MARRIED TO THE ALPHA KING, MATED TO THE MASKED WOLF

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER FOUR

LAURA

Three days. That’s how long I’d been living in Kyle Blackthorne’s apartment before I stopped jumping every time I heard him move. Three days of learning his schedule—he left at 6:15 a.m. exactly, came back between 7 and 9 p.m. depending on whatever important Alpha King business kept him busy, made coffee for himself alone, ate standing up at the counter, scolded me for every little thing, then disappeared into his room.

While I stayed in mine. Crying most of the time.

That was it. That was my marriage.

I explored the apartment on day one because I had nothing else to do. The kitchen had food I didn’t recognize in brands I couldn’t pronounce. The living room had books arranged by color, which told me either Kyle had no personality or someone had decorated for him. The second bedroom was empty except for a treadmill. My room had everything I needed and nothing I wanted.

I spent most of that first day on the phone with Mia. “Describe it again,” she said.

“Big. Expensive. Empty.”

When I told her the hand soap in my bathroom cost forty dollars, she said she hated him. I looked out at Central Park in the rain, gray and beautiful, and told her I was fine. I wasn’t.

Day two, I tried to leave—not to escape, just to get normal coffee from the bodega on Amsterdam with the three-dollar bacon, egg, and cheese. The binding let me reach the elevator, then my body just stopped cooperating, like I’d walked into an invisible wall. I stood there for five minutes before going back inside.

Eventually I figured out the machine in the kitchen. It made incredible coffee. I hated that it was incredible.

That same day I found the terrace, wrapping around the building with views of the park on one side and downtown on the other. I sat out there for two hours in Kyle’s expensive robe, watching the city move below me. Everyone had somewhere to be. A life that was actually theirs.

Kyle came home at 8 p.m., saw me through the glass for exactly two seconds, and went to his room.

I couldn’t hold it in anymore. I knocked. He opened the door.

“What do you want, Laura?”

“I don’t want anything. I just want to go home.”

The words spilled out after that—how he was keeping me like a prisoner, how he could have married anyone else, how I was only twenty-four and already miserable. He said I needed someone to fix my miserable life and pay my debt and told me to stop acting like a princess. I told him yes, we were in debt, but my life had been perfect before this, and now I was stuck with a bloody devil who lacked sympathy.

He told me to get out of his sight and closed the door.

Day three blurred into the same silence. I texted and FaceTimed Mara—God, I missed her. That night Kyle came home earlier than usual and found me in the kitchen eating leftover pad thai straight from the container.

“There’s a dining table,” he said.

“I know.”

He ate standing at the other end of the counter, and we stood there in silence, three feet apart. After two minutes, I started laughing because the whole thing was so absurd.

“This is crazy,” I said.

“What is?”

“The fact that I have an actual mate—the one the Moon Goddess chose for me—but some arrogant, ruthless Alpha King bought me from my father. Isn’t it funny?”

He said it wasn’t. Of course he didn’t find it funny. He rinsed his container and left.

Later, past midnight, I heard a soft sound against the glass. Then another. I went to the window—and there he was. Standing on the fire escape one floor below, silver wolf mask, dark clothes, looking up at me.

K. Is here

I opened the window and he climbed in, fast and silent. The moment he stepped inside, I shoved him hard.

“Where the hell were you? Three days, K. I texted. I waited.”

He said he tried to get there, that by the time he found out about the contract the ceremony had already started. I told him he could’ve done something, that he promised. He didn’t argue. Just said he should’ve been there sooner and that he was sorry.

I sat on the bed while he stayed by the window, giving me space. He said the Northern Pack building on Central Park West wasn’t hard to figure out. There was something careful in the way he mentioned knowing where Blackthorne lived, but I was too tired to dig.

“I’m married,” I said.

“I know.”

“It’s permanent. I can’t leave. I’m stuck.”

He came and sat beside me, not touching, just close.

“I’m not leaving you here,” he said. “I’ll come every night until we figure this out.”

I told him it was a terrible idea. He agreed. He took my hand anyway.

We made rules—every night, answer my texts, no more disappearing. He said he’d try. Then he kissed me. Not electric like the masquerade. Quieter. Desperate. Complicated. His hands in my hair, mine against his chest, the mask brushing my fingers every time I reached for his face.

Always the mask.

When we pulled apart, our foreheads rested together. I told him I missed him. He said three days felt like a lifetime. He stayed for two hours, talking in feelings instead of facts, giving me pieces but never the whole truth.

Around 2 a.m., he stood to leave.

“Who are you?” I asked.

He looked at me for a long moment.

“Someone who loves you,” he said.

That’s not an answer. But the only one he’d give. Then he climbed back out the window and disappeared into the night.

I sat there in the dark—married to a cold. Wicked man, in love with another masked man, stepping into something that would only make everything harder. My phone buzzed. Good night. Every night.

I put it face down and lay back, staring at the ceiling. On the other side of the apartment, Kyle was probably asleep, perfectly unbothered in his organized Alpha King life.

I fell asleep wondering if Kyle ever thought about the girl living in his guest room.