The Alpha’s Unwanted Wife

Annika After seven consecutive hours of surgery, I could barely feel my legs anymore. I stepped back from the operating table and gripped the edge of the scrub sink, letting cold water run over my hands. The OR had been brutal, a pediatric thoracic repair that had pushed every skill I had to its absolute limit. But the child was alive, and that was what mattered. Crescent Falls General was one of the few hospitals in the state with a mixed ward, humans on one side, wolves on the other. I worked both. As the only half-human surgeon trusted by the Booker pack, I had learned early that in this town, the wolves ran everything, and the Booker pack ran the wolves. My colleague touched my shoulder. "Dr. Grey, you should sit down. You look terrible." "I'm fine," I said, which was only partially true. I made my way to a chair in the corner and reached for my phone. One new message from Ruby, my best friend, the only person in my life who delivered the truth without wrapping it in cotton wool first. Annika. Jane Tan is back in town, did you know? I stared at the screen for a long moment. Jane Tan. Something tightened in my chest around that name. Jane Tan, the woman Asher had loved before me. The woman he had never truly stopped loving, if I was being honest with myself. Jane was a pureblooded she-wolf, the kind that turned heads in any pack room she walked into. Everything I was not. I was half-human, and in werewolf society, that was never a small thing. Why now? Why did she have to come back now? Before I could process it, a second message buzzed in. Annika, Asher is hurt, come fast, it's bad. I was out of my chair and through the door before I finished reading it. Outside, Crescent Falls had turned on itself. The afternoon had been clear and bright when I'd arrived for my shift; now the sky was black and rain was hammering the streets in cold, relentless sheets. I hadn't brought an umbrella. It didn't even cross my mind to wait for one. I flagged a cab at the curb and threw myself into the backseat, already typing back: On my way. What happened? Talk to me. No reply came. The silence from Ruby's end made everything worse. My doctor's brain kicked into gear without my permission, running through injury types, scenarios, worst cases. I pressed my palm flat against my knee to stop my leg from bouncing. Just be okay, I thought. Whatever else you are to me, just please be okay. The cab pulled up outside the Iron Gate Club, one of those sleek, members-only establishments downtown where Asher and his circle spent most of their evenings. I shoved cash at the driver and ran. The pavement near the entrance was slick with rain. My feet went out from under me and I hit the ground hard, both palms skidding across wet concrete, one knee cracking sharply against the curb. For a second I just knelt there in the downpour, rain soaking through my scrubs, blood welling up slow and dark across my palms. I got up and I kept going. No claws to grip the wet ground. No heightened speed to close the distance faster. No wolf healing to deal with the bleeding scrapes on my palms. Just me, half-human, soaking wet, and running anyway. I pushed through the door of the private room soaking wet, bleeding, hair plastered flat against my face. The room was full, Asher's entire inner circle spread across leather chairs and couches, drinks in hand, deep in easy conversation. Every single head turned when I walked in. Then the laughter started. "Under twenty minutes!" Ruben shot to his feet and slammed both hands on the table, his grin wide and satisfied. "I told every single one of you, pay up! No backing out now!" The realization settled over me slowly, then all at once. A bet. Ruben had sent that message. Asher is hurt, come fast, words he had chosen deliberately, precisely, because everyone in this room knew they were the only words guaranteed to make me drop everything and run. My heart, my fear for Asher, it had all just been the punchline to someone's joke. My first feeling, shamefully, was relief. Pure, humiliating relief that Asher wasn't actually hurt somewhere. "God, Annika," someone in the back muttered, looking me over. "Look at the state of you." "She's his lapdog," Ruben said easily, dropping back into his seat. "Has been from day one. You really think she'd have landed Asher any other way?" Asher's pack. Every one of them took their cues from him, if Asher didn't respect you, neither did they. It wasn't just loyalty either, it was biology. As Alpha, Asher's dominance ran through every wolf in his pack like a current, they felt his moods, responded to his authority instinctively. When he dismissed someone, the pack dismissed them too. Not because they chose to. Because that was simply how the bond worked. I had learned that within the first month of our marriage, and I had made my peace with it. Or told myself I had. I scanned the room. Asher wasn't here. I walked directly to Ruben. "Where is he?" Ruben swirled his glass without looking at me. "Why would I know?" Before he could say anything more, a younger guy across the table glanced up with the easy carelessness of someone who hadn't gotten the memo. "Oh… I just saw him actually. He took Jane into the back room, the private one." The sentence dropped into the middle of the room like something heavy. Ruben's head snapped toward him. "Shut your damn mouth." But I was already moving. Ruben was on his feet in an instant, stepping squarely into my path, his expression shifting from mocking to serious. "You can't go in there, Annika. I mean it." I met his eyes for one long second, then I stepped around him and pushed open the door. It took less than a second to understand what I was looking at. Asher had Jane pressed against the wall, his hands framing her face, his mouth on hers. The same man who looked through me at the breakfast table every morning was kissing her like she was the only solid thing in the room. Like the rest of the world, including me, had ceased to exist entirely. Every sound behind me cut out. I noticed his eyes first. They had gone gold, that deep, molten amber that meant his wolf was right at the surface. He only ever looked like that when something reached the part of him that was more animal than man. He had never once looked at me with golden eyes. My hands found each other behind my back and locked together, fingers pressing in until I couldn't feel them anymore. It was Jane who noticed me first. She went rigid, her eyes finding mine over Asher's shoulder, and then she was shoving him back hard, the crack of her palm across his cheek ringing out sharp and clean in the silence. "You absolute bastard," she said, her voice shaking with real fury. Asher turned his head slowly, cheek reddening. His expression moved through surprise before settling somewhere near guilt, and then his eyes found me standing in the doorway. Everything in his face went cold. Jane smoothed her clothes, composed herself, and glanced at me briefly before turning back to Asher. "I will never be anyone's secret. I told you that before." She moved past me without another word, leaving nothing behind but the trace of expensive perfume and the soft click of the door. Asher and I were alone. The silence between us carried the full weight of two years, every dinner eaten in quiet, every question I hadn't asked. I stood there soaking wet, blood drying on my palms, and waited for an explanation, for anything. His jaw tightened. "Who let her in here?" Her? Not Annika? Just her, like I was something that had wandered in off the street and disrupted an otherwise pleasant evening.