Stolen By The Alpha's Dangerous Brother
For ten years, I played the safe, "wolfless" emotional support animal for my werewolf best friend, Finn, secretly loving him while he chased his toxic ex.
When she got engaged to a rival Alpha, he dragged me across the country to crash the mating ceremony, only to abandon me at the airport.
His terrifying older brother, Alpha Knox, picked me up instead and shattered my world with one sentence: Finn had always known how I felt, and he intentionally weaponized my devotion.
To prove how little I meant to him, Knox orchestrated a cruel test at a seedy Rogue club.
While I sat right next to Finn in a sticky booth, Knox sent over a stripper.
"You don't mind, right, Sloane? It's just a gift," Finn slurred.
Without hesitating, he let the stripper straddle him right in front of me, burying his face in her neck to chase away the pain of his ex.
A decade of my blind loyalty turned to ash in that smoke-filled room.
I hated my defective, wolfless biology, but I hated him more for treating me like a stray dog begging for scraps.
Why did I waste my entire youth protecting a male who didn't even see me as a woman?
Suffocating on shame and fury, I fled to the cramped club bathroom to hide.
*Click.*
The deadbolt slid into place, and the intoxicating scent of a violent thunderstorm and spent gunpowder swallowed me whole.
Alpha Knox Crawford stood against the locked door, his merciless eyes pinning me to the sink.
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Chapter 8
Knox POV
Sloane shoved me away, stumbling backward like a sinner caught in the light.
My Inner Wolf rumbled, a deep, vibrating purr of satisfaction at the flush staining her cheeks. I watched her tremble, thoroughly enjoying the chaotic aftermath of my wager. Then, my gaze shifted to the doorway.
Finn stood there, reeking of sour rain and heartbreak. His scent, usually just a pathetic whisper of wet grass, spiked into something sharp and acrid with sudden anger. He looked at us with those wide, accusing eyes—our mother's eyes—filled with a jagged disbelief.
"What is going on here?" Finn demanded, his voice scraping like sandpaper.
Sloane, my brave but terrible little liar, panicked. "I—I tripped," she stammered, her voice a breathless squeak. "I lost my balance, and Knox just..."
Her defense sounded like the whimper of a cornered kitten. My Inner Wolf found it incredibly amusing. I didn't expose her lie. Instead, I stepped closer, deliberately positioning my massive frame half-in-front of hers in a blatant display of possession.
"She needed someone to catch her," I drawled, my tone dripping with dark mockery. "You weren't here."
The words hit exactly where I aimed. Finn flinched, the reminder of his absence and inadequacy striking him like a physical blow. His fragile sanity began to crumble.
Desperate to change the subject, Sloane looked at Finn. "What happened outside? Is Delilah..."
"The wedding is still on," Finn choked out, his fists trembling at his sides.
A microscopic sigh of relief slipped past Sloane's lips. She tried to hide it, but Finn caught it. That tiny, involuntary reaction was the final straw for his fragile Inner Wolf. He glared at her, his chest heaving.
"Go upstairs, Sloane," Finn ordered, his voice trembling with a pathetic attempt at authority. "I need to speak with my brother. Alone."
Sloane shot me a terrified, warning look before hurrying up the grand staircase. The moment she was out of sight, Finn turned his pathetic fury on me.
"Stay away from her," Finn snarled, though he wisely kept his distance. "I know what you're doing. You're trying to use her to get to me. Just like Lydia."
The name grated against my wolf's patience. He was so incredibly blind. He thought this was about our ugly history. He thought Sloane was just a pawn.
I took a slow step forward, letting the crushing weight of my Alpha aura flood the Great Hall. The scent of a violent thunderstorm and spent gunpowder swallowed his weak rain scent whole. Finn's knees buckled slightly, his Inner Wolf whining in immediate submission.
"You don't see her, little brother," I growled, my baritone vibrating in the floorboards. "You see a wolfless pet to lick your wounds. I see a queen."
Finn's eyes widened in sheer terror as the truth finally penetrated his thick skull.
"I am going to pursue her," I continued, stepping into his personal space. "I am going to claim her. And I am going to ruin her for anyone else until she forgets your name entirely."
Utterly defeated by my aura and my declaration, Finn let out a frustrated, strangled sound. He spun on his heel and stomped up the stairs like a petulant child whose toy had just been snatched away.
My goal had never been clearer: win the wager, claim my Fated Mate, and shatter my brother's pathetic delusions in the process.
