Wrong Room, Right Mate: Married to The Lycan Prince

CHAPTER ONE WREN'S POV The first thing I noticed when I woke up was the smell of antiseptic. The second was the dull, burning ache in my right side, where the surgeons had cut out my appendix only hours before. Before they wheeled me into the operating room, I had sent Callum a message. Just three words. I'm having surgery. He had not answered. He hadn't even read it. My phone buzzed against the blanket. Tess Ridley, my best friend. My fingers tightened around it. "Hi, Tess," I said, and my voice came out small and guilty. "You know?" "Huh? You know too?" She paused. Then she laughed. "Oh, right. You're my uncle's secretary. Of course you know. I can't believe he's been single all these years, waiting for her." Waiting for her? My breath caught. Deep inside me, my wolf, Sable, went perfectly still. "I can't stand Isabelle Marlowe, though," Tess went on. "She's so fake. She has that breathy little voice, and I have no idea what my uncle sees in her." Relief and horror hit me at the same time. For one terrible second I had thought Tess had found out about us. She hadn't. The girlfriend she was talking about wasn't me. "Tess," I said carefully, pressing my lip between my teeth against the pain. "Are you sure you're not mistaken?" Callum had held me every night before he left the country. I had fallen asleep against his chest, breathing in his scent. How could he have moved on in a week? "Mistaken? Please. Hold on, I'm video calling you." The screen flipped. Snow, bright and blinding. Two figures in ski suits, one pink and one black. "The pink one is Isabelle. The black one is my uncle. Look at them! He's warming her hands and kissing her right in front of me. Gross." The camera was far away, but I would have known that broad back anywhere. Callum Ridley. Alpha of the Ridley Pack, heir to the Alpha King's throne, and the man I had loved in secret for three years. He was blowing on her fingers. Slowly. The way he used to do with mine. He had promised me that once I turned twenty-five, he would make us public. My birthday was in five days. I lay in a hospital bed with stitches in my stomach, and watched him give away what he had promised me. A nurse pushed through the curtain, studying her chart. "Bed thirty-six, time to change your dressing." "Wren, are you in the hospital?" Tess asked. I swallowed a sob. "No. I'm just visiting someone. I'll call you later, okay?" "Okay! I'll text you!" The call ended. A second later my phone buzzed again. I always thought my uncle liked men. Turns out he just likes pretty ones. Isabelle kind of looks like you, now that I think about it. I had heard that sentence for years. Isabelle was not my blood. After my father died, my mother remarried into the Marlowe Pack. That was how Isabelle became my stepsister. The perfect one. The one my mother loved. I closed the chat, and a notification slid down from the top of the screen. Isabelle. Hehe, my personal trainer. Under it was a photo from the slope. Callum wasn't looking at the camera. His head was bent toward her, his eyes soft, his whole face filled with her. A comment sat underneath, from an account I knew by heart. Princess Isabelle. It was his. Like a fool, I tapped his profile. Valentine's Day. Christmas. New Year's Eve. Every time he had told me he was working late. Every business trip. Every cancelled dinner. In all, there was Isabelle smiling at his side. I scrolled and scrolled, as if the next picture might explain it. It never did. I was cold all the way to my bones, and Sable gave a low, broken whine. So that was it. I had never been his mate. I had been a stand-in, keeping her place warm. The nurse was talking. I nodded at whatever she said and let her turn back the blanket, and I stared at the ceiling tiles while she worked. I counted them. Forty-two. I did not cry. If I cried, I would have to admit what I was crying about. When she left, I picked up my phone and texted my mother. I agree to the blind date. For once, her answer came almost at once. Good. You've finally thought it over. The room is 1012. Keep your posture low and don't say anything stupid. Understand? A bitter laugh scraped up my throat. She couldn't wait to sell me off. It all started the winter after Grandpa's funeral. I was twenty-two, six months into my first real job, and Callum had stopped by my desk at midnight to tell me to go home. Then he had driven me there himself. Then, he stayed for tea. He never said the word girlfriend. He said, Not yet. He said, Let me handle the timing. He said, You know how it is with my family. I did know how it was. I knew the Ridleys and the Marlowes had been circling each other for decades. And that Isabelle had been abroad, studying music. And that nobody said her name in the office without a little reverent pause. I knew all of it. I just hadn't put the pieces side by side until a stranger's voice on a phone did it for me. Three years. I had made his tea the way he liked it. I had learned which silences meant he was tired and which meant he was angry. I had kept a toothbrush in his bathroom and never once let myself call it mine. And the worst part was not that he had lied. The worst part was how easily I had let him. Fine, I thought. If I was going to be sold, I would at least set the price. I pulled the IV out myself, signed myself out over the nurse's objections, and flagged down a cab. Every bump in the road pulled at my stitches. I didn't mind. Pain was something I could name. It was simple, and it stayed in one place. My phone lay face-up on my knee, and twice I opened the thread with Callum. Just to look at the unread tick beside my three words. Delivered. Not read. I thought about typing something else. Something furious, or something pleading. I couldn't tell which one I would send, so I sent nothing, and put the phone in my pocket. The driver glanced at me in the mirror and turned the radio down without a word. I was grateful to him in a way I couldn't have explained. The cab let me out at the Silverline Hotel, all glass and gold light. A doorman held the door. I walked past him with my chin up and my hand pressed to my bandage under my cardigan, and no one looked twice. Of course they didn't. Nobody ever noticed me. That was the thing I had been best at for three years. In the elevator, I caught my reflection in the brass. Pale. Hair flat. A woman in yesterday's clothes who had just been dumped by a man who had never admitted he was hers. I couldn't help it anymore. I let the tears free after holding them back. The elevator ride was long enough to let a little bit of my frustration out. Floor ten. The carpet swallowed my footsteps. Room 1012. I thought of my mother's text. Keep your posture low. I straightened my back instead, pushed the door open, and walked in. A man stood at the window with a phone to his ear, a tall shape against the city lights. He turned his head at the sound. My eyes widened. Was this Mr. Thorne?