All Chapters of CLAIMED BY THE RUTHLESS ALPHA KING : Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

Chapter Two: No NameHe didn't leave. That was the first strange thing.Every instinct in him should've had him gone already, back into the trees, away from a pack wolf who'd wandered too far onto the wrong side of the mountain. Instead he stood there at the edge of the clearing with blood drying stiff on his shirt, watching me the way you'd watch something you weren't sure was safe to touch."You're hurt," I said. My voice came out steadier than I felt."Not mine." He said it flat, like it answered everything."Whose, then?"He didn't answer that. He looked at me a long moment, jaw tight, and I watched him decide something and then decide against it."You need to go back the way you came," he said instead. "Before whatever's tracking me finds you standing next to me.""Someone's tracking you?""Elara." My name in his mouth stopped me cold. I hadn't told him my name."How do you know that?"Something like a wince crossed his face. "Word travels. Silver Hollow's future Luna, humiliated

Chapter Four: Weeks LaterBy the third week I'd stopped waiting for the ache to fade.Everyone said it would. The older women, the ones who'd whispered about heat bonds at dinner tables their whole lives like it was something shameful to know too much about, they all agreed on that much. If you didn't claim a bond properly, if it was only ever going to be the one night, the pull faded inside a month. Sometimes less.Mine wasn't fading. If anything it had gotten worse, quieter but heavier, like a bruise that stopped hurting to the touch and just sat there aching on its own instead.I told myself it didn't matter. Silver Hollow had gone back to treating me the way it treats anyone who's had something bad happen to them in public, which is to say carefully, at a distance, with a kind of pity dressed up as politeness. Caleb and Brynn had already announced their engagement. I'd sat through the announcement dinner because my mother insisted appearances mattered, and I'd smiled at the right

They sent a black carriage for me. No crest on the doors, nothing marking it as a King's, just good craftsmanship, the kind that costs more than it lets on. My father walked me out to it himself. For the first time in three weeks he didn't look like a man trying to solve a problem. He looked like a father putting his daughter on a road he wasn't sure was safe."You don't have to go," he said, hand still on the door frame.Both of us knew that wasn't really true. I had two options left and one of them was exile. I hugged him instead of arguing about it, because nothing I could say would've made either of us feel better.Two days on the road. I mostly just watched the land change out the window, forest thinning into hills, hills going colder and barer the further we got, like even the ground knew what kind of man ran this place. The driver didn't talk. I didn't ask him to.I spent a lot of that time thinking about the stories. Everybody had one. An Alpha King who took his throne young a

Chapter Eight: KaelI found the training yard by accident, wandering around the grounds the next morning because my room felt like it was too small and the rest of the castle was easier to handle when I had somewhere to walk toward. A dozen wolves were sparring in pairs, bare feet on packed dirt, and off to the side a man stood watching with his arms crossed, calling out corrections that sounded like insults and somehow didn't land as offense.He clocked me before I'd figured out whether to keep walking or turn back."You're the King's intended." Plain, no edge to it, which after Ashby and the advisor woman felt almost like a break. "Kael Voss. Run his guard, when I'm not making his life harder in other ways.""Elara.""I know." Almost a smile. "Everybody knows. You've been the only thing anyone's talked about all week."I didn't have much to say back, so I just watched the sparring instead, glad for something to look at that wasn't a person sizing me up."You don't have to just stand

Chapter Ten: The FeastThree day later, Greta told me there will be a formal feast, the first since I got here, which is meant to put me in front of the wider court instead of just the handful of nobles who ate at the King's table most days. She said it more like a warning than an announcement."Wear something that doesn't apologize for you being here," she said, laying out a deep red dress, heavier and finer than anything else she'd given me so far. "Ashby will be watching for anything he can use. Give him nothing.""I don't know how to give a room like that nothing.""You stood in front of your own pack the night you lost everything and didn't fall apart." Plain, not unkind, just true. "You know how. You've done it before."I thought about that a lot getting ready, about the girl in that clearing three months back, chin up, spine straight, refusing to let anybody watch her come apart twice. Didn't feel much like her anymore, not exactly, but I found some of that same stubbornness p