BREEDER FOR THE MAD ALPHA

CHAPTER 004

SERA

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Hours had passed and I was still sitting on the bed, turning everything over in my mind.

Kael's voice. The wink at the door. The way he had folded into himself the moment his mother touched his arm, like someone had reached in and turned a dial. I had been trying to figure out what it meant since the door clicked shut and I had not landed anywhere useful yet.

The door opened and I straightened automatically.

I straightened automatically.

Maids filed in carrying bags and wide flat trays, moving around the room without looking at me, setting things down on the dresser, the table, the foot of the bed.

Then a young woman walked in behind them.

She was young, maybe a few years older than me, and she carried herself like someone who had been told from birth that every room she entered was hers by right.

Her face was striking enough to stop you mid-sentence, and she walked toward me wearing an expression of open disdain.

"So this is the breeder." She said it to the room more than to me. Then she looked at me directly. "My name is Vera. I am here because it is my job to make sure you are presentable enough to step foot inside the Alpha’s chambers tonight.”

I held her gaze and said nothing.

"I imagine you already know what it takes to please a man," she continued, her voice smooth and unhurried, "so that part should not be too difficult for someone like you. Our job is simply to ensure that you look at least worthy of sharing his bed." She reached into one of the bags and drew out a dress, then lifted a piece of jewelry from the tray and set both aside. "I also want to be very clear about something." She smiled at me, and it was the same smile the elderly woman had used the night before — all mouth, nothing behind it. "Women in your position tend to see opportunity in situations like this. They start to get ideas." She tilted her head slightly. "Do not. Your only purpose here is to warm his bed and carry his children. Nothing more than that."

She turned back to the bags.

"After tonight we will discuss your cycle so we can schedule the appropriate nights. We will not be doing this randomly." She held up a garment, considered it, put it back. "And just so we understand each other — sharing his bed does not make you anything. It does not give you a title, a seat, or a voice. You are a slave. A useful one, for now, but a slave."

Each word landed exactly where she intended it to.

I sat with my hands folded in my lap and my face arranged into something neutral and let them land.

I had learned that particular skill young — how to take a hit without giving anyone the satisfaction of watching you feel it.

Nothing but a slave.

I almost laughed.

Barely a week ago I had been standing in front of a different mirror, whispering about university applications and saving enough money to register for the spring semester.

I had been three months away, maybe two.

I had been so close I could feel the shape of it.

Now I am here.

Vera set a lingerie set, a robe, and a chain of jewelry on the bed beside me.

Then she gestured at the collection of bags the maids had carried in. "The rest of the clothes and jewelry in those belong to you as well. We cannot have you walking around this pack looking like you came in off the street." She straightened and looked at me one last time. "You have thirty minutes to get ready. Thirty minutes. There will be a maid waiting outside your door."

Then she walked out and took all her careful cruelty with her.

I sat there for a moment after the door closed.

Then I picked up the lingerie with both hands, stood, and got dressed.

༺༺༒༻༻

When I stepped in front of the mirror I did not recognise myself at first.

The woman looking back at me had the same tired eyes, the same cut at the corner of her lip that still had not fully healed — but the dress fit like it had been made with her measurements in mind, the jewelry caught the lamplight and threw it back softly, and she looked, for the first time in years, like someone who was allowed to take up space.

She looked beautiful.

I hated how much I noticed it.

I hated that they had dressed me up like this, that I had put it on, that I was standing here appreciating my own reflection while tears were sliding quietly down my face and I had not even felt them start.

I wiped them away with the back of my hand.

I squared my shoulders.

I looked myself in the eye and held my own gaze for a long moment, the way I used to when I was younger and things were hard and I needed to remind myself that I was still in there.

I was still there.

I turned from the mirror, walked to the door, opened it, and followed the maid down the hall.

I stood in front of his door for longer than I should have.

The maid had walked me here and left without a word, and now it was just me and the dark wood and the thin strip of light coming from underneath it. I could hear movement inside.

I raised my hand and knocked.

"Come in."

I pushed the door open.

He was mid-stride across the room when he saw me and he stopped. Just — stopped. His eyes moved over me slowly, from the top of my head down, and when they came back up to my face he exhaled quietly and said, "You look so hot."

The words caught me completely off guard.

Heat crawled up the back of my neck before I could catch it and I turned my eyes to the window on the far wall and kept them there.

"You are shaking," he said. His voice had changed, gone quieter. "And I can smell the fear on you from here. I already told you — I will not touch you without—"

"That will not be necessary." I looked back at him. "I was brought here for a reason. I would like it if we could just get it over with."

He looked at me for a long, quiet moment.

“Sit down,” he said. “Please. I need to talk to you before anything else happens tonight.”

I sat on the edge of the chair nearest to me and watched him stand in the centre of the room with both hands in his pockets.

"I want to apologise again," he said. "For the way you were brought here."

"It does not matter. It is done."

"It matters to me." He held my gaze. "“I wanted to tell you as well that I have been thinking about your situation since this morning and I believe I have something to offer you that might change how the rest of this goes. If you are willing to hear me out.”

I said nothing.

What could he possibly have to say that would change anything about my situation today?

He exhaled slowly. "I am going to be honest with you. I am not interested in a breeder."

I frowned.

"My stepmother has been desperate for one because the council gave a deadline for an heir to the throne. That deadline created a panic, and you were the result of that panic." He paused. "I understand the terms of the deal that brought you here. But if you are willing to cooperate with me, I would like to change those terms."

"I am not interested in cooperating with anyone in this place."

"Hear me out."

Something in his voice made me stay quiet.

He took one step toward me, steady and unhurried. "I want to make you my legal wife."

The room went very still.

"I'm sorry — what?"

"My legal wife," he said again, no hesitation. “Not a kept woman, not a breeder hidden in a back room. My wife, with the full title and everything attached to it. You would have authority in this pack. You would have freedom to move, to decide, to build whatever it is you want to build.” He watched my face carefully. “I imagine there are things you want for yourself. Things that were interrupted by what happened to you. A title like Luna would not get in the way of those things. It would open doors.”

I stared at him.

I wanted to tell him I did not believe a single word coming out of his mouth. I wanted to stand up and say that I had grown up around men who used kindness as a doorway to something worse, and I was not walking through it again. I wanted to say a great many things.

What came out was, "Why?"

He held my gaze without blinking.

“Because I need your help,” he said. “I need someone I can trust inside these walls and right now that list is very short.” He paused for just a beat. “I need you to help me take down my stepmother.”

He let that settle, and then added in a voice that was quieter and more careful than anything he had said before it, “And my brother.”