Sold to the Alpha Who Swore to Kill Me

Chapter 1 — The Girl They Forgot to Bury

They stopped feeding me on my sixth birthday. They locked the door on my seventh. By my eighteenth, the whole kingdom had forgotten my name. Everyone except my father — who was still waiting for me to die. Tonight, he sent me a wedding dress instead. I sat on the floor of the north tower, knees pulled to my chest, counting my own heartbeats because there was nothing else in that room to count. The winter wind came through the cracked window like teeth. Snow gathered on the sill in a neat little drift, and I watched it, and I whispered the same four words I had whispered every night for twelve years. "I don't want to die." I am Wren Ironmoor. Firstborn of Alpha King Vorak, ruler of the Ironmoor packlands. In our kingdom, the crown goes to the first child born, son or daughter, no exceptions. My father found an exception. He looked at his small, sickly, wolfless daughter, and he decided the simplest thing was to put me somewhere quiet and let winter finish what my mother's death had started. One meal a day. Thin soup, most days. Water with ice floating in it. Twelve years, and I was still breathing. I think that offended him more than anything. The door groaned open. Mira, the maid who brought my bowl, set it down and stayed, which she never did. "Why do you keep holding on?" she asked. Not cruel. Genuinely puzzled, the way you'd study a bug that refused to be stepped on. "Wouldn't it be easier to just let go? No more cold. No more hunger." I lifted the bowl and drank from the rim because they never gave me a spoon. "Why don't you jump from the south tower?" I said. Her mouth fell open. "Are you insane? I'd die." "Exactly." I licked the inside of the bowl clean. "Your life matters to you. Mine matters to me. So stop asking me to give up something you'd fight tooth and claw to keep." She took the bowl and left without another word. I didn't sleep that night. Not because of the cold. Because in the morning, everything changed. Mira came back at dawn with three other maids, a copper tub, and a gown. A real gown. White silk. Pearls at the throat. Sapphire drops for my ears. "His Majesty wants you cleaned," she said. "He wants to see you." Nine years since my father last looked at me. I still remembered his exact words, the way you remember a scar. I don't need a broken daughter. Just die already. They scrubbed me in water so cold my lips turned blue. They combed twelve years of tangles out of my red hair — Ironmoor red, the one thing my father couldn't take from me. They painted my mouth. They put pearls on my starved little collarbones. Then Mira lifted the last thing from the bottom of the box. A veil. And I understood. Death hadn't come for me, so my father had found another way to be rid of me. I was being sold. I walked the palace corridors barefoot in shoes two sizes too small, and the courtiers stared and whispered — who is she, where did she come from, look at her hair — as if a ghost had wandered out of the walls. My father sat on his throne, smiling. "My beloved daughter," he said. "How beautifully you've grown." I said nothing. "Today you travel to Blackthorn. Their king has agreed to a peace bond. I am giving them my most treasured child to end the war." Treasured. I hadn't tasted meat in twelve years. I didn't bow. I turned to go. Behind me, his voice floated soft and warm. "May the Moon take you gently, daughter." The Blackthorn guards escorting me didn't flinch. To outsiders it sounds like a blessing. But I learned to read in that tower. I know the old pack tongue. It means: die soon. I climbed into the white carriage with my head high and my stomach growling, and as the driver shut the door, the youngest Blackthorn guard leaned in and whispered, almost kindly: "Princess... you do know our king swore an oath to kill you, don't you?"

