I Left Potatoes, My Alpha King Raged

Chapter 3

My first day inside the Pack House, I overheard the maids whispering.

"Look at her,the new girl, Chris. Doesn't she look so much like Lady Isabella…"

"Oh, Lady Isabella married into a small Pack up north three years ago, for her family's interests. King Alexander has been pining for her ever since."

"It's true. He still keeps her portrait hanging in his study."

I was young then, and stubborn, and full of fire. I didn't care about being a stand-in. I'd read enough human romance novels to know this trope inside and out.

So long as King Alexander treated me well, fed me good meat, gave me a big house,what was wrong with playing the substitute?

In King Alexander's study, I saw the portrait.

The girl wore a pale-green silk gown, her hair cascading like a slow waterfall. She really was beautiful. Like an angel, even.

After that, the gifts started arriving,green dresses, all of them. I wore them all without complaint.

He had me study aristocratic etiquette, flower arrangement, piano. I did all of it,though my piano playing sounded mostly like a woman cracking walnuts.

Then came that rainy night.

He came home drunk. He pinned me to the bed and kissed me with a kind of desperate, ravenous hunger,and a guilt I didn't recognize at the time.

He reached over and clicked off the lamp. The room plunged into darkness.

"Don't be afraid, Chris," he whispered against my ear. "I'll be good to you."

That was our first time. That was the moment the Mate Bond truly awakened between us.

I thought it was love. I thought we were each other's only one.

In the three years that followed, he was good to me. As an unfavored prince, his resources were limited,but he saved the best of everything for me. If there was a single box of imported cherries, he would peel each one and lay them in front of me like an offering.

He told me, "Chris, I don't have other women. Every cent of my money is for you."

So I didn't hold back, either. I started spending lavishly,sending help to the broke Rogue friends I had known back when I had nothing.

He never asked. He told the steward, "As long as Chris is happy, I don't care how much she spends."

My Mentor had taught me one rule above all others: take a man's money, you do a man's work.

So in return, I became Alexander's living shield. When his political rivals tried to ambush him in the forest, I lay buried in a swamp for a full day and a full night, slowing my breath until even the trackers couldn't sniff me out, and then I turned the trap back on them.

In the bloody coup that took him to the Alpha King's throne, I caught three silver arrows for him. The scars on my back are still there.

I walked beside him every step of the way,from disgraced prince to absolute power.

I thought we had paid our dues. I thought now we could be happy forever.

Then Isabella came back.

The unattainable first love he had married off to the north,the white-gowned ghost of his every quiet moment,came home. Her husband had died, unexpectedly, and she returned with a fortune in inheritance, a face full of trembling tears, and walked right back into Alexander's life.