Romans Mystery Werewolf & Histoires Substitute Bride

He put his mouth on my throat in front of four hundred people, and nothing happened. A mate’s mark only takes on a true name. Nineteen weeks earlier my father put me in my sister’s clothes, poured her scent over my skin, handed me nineteen doses of the medicine I’ve taken every week since I was four years old, and told his own pack that I had drowned. He never told me what was in the jars. I never asked. I was grateful — nobody else in that house had ever given me anything. So I walked into Ashvale wearing a dead girl’s name, and Alpha Marek Thorne leaned in to scent the bride he’d paid a territory for, and found nothing there at all. Now the whole hall has watched the bond refuse me. Substituting an alliance bride isn’t an insult. It’s fraud against the pack, and the penalty is my life and my father’s land. So my Alpha stands up in front of all four hundred of them, and rejects me. He isn’t permitted to tell me why he did it. Neither is the old woman standing three feet away, who has known what I am since the day I arrived.