then Kayla pushed through the crowd and grabbed my hand, squeezing hard. "Helena, you don't have to—""She does," someone shouted from the back. "Would you rather we all die because one girl won't agree to marry a ric

Nobody moved. The officiant cleared his throat, waiting for one of us to start walking, and neither of us did, both frozen at opposite ends of an aisle neither of us had chosen."Helena," Felix whispered beside me, low and urgent. "Keep walking."Then I forced my legs to carry me forward, forcing my face into something steadier than I felt, until I was standing close enough to see the fading bruise along his jaw and the tension locked into every line of his shoulders."You," I breathed, barely audible."You're the bride," he said silently. "I didn't know. I swear to you, I did not know it was you.""I was told to say nothing about last night," I responded quietly. "So whatever you're thinking right now, I need you to forget that you ever saw me in that park."Something moved across his face, sharp and calculating, gone as fast as it came. "That's not how this works.""It has to be. Please."The officiator cleared his throat again, more pointed this time, and the room, which had gone

The rest of that first night blurred together, introductions and polite careful distance, until Damian finally led me down a long hallway lined with closed doors and stopped at the last one on the left."This is your room," he said, pushing it open to reveal a room larger than the entire apartment I had grown up in. "There's a connecting door between this room and mine, if you need anything.""If I need anything," I repeated, testing the words. "Not because you'll be checking on me.""I don't check on people." But he lingered in the doorway a moment longer than the sentence needed, like some part of him wanted to argue with his own claim."Goodnight, Damian," I said to him.He nodded once, stiff and formal, every trace of the tension from earlier folded away somewhere I could not reach. "Goodnight, Helena," he responded.The door clicked shut, and I was all alone again after everything that had happened. I sat on the edge of an unfamiliar bed, in an unfamiliar room, in a home full of

Xavier was already moving, the guard trailing behind him barking orders into a radio, and I found myself running to keep pace, my bare feet slapping against marble floors I still did not know the layout of."Seal every exit," Xavier snapped as we reached the private elevator. "Nobody leaves this building without being searched, staff included.""She's already gone," the guard said. "Her car cleared the north gate eleven minutes ago.""Then find out where it's headed." Xavier's charm had vanished completely, replaced by something cold and efficient that made him look, for the first time since I had met him, like a man who genuinely ran strategy for a war pack. "Get Ryder, now."The elevator doors opened, leading to the lobby, and Damian was already there, still in the shirt he had worn to say goodnight to me hours ago, his face carved from stone as he listened to a second guard giving a rapid, clipped report."Helena." His eyes found me first, sharp with something that looked almost li