The Alpha Who Burned My Pack Is the Love of My Life

A guard shoved me between the shoulder blades.

I pitched out of the carriage and hit the black basalt courtyard on both knees.

Laughter broke around me.

"The Crescent Princess," someone called. "Doesn't look so royal now."

I pushed myself upright before anyone could offer a hand. My torn gray cloak was wet from the road, my palms scraped raw, but I refused to let the Obsidian wolves see me cry.

Three years ago, their army had crossed our border under Alpha Kael's banner and burned half the Crescent territory to ash.

Today, I had been delivered to them under a peace treaty.

Not as a diplomat.

As a bride.

The treaty had been signed after the first winter deaths in the refugee camps. Obsidian would reopen the eastern trade road, release two dozen Crescent prisoners, and send grain before the next snow. In return, our surviving council had agreed to one marriage between bloodlines.

Mine.

I had said yes because children were already rationing flour. I had repeated that fact for the entire carriage ride whenever fear threatened to become panic.

"Move," the nearest guard ordered.

When I did not move fast enough, he jabbed the butt of his spear into my ribs.

Pain flashed through my side.

I turned on him. "Touch me with that again and I will make you eat it."

The guard laughed, but he did not strike twice.

The fortress doors opened ahead.

Obsidian's great hall had been built to make visitors feel small. Black stone climbed four stories to a vaulted ceiling. Iron braziers burned along the walls. Wolves from Kael's court lined both sides of the central aisle, watching me as if I were meat carried in from a hunt.

At the far end, Alpha Kael sat on an iron throne.

He had aged since the war. More gray threaded his beard, and a scar pulled one side of his mouth into a permanent sneer.

"Bring her forward."

I walked without waiting for the guards.

"Kneel," Kael said.

I stopped.

A boot struck the backs of my calves.

My knees hit stone again.

Kael smiled. "There. Much better."

"Enjoy it," I said. "You needed three guards to manage it."

A murmur moved through the hall.

Kael leaned forward. "Your father had the same mouth."

My stomach tightened.

"Do not speak about him."

"Why not? I remember him well. He called me a tyrant while his temple burned."

Kael reached beside the throne and tossed something toward me.

A strip of blue cloth landed on the floor.

Silver crescent embroidery ran along its torn edge.

My breath stopped.

Elian's ceremonial sash.

My brother had worn it during the Moon Festival three years ago, the last night I remembered clearly before my mind turned into broken flashes of blood, smoke, and pain.

"Where did you get that?"

Kael lifted his wine. "From your brother's body."

My fingers curled against the stone.

"You killed him."

"I killed many traitors."

"We were not traitors."

"You refused my authority."

"That is not the same thing."

Kael's smile disappeared. "Be careful, girl. Your remaining people are alive because I agreed to this treaty. One insult from you can become a winter without grain."

I stared at him.

There it was. The real marriage contract.

My obedience in exchange for Crescent survival.

"I understand the threat."

"Good. Then understand the rest. You do not belong to me."

The court shifted.

A man stepped out from the shadow beside the great hearth.

Fallon.

Kael's son.

I knew him by reputation even before memory failed me. Obsidian soldiers called him the Black Heir because he never celebrated after a battle and never left wounded men behind, even enemies. Crescent survivors used another name: the Ash Wolf. They said towns surrendered when his banner appeared because Kael's armies always followed.

I had spent three years hating a man whose face I could barely remember.

The heir who had led Obsidian's northern companies during the final months of the war.

He wore black from throat to boots. No jewels. No ceremonial armor. He did not need decoration. Every wolf in the room made space for him without being told.

He stopped in front of me.

Silver eyes met mine.

The scar at the base of my neck burst into heat.

I gasped.

For one brutal instant, the hall vanished.

Moonlight through pine branches.

Wet earth against my back.

A man's breath at my throat.

Teeth sinking into skin.

A voice, low and possessive.

Mine.

Then the memory broke apart.

I recoiled.

Fallon's hand closed around my jaw before I could move farther.

"Look at me."

His touch made the scar burn hotter.

The reaction was so violent my knees almost weakened. No one else had ever made the scar respond that way. He noticed. His thumb stopped a fraction above the raised skin, and the indifference in his face cracked for one heartbeat.

I grabbed his wrist. "Let go."

His eyes narrowed, not in anger but recognition.

Did he feel it too?

"This marriage is political," he said. "You are here because your people need the treaty. Do not mistake necessity for trust."

"Trust? Your father burned my home."

"And yours sent raiders across our eastern farms for ten years. Spare me the innocent-princess version of history."

"My family is dead."

Something shifted in his face and vanished.

"Then survive long enough to protect the ones who aren't."

He released me.

Kael laughed from the throne. "Put the collar on her. The court should know exactly where the Crescent line stands now."

A maid approached carrying an iron collar lined with short inward spikes.

Humiliation disguised as ceremony.

"No," I said.

The maid smiled. "Hold still."

I knocked her hand aside.

Her expression twisted. She slapped me across the face.

The crack echoed through the hall.

Before she could strike again, steel flashed.

A dagger punched through the maid's sleeve and pinned the fabric of her wrist to the banquet table behind her. The blade had missed bone by less than an inch.

She screamed anyway.

Fallon stood with one hand still extended from the throw.

His silver eyes had gone almost black.

"Who gave you permission to touch my fiancée?"