Thirty minutes later, I parked my Shelby outside a high-end hotel in downtown Asheville. The sterile, human scent of carpet cleaner in the hallway did nothing to mask the sweet, calculating orchid perfume leaking from the presidential suite.
I knocked once. The door swung open.
Delilah stood there in a sheer silk robe, her scent laced with a bitter edge of fear. She tried to block the doorway, offering me a sultry, practiced smile that made my Inner Wolf bare its teeth in disgust.
"Knox," she purred, though her eyes darted nervously down the hall. "If you're here to tell Hunter about Finn, let's make a deal. I can make it worth your while."
I didn't waste my breath. I hit her with a fraction of my Alpha aura, forcing her to stumble back, and strode into the suite.
"Mating Ceremonies are sacred," I said coldly, staring down at her. "You defiled yours two days before it even began."
Before she could beg again, the bathroom door opened. Hunter Strickland walked out, a towel slung low on his hips, his hair damp. Delilah instantly slithered to his side, wrapping her arms around his waist and pressing a kiss to his chest, playing the perfect, devoted Luna.
"Knox," Hunter said, his brow furrowing in surprise. "What are you doing here?"
"Get dressed," I told him, ignoring the venomous glare Delilah shot me. "We need to talk."
Once Delilah was banished to the bedroom, Hunter poured us both a glass of whiskey. I looked at my best friend, seeing the exhaustion beneath his Alpha exterior.
"You know she doesn't love you, right?" I asked bluntly. "Her scent is a lie."
Hunter stared into his glass, his jaw tight. "I'm not a fool, Knox. I know about her history with Finn. But my wolf... my wolf chose her. The alliance makes sense."
He was blinded by a false bond and pack politics. Direct intervention wasn't going to work. If I wanted to save my friend—and win my wager for Sloane—I needed to force his hand.
"Then let's celebrate your impending doom properly," I said, downing my whiskey. "I'm taking you to Obsidian tonight. There's one on the edge of the neutral zone. A real bachelor party. Just you, me, and a place where primal instincts don't lie."
Hunter hesitated, then nodded. The trap was set.
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7.3
Clara came home from a fourteen-hour board meeting to the sound of a piercing scream in the playroom.
When she rushed in, she found her husband, Chadwick, kneeling on the floor in a panic.
But he wasn't looking at their five-year-old son, Leo, who had a massive bleeding welt on his forehead.
Instead, Chadwick was trembling as he held the nanny's daughter, Autumn, who barely had a microscopic scratch.
"She needs ice. And antibacterial ointment," Chadwick snapped, carrying the nanny's daughter away and leaving his bleeding son behind.
From that moment, the nightmare only escalated.
Chadwick ordered Clara to cook a three-hour meal for the nanny's kid, threw away Leo's favorite toys because Autumn sneezed, and even secretly took the nanny and her daughter on Leo's promised Disney trip.
The final humiliation came at the Met Gala.
Right before their sponsor speech, Chadwick received a frantic call from the nanny claiming Autumn was having a panic attack.
He abandoned Clara in front of hundreds of flashing cameras, sprinting out of the ballroom.
Clara stood completely alone, the humiliation eating through her veins like acid.
She couldn't understand how a father could call the nanny's kid his "little princess" while watching his own son cry.
Why was he treating his own flesh and blood like garbage just to play savior to another woman's child?
Suddenly, the blinding camera flashes were blocked by a massive shadow.
Erasmo Chase, the heir to New York's largest financial dynasty, stepped out of the darkness and shielded her.
"A man like that is unworthy of your grief, Ms. Best," he whispered, pressing a silk handkerchief into her trembling hand.
Looking at the sharp profile of the powerful man beside her, Clara's shock hardened into a lethal, cold fury.
She was going to dump her family's shares, crash the board, and make Chadwick lose absolutely everything.
9.1
The best way to get back at a cheating bastard? Make him sick to his stomach for the rest of his life!
Days before her wedding, Corinne caught her fiancé cheating with his coworker in what she thought was their future home.
Furious, she tore everything apart, ended the engagement, and decided on a bold revenge plan.
To make him regret it for life, she set her sights on marrying his powerful uncle. Confident in her scheme, she tried to win over the cold, untouchable man, only to realize too late that she had mistaken his identity.
The man she married was far more dangerous than she imagined!
Corinne decided to make a quick escape. "Let's get a divorce. We're clearly not right for each other... "
He cornered her with a knowing smile, "Not right for each other? Funny, that's not what you said last night in bed. Want me to remind you how wrong you are?"
