My Alpha Husband Humiliated Me Until the Lycan King Claimed Me

Maxine sat at the heavy oak kitchen table, her hands curved around a mug of black tea she hadn't touched. The steam had died out twenty minutes ago.

"The bank slip had an odd string of numbers printed across the bottom," she said softly, staring down at the dark surface of the tea. Her voice was thin, like paper left out in the sun. "Not our usual county branch. The young man behind the post office counter looked it up for me on his computer. He said the routing code cleared through Silverfang territory."

In the hollow space behind my ribs, my wolf stirred. Sluggish and bruised from that morning’s transfer, she dragged herself up and gave a low, grating growl. It was a sound of pure disgust.

Silverfang.

Maverick hadn't just rerouted my healing aura. He had funneled pack funds through their private banking exchanges.

I didn't call Callum back into the room. I didn't summon the Nighthollow Delta guards, and I didn't issue an alert through the pack link. If Maverick had been plotting this, he had eyes in our halls.

"Come on, Maxine," I said.

I took her frail elbow and helped her up. She held tightly to the dented tin of shortbread cookies, clutching it against her faded woolen coat like a shield. I guided her down the back porch steps, bypassed the main courtyard, and led her to my car.

I put the car in gear and drove toward the western highway. Maxine sat beside me in silence, her gnarled fingers resting over the hand-embroidered cloth wrapping her tin. The road stretched out under a grey, overcast sky. My hands stayed fixed on the steering wheel, my knuckles steady, while inside me, my depleted wolf pressed against my ribcage like an iron fist.

Two hours later, the asphalt turned into rough mountain road, cutting deep into Silverfang lands.

The moment the front tires crossed the border markers, the air shifted. Even with Maverick’s mental wall clamped down tight over our link, biological proximity was something he couldn't completely erase.

My inner wolf suddenly lunged upward.

It wasn't a clean shift. It was a desperate, agonizing heave of a creature starved of power, thrashing against the chemical fog that had dulled her since my childhood. The sudden jolt ripped through my nervous system, dragging Maverick's scent straight into my throat.

It hit me like a physical blow.

Pine. Bitter and sharp. But under it was the heavy musk of ceremonial frankincense, crushed white lilies, and sweet mating oils rubbed into bare skin. And woven tightly through all of it was that cloying trace of sweet almond and bruised berries.

My vision swam with red.

I jerked the wheel and pulled the car hard onto the gravel shoulder, cutting the engine. My breathing came in ragged, burning gasps. I gripped the wheel until the leather groaned and the skin across my knuckles turned white as bone.

Ten seconds.

I closed my eyes and counted them down.

*One.* Five years of shared beds and shared oaths.

*Three.* Five years of swallowing bitter vitamins every morning, believing my power was meant only to keep his borders whole.

*Six.* The promises made under the moon, the agreement to forgo pups so my strength wouldn't falter.

*Eight.* A mating ceremony. In another pack's sacred lodge.

*Ten.*

The phantom burn in my throat chilled. Inside my chest, my wolf stopped clawing. She didn't whimper. She didn't howl in grief. She dropped her head, went dead silent, and coiled in the dark. It wasn't surrender. It was the absolute, lethal stillness of an animal preparing to hunt.

A small, dry hand covered my forearm. Maxine didn't say a word. Her cloudy eyes looked straight into mine, filled with an ancient, weary sorrow that told me she already knew what a man looked like when he was running away.

I took a single breath, turned the key, and put the car back in drive.

Dusk had swallowed the trees by the time we reached the perimeter of the Silverfang ceremonial grounds. I parked the car off an overgrown dirt trail, hidden beneath a canopy of thick hemlock.

The scent in the evening air was so heavy now that even my dulled senses caught it without trying. It curled through the damp pines, leading up a winding stone path toward a massive timber lodge perched against the granite cliff. The windows blazed with warm, golden lantern light.

I led Maxine through the tree line, stepping quietly over pine needles until we reached the stone foundation. I leaned against the cold rock, peering through a high, leaded-glass window.

The view knocked the breath clean out of my lungs.

It was vast and ornate. Hundreds of cream-colored candles flickered along the stone walls. At the center of the hall stood an elevated dais, its altar draped in pristine white ceremonial linen and banked with white orchids. In the wooden pews below, dozens of high-ranking Silverfang wolves sat in silence, dressed in formal grey witnessing robes.

Maverick wasn't there for a border treaty.

He was standing near the altar in his formal Alpha coat, the stolen glow of my healing aura radiating off his skin like a halo.

Beside me, Maxine gasped. Her breath hitched, catching painfully in her chest. She began to wheeze, her frail frame trembling violently from the trek through the brush, her face flushed grey with exhaustion.

"Maxine," I whispered, turning to catch her by the shoulders. "You need to stay by the car. Wait for me."

"No," she rasped, her eyes wide, staring toward the light. She gripped my wrist with surprising strength, her voice shaking with thirty years of buried heartbreak. "No, Harper. That's my boy in there."

She refused to step back.

I swallowed the lump of ice in my throat, wrapped one arm firmly around her waist to bear her weight, and guided her toward the heavy, iron-latched side door.

The latch clicked. The door gave way without a sound, opening into the shadowed corridor of the lodge.