One Night with the Alpha, Forever as His Substitute

Tomorrow I would be sold. The seamstress knelt at my feet with pins between her lips, and she sighed for the third time. "I've let these seams out twice, my lady. Alphas prefer their brides delicate." I stared into the mirror. A plump girl in ivory silk stared back, the fabric straining across her hips, her cheeks burning. The dress had been cut for someone else. "She'll do," said my stepmother from the doorway. Lady Odalys Thorne did not look at me. She looked at the dress. "Blackmoon needs a breeder, not a beauty. The veil will hide the rest." The rest. That was me. Three nights ago, my sister Seraphine had climbed out of her window and vanished. Seraphine, who was slim and golden and perfect, who was supposed to marry Alpha Kaelen Draven and seal the treaty that kept Ashfall Pack alive. The treaty could not break. So Odalys had looked across the breakfast table at the daughter she never wanted, and she had found a use for me. "He has never met her," she said. "He will never know the difference." "And if he does?" "Then you will make sure he doesn't." Her smile was thin as a blade. "Twenty-four years we have fed you, Mira. It's time you earned your keep." My father sat by the window with his eyes on his boots. Garrick Thorne, Beta of Ashfall, had not said one word. He never did. "Yes, Stepmother," I whispered. I always said yes. But that night, while our caravan slept at an inn in Harrowgate, the neutral border town where the Moon Festival roared with music and lanterns, I did something I had never done in my life. I stole a mask, and I ran. If I was going to be sold at dawn, I wanted one thing first that nobody had chosen for me. The square glowed with a thousand paper lanterns. Wolves from a dozen packs drank and danced under the swollen moon, every face hidden behind silver. Nobody knew I was the Beta's plump, forgettable daughter. Nobody knew I was a lie in a borrowed dress waiting to happen. I ordered a drink I couldn't afford and held it with both hands so they wouldn't shake. Then the air changed. It wasn't a sound. It was pressure, like a storm settling into my spine. My wolf, Ember, who had hidden from the world for years, lifted her head and went completely still. A man had stopped at the end of the bar. Tall. Black coat, black mask, the lower half of his face cut sharp as a blade. Dark hair. Hands that looked made for violence and restraint in equal measure. He wasn't watching the lanterns. He was watching me. "You're staring," I said, because my voice needed something to do. "You're the only person here not pretending to enjoy this." His voice was low and rough, gravel wrapped in velvet. Ember shivered. "And you're the only one not drinking." "I'm waiting." "For what?" He stepped closer. Cedar. Winter air. Something wild underneath. "I haven't decided yet." Something inside me clicked, small and warm and impossible, like a key turning in a lock I never knew I had. "No names," I said, before I lost my nerve. "Not tonight." Behind the mask, his eyes flashed amber for half a heartbeat. "No names," he agreed. He asked me to dance, and I forgot how to say no. His hand settled at my waist, big and steady, and I braced for it. The flinch. The tiny recoil men always gave when they touched a body like mine. It never came. His palm spread wider. His thumb pressed into the soft curve above my hip, slowly, almost reverently. "You tensed," he murmured against my ear. "Why?" "Because I'm used to it." "Used to what?" "Being someone people wish were smaller." His grip tightened. His voice dropped into something dangerous. "Then they are fools." I laughed, and it came out broken. Then I stopped laughing, because he was looking at my mouth. "Tell me to go," he said quietly, "and I will." I thought of the dress. I thought of the veil that would hide me. I thought of every year I had spent making myself small enough to be tolerated. "Stay," I said. The room above the tavern was dark except for lantern light bleeding through the shutters. The door clicked shut, and he turned me against it, one hand braced beside my head, breathing hard like a man holding something back with his teeth. "Last chance," he rasped. "Don't you dare." He kissed me. It was nothing like the clumsy, apologetic kisses I had stolen from boys who never called again. It was slow and deliberate and absolutely certain, and when I gasped, he swallowed the sound. His mask hit the floor. Mine followed. In the dim light I saw sharp cheekbones, a scar slashing through one dark brow, eyes the color of dark gold. Then I stopped seeing anything, because his mouth was at my throat. He undressed me as if he were unwrapping something precious. When his hands found my hips, my stomach, the soft heavy curves I had been taught to hide, he did not hurry past them. He lingered. His mouth followed his hands, and the low groan against my skin made my knees buckle. "Beautiful," he said. Not a compliment. A fact. As if I were a fool for not knowing. Tears stung my eyes. Nobody had ever looked at me like that. Not once. When we finally came together, it was slow, and then it wasn't. I clung to his shoulders, his forehead pressed to mine, our breath tangled, every nerve in my body lit like the lanterns outside. Ember was howling inside me. Somewhere in the heat, his teeth grazed the curve of my neck, the place where a mate's mark belongs, and he went rigid. He pulled back, shaking. "Not like this," he said hoarsely, almost to himself. "Not without knowing your name." I should have been afraid. Instead I touched his scarred brow and whispered, "Then don't ask." He made a sound like something breaking, and he kissed me again, softer this time, and held me through the rest of the night as if I were the only solid thing in the world. I fell asleep in his arms thinking: So this is what it feels like to be wanted. I woke before dawn. He slept with one heavy arm around my waist, his face finally unguarded. Younger, somehow. Tired. A man who had carried too much for too long. A very stupid, very brave part of me wanted to stay. But the horn of Ashfall's caravan was already sounding in the distance. I was not a woman who got to keep things. I was a substitute, a body in a borrowed dress, and by sunrise I belonged to a stranger who would never want me. I pressed my lips to the scar on his brow, so lightly he didn't stir. "Thank you," I whispered. "For one night." I slid from beneath his arm, dressed in the dark, and left without looking back. Because if I looked back, I would never go. The Blackmoon wedding hall was carved from black stone and silver pillars, packed with wolves who stared at me like I was livestock. I stood at the altar in the dress that didn't fit, veiled to the chin, my stepmother's lie sitting on my shoulders like iron. I could not feel my hands. Beside me, the groom waited in black, his back to me, utterly still. Tall. Broad shouldered. Something about that silhouette made my chest ache, and I told myself I was imagining it. I was exhausted. I was grieving a night I had no right to grieve. That was all. "Alpha Kaelen Draven," the priestess intoned. "Lift your bride's veil." The room held its breath. He turned. Cedar. Winter air. Something wild underneath. My blood turned to ice. His hand rose slowly and lifted the veil, and I looked into dark gold eyes I had last seen twelve hours ago, half closed with pleasure. The scar through his brow. Kaelen Draven, the cold Alpha who had never touched a bride, stared at me. The color drained from his face. His fingers went rigid on the lace. The hall was silent. Then, in a voice that only I could hear, flat and deadly and shaking with something I could not name, he said: "You." Behind us, an old man's voice rang out across the hall. "Alpha, forgive me. That is not Seraphine Thorne." Kaelen's hand closed around my wrist. And for the first time in my life, I could not tell whether I was being held or caught.