Todos los capítulos de THE ALPHA KING'S WIFE WAS NEVER HIS MATE: Capítulo 1 - Capítulo 10

The note was folded so small that I almost missed it.It lay tucked inside the left sleeve of my wedding gown, pressed flat against the silk like a secret that had been waiting for me. I found it because my hands were shaking and I was trying to smooth the fabric. My fingers caught on a hard little square of paper.I unfolded it with my back to the door.They know what you are. Do not let him touch your hand.No name. No signature. Just six words in a thin, slanted hand, and a smear of something dark at the corner that looked like dried blood.My heart did not stop. It did something worse. It went perfectly calm, the way it had sixteen years ago, when I was eight years old and hiding in a grain cellar while my home burned above me.Calm, Brenna had taught me. Calm is the only thing that keeps a Veyra alive."My lady?" The seamstress knelt by my hem, a pin between her lips. "Are you cold? You are trembling.""Nerves," I said. My voice came out smooth. "It is not every day a clerk's dau

I have thought many times about the half second between my scream and what came after.It was not long. A blink. A breath. But in that half second I saw everything with a terrible clarity. The crossbow bolt, a thin dark line against the silver glass. Four hundred faces turning upward, mouths open. Ezekiel, frozen with his hand raised in blessing. And Kael, who had heard my voice and turned toward me instead of toward the danger.He should have looked up. Any trained warrior would have. Instead he looked at me, and for that tiny, ridiculous moment his face held something I had not expected to see on the Alpha King. Surprise. As if nobody had ever shouted his name like that before.Then my body moved without asking me.I drove my shoulder into his chest with every ounce of strength I had.It was like hitting a wall. He barely shifted. But he was a wolf, with a wolf's reflexes, and he understood in the same instant what I had done. His arm snapped around my waist. We went down together i

I snatched my nightdress up over my shoulder and spun around so fast the mirror rattled.Kael stood in the doorway.He was barefoot, in a loose black shirt and trousers, with his hair wild and his chest rising and falling as though he had run the whole length of the citadel. One hand was still on the door, and the wood had splintered under his fingers where he had torn it open. His eyes were no longer amber. They had gone dark and bright, with the unmistakable shine of a wolf pressing close to the surface."The bell," he said hoarsely. "Did you hear the bell?""I heard it.""Everyone heard it. Every wolf in the citadel is awake." He took one step into the room, then stopped, as if he did not trust himself to take another. "It has not rung in eighteen years. I thought I imagined it. I thought—" He broke off. His gaze dropped to the hand clutching my nightdress, then to the glow leaking through the thin cloth at my shoulder, a faint, steady silver that lit the floor beside my feet."Sho

I did not sleep.The council had finally released us near dawn, with Ezekiel's soft blessing and Lord Varek's heavy frown, and Kael had walked me back to the royal suite in complete silence. At the door of my room he had stopped, as if there were something he wanted to say, then given a short nod and gone to his own chamber instead.I lay awake until the windows turned grey, listening for the sound of footsteps. Every creak of the old stone made me think of Seraphine's voice at my ear.I know what you see.By the time the maids came with water and a breakfast tray, I had made two decisions. The first was to say nothing about it to Kael until I understood how much she knew. The second was to find out."The south garden is my favourite," Seraphine said brightly. "Nobody ever comes here before noon. It is the only place in the whole citadel where one can speak freely.""That seems unwise to say.""On the contrary. It is exactly why I say it."She had come to my door a little after eight,

The Hollow district smelled of wet wool, coal smoke and old fish.It lay at the bottom of the city, in the crooked shadow of the citadel's great south wall, where the narrow streets twisted like roots and the houses leaned together so closely that their roofs almost touched. Washing hung between the upper windows. Children ran barefoot through puddles. A thin, grey, drizzling rain had started at dawn, and nobody paid us the slightest attention.That was the point.I wore a faded brown dress and a patched shawl that Mara had found in the laundry. My hair was bound in a plain scarf. On my feet were a servant's boots, one size too large, stuffed with rags at the toes. I looked, I thought, like a woman who scrubbed floors for a living.Beside me, Kael looked like a dockworker who had been in a lot of fights.He had put on a rough grey coat and a cap pulled low, and dirt rubbed along his jaw. He had also, somehow, made himself shorter. He slouched. He walked with a slight roll to his step.