Chapter 2 — The Mark That Burned Gold

I didn't answer him. What was there to say? Yes. Everyone I've ever met has wanted me dead. Your king will have to take a number. We crossed the border through a moongate — a shimmering tear in the air that swallowed the carriage whole. Nobody warned me what it does to a body that has never been through one. It felt like being taken apart bone by bone and put back together in the wrong order. When the doors opened I was on the carriage floor, shaking, unable to make my legs obey. "Get up, Princess," a guard said flatly. "Don't keep His Majesty waiting." They assumed I was being dramatic. A pampered Ironmoor brat, performing. They dragged me out by the elbows and I walked to my own wedding half-crawling, silk dragging through the dust. The Blackthorn temple was white stone and white flowers, packed wall to wall with nobles. A statue of the Moon Mother loomed behind the altar, arms spread, eyes empty. Every head turned. Every face changed the moment they saw my hair. Hate has a smell. Sour and hot. I walked through a hundred people who wanted me dead and I did not slow down. He was waiting at the altar. King Kaine Blackthorn. Tall enough to blot out the candlelight. Black hair, jaw cut from stone, shoulders that filled the aisle. And eyes — green, furious, alive in a way nothing in my life had ever been. He looked at me the way you look at a rat in your bread. I stopped in front of him. My legs were shaking. I did not bow, because nobody had ever taught me how. "Hello," I said. The room made a sound like a gasp swallowed sideways. His jaw ticked. He thought I was insulting him. He thought I was standing there saying you don't deserve my respect. The truth was simpler. I had spent twelve years in a stone room. Nobody ever taught me what to do with a king. "In the eyes of the Moon Mother," he said, biting each word off, "I bind my life to yours. From this hour, we are husband and wife." That was it. The whole ceremony. He cut it down to nine seconds because he couldn't stand to be near me. The priestess handed him a chalice. He drank, then shoved it at me. I drank the rest — sweet, warm, the best thing I'd tasted in years, and I had to stop myself from tipping it back for the dregs. Then the dagger. He sliced his palm without blinking and let his blood fall onto the bonding scroll. He held the blade out. I cut deeper than I needed to. My hand hurt less than most days. Our blood touched. The scroll caught fire — not real fire, moonfire — and heat crawled up my arm like something living. A mark bloomed across the back of my left hand. His too. The mate-bond. Unbreakable. It fades only when one of you dies. I stared at it. Every bond mark ever inked by the Moon Mother burns silver. Mine burned gold. Behind me, the priestess dropped the chalice. It rang on the stone floor like a bell. Kaine didn't notice. He was already turning away. "You are my wife," he said over his shoulder. "Behave like one." He didn't kiss me. Didn't take my hand. Both are required. He skipped both, deliberately, in front of six hundred people, and I understood the message perfectly: You wear my mark. You will never be mine. So I bowed — finally, badly — and said, "I'll be in your care." Something flickered across his face. Then it was gone. The carriage ride to the palace was silent. He sat with his eyes closed, hands white-knuckled on his knees, and I could feel him fighting something. Later I'd learn what. Every time he looked at my red hair, he saw my father's soldiers dragging his two younger brothers into the courtyard. Every time, his wolf screamed at him to snap my neck. At the palace, a maid took me to a room the size of my entire tower. Silk sheets. A fireplace. A balcony. "Do not leave this room," she said. "King's orders." Then she shut the door. I laughed — quietly, so nobody would hear. A prisoner again. Fine. This cell was warmer. I sat on the bed and it was so soft I nearly cried, and I looked at the gold mark still glowing faintly on my hand and thought: I think I might survive this place. Which is exactly when the door opened, and my husband walked in with murder in his eyes.

Chapter 3 — I Will Never Love You

I'll be honest with you. When my husband kicked open my door on our wedding night, my first thought was not about my life. It was about dinner. Because I hadn't eaten since the soup in the tower, and my stomach had been making sounds like an angry animal for six hours, and I had already decided that if he killed me, I would at least like to die full. "Get up," he said. I got up. "You're still wearing that dress." "Nobody came to help me take it off." His lip curled. "Playing the tragic bride. It's pathetic. This marriage is a joke and you're the punchline." He came closer. Close enough that I had to tip my head back to see him. "Understand me, Wren Ironmoor. I will never treat you as my wife. I will never touch you. I don't care how many men have already had you—" "None," I said. He stopped. "None have had me," I said. "I've been locked in a room since I was six. You're the second man I've spoken to in twelve years. The first was a doctor confirming I wasn't dead yet." Silence. Long, ugly silence. He didn't believe me. Of course he didn't. He'd built a whole altar to his hatred and I'd just tried to move a stone. "You will never have my heart," he said, lower now. "You will never have a place in my bed. Stay out of my sight. Because if I see you too often, I may forget I need you alive." He slammed the door hard enough to shake dust from the ceiling. I stood there in my ruined wedding gown, alone. And then my stomach growled so loudly that I actually laughed out loud in the empty room. "Sorry," I told it. "I know. I know." Two hours later, a knock. I flew to the door and yanked it open with my heart in my throat. Mira's Blackthorn counterpart — a dark-haired maid named Sena — stood there empty-handed. "His Majesty requires you at dinner." I nearly wept with joy. She thought it was because I wanted to see him. It was not. It was because dinner is the most beautiful word in any language. The royal dining hall had a table longer than my tower room. Roast lamb. Bread with butter. Fish in cream. Fruit stacked in silver bowls like something out of a dream I'd never dared to have. Kaine sat at the head, holding a knife like he was picturing it in my eye. I sat down and started eating. I want to be dignified about this. I wasn't. I ate like a starving dog. Soup, then bread, then meat, then fish, then more bread, and I cleaned every plate down to the glaze because in twelve years I had never once left food behind and my hands didn't know how. "Your father clearly spared no expense on your education," Kaine said acidly. "Your table manners are revolting." He was right, so I didn't argue. I kept eating. Halfway through the lamb, he reached over and touched my hair. I froze solid. Fork in the air. Eyes shut. So this is it, I thought. At least he let me finish the lamb. He rubbed a red curl between his fingers, then dropped it like it burned. "If it weren't for that hair," he said, "I'd think you were a beggar off the road." He was checking if it was dyed. That's all. I opened my eyes and reached for the potatoes. Something in my calm made him angrier than any insult could have. He stood so fast his chair screamed on the floor and slammed both palms on the table. "Get out. Looking at you makes me sick." I'd already had three helpings. I nodded, stood, and left with the dignity of a woman who has strategically hidden two apples in her sleeves. Back in my room, I sat by the fire and finally got a good look at my left hand. The mark was still warm. Still gold. I'd only ever read about mate marks in the tower books, but I remembered one line clearly, because I'd read that page a hundred times: Silver for the bonded. Gold for the Moon-chosen. Gold has not been seen in three hundred years. I was staring at it when a folded paper slid under my door. I ran and pulled the door open. The corridor was empty in both directions. The note had four words on the front, in a shaking old hand: Hide the gold mark. And on the back, four more: They will kill you.