9.5
As the fetal monitor screamed in the delivery room, Danae begged the nurses to call her billionaire husband to save their dying baby.
Instead of Adrian, his chief lawyer arrived with a chilling directive: all emergency interventions were explicitly denied.
While security guards pinned her arms to the mattress, Danae was forced to listen to her baby's heartbeat flatline. The lawyer simply dropped divorce papers on her bed and walked out. A sympathetic doctor helped Danae fake her own death to escape the family. Stripped of her assets and kicked out into the freezing rain, she tried to drown herself with her child's ashes, only to be saved by a mysterious benefactor.
Three years later, Danae returned as a top medical researcher. But at a high-profile symposium, she crossed paths with Adrian and his new fiancée—a cheap lookalike of Danae. The woman maliciously staged a bloody miscarriage using a restricted chemical, perfectly framing Danae's lab for the crime.
Adrian pinned Danae against the wall, his eyes black with rage, vowing to make her beg for death. Three years ago, he let their real child die without even answering the phone. Now, he was ready to destroy her over a fake pregnancy.
Just as Adrian's private guards dragged her away to be locked up, the hospital doors were violently kicked open. A rival billionaire stepped in with a team of ruthless lawyers, shielding Danae behind his back and declaring war.
8.1
I lived my entire life in a beautiful, naive bubble, completely trusting my husband and my best friend.
That was until they tied me to a chair, slit my vocal cords, and set my family's estate on fire.
As the flames crept closer, my husband Demarco calmly crushed my diamond wedding ring under his leather heel.
My best friend Cristin walked in, leaning against his shoulder and pouring her champagne onto the floorboards to fuel the fire.
"Your grandfather didn't just have a stroke. The medication swap was incredibly easy to arrange."
Looking down at my bleeding body, they casually confessed to murdering the only person who had ever truly protected me, all to swallow the Bridges empire.
I couldn't even scream. I could only suffocate in the thick black smoke as they turned their backs and locked the heavy oak door behind them.
Why was I so blind? How could the two people I loved most treat me like disposable garbage?
In my final moments of agonizing pain and pure, concentrated fury, I pulled out the detonator my grandfather had secretly left me.
I pressed the button, blowing the estate and all of us to hell.
But the burning stopped.
When I opened my eyes, I was staring up at a pristine crystal chandelier.
I was fifteen years old again, lying in my childhood bedroom, right before my treacherous uncle and those parasites started tearing my family apart.
And I didn't come back empty-handed.
This time, I am not the naive heiress.
9.0
My fiancé, Jadon, proposed on the Fourth of July. It was the perfect moment I had dreamed of since we were kids. That night, he called me on FaceTime.
But the man on the screen wasn't him. It was a version of him from five years in the future, his face hollow with regret.
He laid out a horrifying timeline of betrayal. He was sleeping with my best friend and business partner, Kimberly.
She would use his venture capital to steal my architectural firm. She would sabotage my father' s life-saving kidney transplant, leaving him to die.
And she would maliciously cause a future pregnancy to end in tragedy, murdering our unborn child.
My entire world-my love, my friendship, my future-was a lie. The two people I trusted most were plotting my complete ruin.
This broken man from the future, desperate to atone, gave me a roadmap to escape. So I drove my car off a cliff and faked my own death, determined to rewrite the story they had written for me.
9.8
On the night of her seventh wedding anniversary, Annabelle waited by a cold dinner, only for her husband Julian to kick the doors open, carrying his bleeding sister-in-law, Jocelyne.
Jocelyne had committed a horrific drunk driving hit-and-run, and Julian demanded Annabelle sign a plea deal and go to prison to protect the family's stock prices.
What truly broke Annabelle wasn't Julian's ruthless betrayal, but her own twin sons.
Her own flesh and blood stood fiercely in front of Jocelyne to protect her.
"Nobody even likes you anyway, Mother. If you go to jail, everything stays normal."
Julian stripped her of every cent, locked her in a remote estate, and chased her to the edge of a cliff with his bodyguards when she refused to be their scapegoat.
Looking at the man she had loved for seven years and the children she had devoted her life to, her heart turned to ice.
Why was her endless sacrifice rewarded with being a disposable shield for a manipulative liar?
Standing on the jagged cliffs, she played the dashcam audio proving Jocelyne's guilt to a suddenly horrified Julian.
"You don't deserve the truth."
Then, she stepped backward off the cliff into the raging black ocean.
Two years later, she returned to the city as an untouchable, powerful elite, walking right past a broken, miserable Julian without a second glance.