The Alpha’s Last Bride

The first night

Damien

The room was silent when I entered.

No fire. No candles. Just moonlight catching on the silk sheets as she lay there, still and waiting. Her back was to me, the lines of her body tense beneath the thin nightgown they’d given her. She hadn’t lit the hearth. Hadn’t turned down the bed herself. I wondered if she’d expected me to ignore the marriage terms. If part of her hoped I would.

But she was wrong.

I shut the door quietly behind me and crossed the stone floor with measured steps. She didn’t turn. Didn’t breathe a word. I preferred it that way. There was nothing to say.

I reached the edge of the bed and stared down at her for a long moment.

She was smaller than I remembered. Or maybe just thinner. Her ribs still showed despite the bath, and her hair, though brushed, clung damp to her neck. There were no flowers. No veil. No coy glances or soft, breathless questions. Just a trembling spine and the barest hitch of breath as she waited for me to make good on the contract she’d signed in blood.

Fine.

I caught the hem of her nightdress and yanked it up, bunching the fabric around her hips. She gasped, but didn’t protest. I pressed my palm between her shoulder blades, forcing her chest down into the mattress. She was silent—rigid and breathless—but I could feel her heart pounding beneath her skin.

Good.

I undid the buckle at my waist, pushed my trousers down just enough, and took her like she was nothing more than a means to an end. No ceremony. No tenderness. Just skin against skin, hot and cold all at once, the bed creaking with each brutal thrust.

She didn’t cry out. Didn’t sob or plead. But she didn’t move either.

When it was over, I stayed there for a moment longer than I should have. Breathing hard. Staring down at her back. My hand curled against the mattress beside her ribs, and I told myself it was only because I needed the balance.

Then I pulled away.

No words. No look. I straightened my clothes and left the room the same way I came—in silence.

There was no fire in the hearth.

And I didn’t light one.

The moment I shut her door behind me, the silence felt obscene. Like something had been carved open and left to rot. I didn’t linger.

Didn’t allow myself to look back.

Down the hall, firelight bled from the cracks beneath the doors of the east wing salon. Laughter spilled into the corridor—loud, crude, unfiltered.

My feet carried me there before my mind caught up.

Inside, the scent of smoke and spirits hit first. Men lounged with their boots on tables, half-empty bottles clinking against the stone hearth, dice scattered across the floor. A few of them stood when I entered, out of habit if not respect, but most didn’t bother. They were already too deep into the night.The keep’s great hall reeked of mead and smoke.

Men gathered like animals around a long oak table, tankards slamming, firelight dancing in their teeth. Laughter burst like thunder, lewd and loose, bouncing off the high stone walls. Someone had found an old lute, strumming it off-key while a few guards chanted a song too filthy to have ever been sung in any noble court.

I didn’t want to be here. But Garrick insisted appearances mattered. That I was expected to show my face—prove I’d survived my wedding night.

So I stood at the edge of the chaos, a fresh drink shoved into my hand before I could speak. I didn’t bother asking what it was. I downed it in one pull, the burn scraping clean through the cold left on my skin.

“She still in one piece?” one of the younger scouts asked, voice loud enough to carry.

The others howled.

“More than the last one,” someone else muttered, and they laughed harder.

I said nothing. Sat down at the end of the table and poured myself another drink.

“Careful, Alpha,” a warrior named Joren said, elbowing the man beside him. “We all caught her scent on you when you walked in. Poor girl didn’t even get a chance to fight back, did she?”

“She’ll be limping tomorrow,” another chimed in. “Might need one of those healers she used to work with.”

They laughed again, drunk on the thrill of violence disguised as camaraderie.

“She a good Luna?” someone finally asked, leaning over the table with a smirk. “Or just another one for the grave?”

The room went quiet. Not out of shame—but anticipation.

I looked up, slowly. Met his gaze. Growled—low and quiet—but didn’t say a word.

That was enough. They shifted uncomfortably, eyes flicking away, the mood souring just slightly. But no one apologized. No one stopped.

