She saved his life. He bought her with a contract. Neither expected the bond to burn. Aria Stark is nobody — a bullied intern scraping by on a twelve-hundred-dollar paycheck, funneling every cent to the adoptive family that treats her like a walking ATM. She's spent her whole life learning to keep her head down and her mouth shut. Then one rainy night, she stumbles on a dying wolf the size of a car. When her hand touches its fur, something impossible happens: the beast becomes a man. A man with ash-gray eyes that see straight through her — and a name that moves markets. Lycan Blackwood, CEO of the Blackwood empire. The most powerful Alpha in North America. Her fated mate. Except Lycan doesn't believe in fate. His mother was betrayed by a human, and he's spent ten years hating everything Aria is. So he does what any billionaire would do: he locks her into a three-year marriage contract. Convenience. Nothing more. But the mansion is full of wolves with sharper teeth than the men outside. His ex-fiancée wants her dead. The Lycan Council wants her erased. And every full moon, the bond they both deny burns a little hotter. They think she's just a human they can break. They don't know what sleeps in her blood. One contract. One bond. A queen the wolves never saw coming