The Alpha's Forgotten Bride

Chapter One: Mira

"That's the omega girl who never got a pack mark. Cursed, if you ask me."

"I heard she tried to seduce a Beta last winter."

"Look at her. Same face as her mother. Same rotten blood."

They kept their voices low, but in this room, low still carried. Every whisper landed like it was shouted straight into my ear.

I stood frozen in the center of the courtroom floor, surrounded by people who would have gladly watched me burn if the law allowed it. I made myself breathe, in and out, slow, even though my heart was slamming against my ribs. The way my mother taught me to, back when I was small enough to still believe breathing could fix anything. Before she died and took that comfort with her.

"Mira Calloway," the judge said. "You stand charged with bringing a false accusation of attempted assault against Lord Sable."

The words dropped into the silence like stones into still water.

It wasn't false. Not one word of it.

I lifted my chin and met his eyes. "I told the truth. He cornered me past the stables and tried to force himself on me. My arms were bruised for a week after. The healer examined me herself. Ask her."

"She also claims those bruises were self-inflicted," the judge shot back, irritation sharpening his voice.

Heat crawled up my throat. "Why would I hurt myself like that? Why would I ever—"

"Because she's desperate," someone in the crowd murmured, just loud enough to carry. "Desperate women do desperate things."

I found Lord Sable near the front, arms folded, expression perfectly composed. That same faint smile sat on his mouth, the one he'd worn while I screamed for help and no one came.

He winked at me.

I swallowed down the bile climbing my throat.

"I never encouraged him," I said. I already knew it wouldn't matter.

I was an omega. My word had never been worth much in this pack, and it certainly wasn't worth anything today.

"Enough!" the judge barked. "You dare bring your lies into this court and stain a nobleman's name with them. The audacity."

I bit down on my lip hard enough to draw blood.

"Twenty lashes," he announced, his voice rolling out over the whole silent room, "for false testimony. Whip laced with wolfsbane. Carried out immediately."

Gasps rippled through the crowd like wind through dry grass.

Two guards hauled me down to the underground cell where the pack handed out its worst punishments. My blouse was torn open down the back before I'd even stopped shaking.

"Begin," the judge said.

The first lash split my back open.

By the eighth, I could barely hold onto my own thoughts.

By the fifteenth, everything went dark.

---

I woke up in bed.

Not a real bed. A thin mattress with torn sheets, in the cramped servants' room I'd called mine since I was old enough to understand I'd never be given anything better. The smell of mildew clung to everything, including, apparently, me.

My back felt like it had been set on fire and left to keep burning.

"About time you woke up," my stepmother said from the doorway, her voice flat with disgust. "You've been lying there like a corpse all day."

I tried to push myself upright and my whole body screamed in protest.

She curled her lip at me. "This family has done nothing but suffer humiliation because of you. Accusing a lord? Have you lost your mind?"

"I—" My throat was bone dry. "I didn't lie."

"Save it. We've heard enough of your stories." She crossed the room and set down a bowl of cold water beside the bed without a shred of gentleness. "Get yourself cleaned up. The house doesn't clean itself."

Once she was gone, I forced myself upright, dipped a rag in the icy water, and pressed it to one of the open welts on my back, my hands trembling the whole time. My stepmother liked to call me the wounded w***e behind closed doors. No one in this house had bothered to check on me once.

Eventually I dragged myself to the dining room, hoping to grab a heel of bread and disappear before anyone noticed me.

My father sat at the head of the table as always, laptop open in front of him, dressed in a suit so white it looked like it had never touched dirt in its life. My stepsister sat beside him, giggling as she stirred honey into her tea.

"Good morning, Father," I said quietly, keeping my eyes down.

He didn't look up from his screen. "Where is your bracelet." Not even a real question. Just a statement waiting to be corrected.

My throat tightened. "I... I lost it."

He raised his eyes then. Once. Cold as ice water. "Do you understand what happens if you walk around without it?"

"I—" I stopped myself. It had been gone when I woke up the day before. I'd searched everywhere, before I left for work, before Lord Sable ever—

The rest of the sentence died in my throat.

My stepmother made a small, pitying sound and set her teacup down with a soft click. "Honestly, Father, perhaps it's time we admit she loses it on purpose. She craves attention that badly. It's rather sad, really."

He looked at me the way you'd look at something you regretted keeping around. "Your mother's bloodline enchanted that bracelet. It's the only thing keeping that filthy aura of yours contained."

I flinched.

"She was exactly the same," he said, voice going colder still. "Too beautiful. Too dangerous. Wolves lost their minds around her. You've only gotten worse since she died."

My stepsister let out a soft snort. "Honestly, it explains a lot, why the men act the way they do around her. They practically drool whenever she walks by."

The whispering had started the year I turned fifteen, when my aura first began to surface. Warriors stood too close. Merchants in the market stared too long. Married men, brushing past me in the street, would slip me coin and ask what it would cost to have me for an hour.

Even fully covered. Even after I begged the Moon Goddess, night after night, to make it stop.

They never stopped looking at me like prey.

The pack's w***e. That was the only name that ever stuck.

My stepmother came back into the room then, wiping her hands on a filthy apron, and gave me one glance before her lip curled again.

"Maybe this family wouldn't have to live with the shame you drag through this house every single day," she snapped, "if you'd learn to keep your legs closed."

I said nothing. What was there to say? Denial had never once been enough to change how they saw me.

My father nodded along without even glancing my way. "Mira, your reputation is beyond repair at this point. But the Moon Goddess works in strange ways."

I frowned. "What do you mean?"

He finally looked at me directly. "A marriage proposal has arrived. From the Alpha King."

My heart stopped cold in my chest.

"W-what?" I wasn't sure I'd heard him right.

He closed the laptop with a slow, deliberate motion. "This family will be honored beyond measure. Somehow, in spite of everything you've done, the Goddess has handed us this chance. You'll be marrying into royalty."

A bitter laugh tore out of me before I could stop it. "You want me to marry an Alpha? After spending my whole life calling me cursed?"

My stepmother scoffed. "You should be grateful anyone still wants you at all."

My hands curled into fists at my sides. "Who is he?"

My father took his time finishing his tea before he finally said the name that stopped my heart cold a second time.

"Ronan."