Elias was perched like a smug gargoyle in the high-backed chair closest to the fire, a glass of something amber in hand. He raised it in a mock toast when he saw me.

“Well, well,” he drawled, “our blushing bridegroom returns.”

I said nothing.

Someone—Karric, maybe—let out a bark of laughter and leaned toward the hearth. “So? Was she warm at least, Alpha? Or are rogues just as cold in bed as they are in blood?”

Another voice chimed in, lewd and low. “He doesn’t need her warm, just fertile.”

The room erupted. I crossed to the decanter without speaking, poured a glass, and drank it in one long pull. They took that as permission.

Elias raised his glass. “To our Alpha. May this one last longer than the last.”

The men echoed the toast, some with smirks, others with open mockery.

I took my seat without a word. I wasn’t in the mood for games—but it didn’t matter. The scent still clung to me. Ayla. Her skin, her breath, the way she’d gone silent beneath me.

“Tell me, cousin,” Elias drawled, leaning forward. “Was it different this time? Did you feel it?”

I gave him a warning look, but he didn’t flinch.

“I mean the curse,” he added. “Was there a moment when you thought—‘maybe this one won’t die’?”

Garrick scoffed from the doorway. “There is no curse. Just bad luck and worse timing. Don’t start with that superstitious horseshit again.”

Elias gave him a long look. “Four wives dead, Garrick. Four. All under strange circumstances. All after short, cold marriages. You can call it coincidence. I call it pattern.”

“You call everything a pattern if it gives you a reason to drink,” Garrick muttered.

I let them argue. The fire cracked behind me, the scent of pine and rain seeping through the windows. The whiskey warmed my fingers but did nothing for the chill in my chest.

“She’s different,” I said finally, voice low.

That quieted them both.

“She’s not like the others. Stronger. Wilder. I don’t think she’ll break so easily.”

“You sound almost hopeful,” Elias said with a slow grin. “Should we worry?”

I met his gaze. “I’m not hopeful. I’m prepared.”

Garrick shook his head. “Prepared for what? You said it yourself—she’s not even pack. She’s a rogue. The others were noble-born, raised to be Lunas. And still—”

“They died,” I cut in. “I know.”

Silence settled, heavy and cold.

“I’m not letting the curse win again,” I said. “Even if I have to chain her to the bed and stand guard at the door.”

Garrick looked disgusted. Elias looked intrigued.

“She’ll hate you,” Garrick muttered.

“She already does,” I replied. “But if it keeps her breathing, I’ll live with that.”

Elias laughed, soft and low. “There it is. The charm of Stormwatch Alpha.”

The laughter continued—too loud, too free, the kind that fed on discomfort. It clawed at me, at the back of my skull where the night still echoed with the sound of her breath, her silence, the sting of her eyes when I left her in the dark.

I slammed my glass down hard enough to silence the room.

“That’s enough.”

Chairs shifted. Garrick froze mid-pour. Elias raised a brow, but didn’t speak.

“She’s your Luna now,” I said flatly, standing. “And she will be treated as such.”

Karric chuckled nervously. “We didn’t mean—”

“I don’t care what you meant.” My voice dropped into a low growl. “The jokes end tonight. So does the indifference.”

I stalked across the room to where a lazy guard had his boots up, half-asleep in his chair. He didn’t move fast enough.

I kicked the chair out from under him.

“Get up.”

The guard stumbled to his feet, stammering. “Alpha—?”

“You want to keep your post?” I barked. “Then earn it. You’ll stand outside the Luna’s chambers until sunrise. And if anything happens to her while you're warming a chair, I’ll make sure the punishment fits the crime.”

He nodded quickly and scrambled out, boots thudding against the stone. The rest of them stared at me like I’d grown a second head. I didn’t care.

Let them think me cruel. Let them think I cared too much.

She would not die.

Not in her sleep. Not in the cold. Not under this roof like the others.

Garrick sighed as I passed, muttering something about overcorrecting.

Elias only smiled. “You can’t save her from the curse, cousin,” he said quietly. “But you might die trying.”