My Secret Divorce From The Cruel Alpha

ALIA POV:

"Strip her clothes off."

No explanation. No hesitation. I'd heard that voice for three whole years-Cason Hatfield, my husband, the ruthless Alpha of the Hatfield Pack. He stood at the suite door, his tone as cold as if he were ordering someone to carve up raw meat on a butcher's block.

Just seconds ago, I'd been wearing red lace lingerie that hugged every curve-like a girl in love, my heart fluttering, swiping my key card through the door of the penthouse suite he'd booked. Now, before I could even pull off my coat, a needle drove hard into the back of my neck.

My arms and legs turned to lead. Pale-scrubbed figures closed in, yanked off my coat with brisk efficiency, and lifted me onto the cold bed. My body was completely paralyzed, my mind terrifyingly awake. Five doctors wheeled over an ultrasound machine and sterile steel trays, surrounding the bed to stare down at my lace-clad body with cold, professional eyes-like vultures circling prey that was already dead.

"Monitor her vitals and her ovulation continuously." Cason pocketed the syringe without once looking at me. "I want to land it on the first try."

"Alpha..." The lead doctor hesitated, his discomfort written all over his face. "Are you certain you want us in the room while you and the Luna... mate?"

"Do you think I'm going to enjoy this?" Cason's snarl sliced through the air like a blade. The disgust in his voice flayed me to the bone. "The mere sight of her makes me sick. Keep your eyes glued to those monitors. If she isn't pregnant by tonight, every single one of you dies."

Now I lay here, half-naked and utterly helpless, listening to the man I'd loved for three years calculate how to breed my body like livestock.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to claw through my own skin. My wolf thrashed against the chemical cage that pinned her down, desperate and wild. The Hatfields called me "wolfless." It was their favorite sneer-their word for an Omega whose wolf was too weak, too deeply buried, to ever surface and answer an Alpha's command. They meant it as "no wolf at all." But she was there, always, clawing at the inside of my chest. And right now she was screaming louder than I ever could. The drug pressed me into the mattress like a hand over my mouth. All I could do was lie there, feeling the cold air on the lace that barely covered me.

"Enough." Cason sighed, already tired of the whole business. "Let's just get this over with."

The click of a belt buckle. The heavy tread of his boots crossing toward the bed.

The mattress dipped under his weight. His hand closed around my ankle and dragged my legs apart. My mind went blank-a scream caught somewhere between my throat and my deadened tongue. My wolf thrashed inside me, clawing at the walls of the chemical cage that held her, but my body wouldn't obey. It only lay there, limp and open, while the man I'd loved with every breath took what he wanted as coldly as a butcher grading meat.

My stomach heaved, but even the retch died deep in my chest. Tears I couldn't shed burned behind my eyes. He didn't kiss me. He didn't look at my face. He only worked over me with the same flat, efficient cruelty as the doctors at their machines.

Until he finished what he'd come to do, checked the readouts with the lead doctor in a low voice, and left me there-wet, used, staring at the ceiling.

I don't know how long I lay there before the sedative finally thinned into a dull, aching fog. When I could move again, the room was dark. And through the closed bedroom door, two low voices drifted in from the living room.

"So, after three years of refusing to touch her, you finally went through with it tonight." Zane's voice was lazy. "How was it?Everything the great Alpha expected?"

"A chore." Cason's tone was flat. "If Karin weren't so desperate for a child with the Hatfield bloodline-if her body weren't so fragile, if I couldn't bear to let her suffer even a little-I would never have touched Alia at all."

Karin. He was in love with his brother's widow-his own sister-in-law?

My heart, already ground to dust, went cold and still.

"So the plan is to use your own Luna as a breeding machine?" Zane let out a low whistle. "Knock Alia up, snatch the pup, and hand it to your sister-in-law?You've reached a whole new level of ruthless. What if Alia finds out?"

"She won't." Cason's tone was steady, as if he were discussing how to dispose of a stray dog. "Once the pup is born, I'll tell her it died during labor and hand it straight to Karin. Karin will finally get what she wants. That's all that matters."

A wave of pure, suffocating nausea seized my throat.

"Three years ago, you staged that entire rogue attack just to play the hero and make her fall for you," Zane said. "If you only ever wanted Karin, why go to such lengths?"

"Karin is too weak. If I made her my Luna directly, the elders would eat her alive." Contempt dripped from Cason's voice. "I needed a Luna with a fierce, dominant personality to draw all their fire and attention. Alia is the perfect meat shield."

The truth hit me like a sledgehammer, shattering every last bone of the life I thought I'd had.

Three years ago, I'd been ambushed by rogues. Cason had appeared just in time to save me-but he'd been badly wounded, leaving him unable to consummate our bond.

To protect his pride as an Alpha, I'd laid down all of my own. I'd shouldered the blame for our childlessness. I'd willingly endured the elders' humiliating fertility treatments, drunk their bitter potions, and swallowed their scorn for three whole years.

If he hadn't told me today that his wounds had healed and summoned me to finally consummate our bond, I might never have known... that he had staged the attack. That the rogues who'd nearly torn out my throat... were sent by him. I thought I was his cherished wife, but in his eyes, I was nothing but a human shield. A blood bag to nourish his fragile true love. A womb to be used and thrown away.

Three years of devotion burned to nothing in a single instant. What was left was a cold, bottomless pit of pure, toxic hatred.

Suddenly, Cason's phone rang from the living room. The ice in his voice vanished the instant he answered, replaced by something sickening, cloying, frantic. "Karin?What's wrong?Don't cry-hold on, I'm coming!"

A moment later, I heard the front door slam shut. The doctors packed their equipment with the same flat efficiency and filed out, leaving me alone in the dark.

I dragged my numb body upright, pulled my coat tight around myself, and slipped out into the freezing night. I would pack my things. I would call my lawyer. I wanted a divorce.

I returned to the Hatfield ancestral house, my spine ramrod straight, and pushed open the heavy oak door.

Matriarch Eleanor stood at the top of the grand staircase, her face twisted with an absolute, terrifying fury. Before I could speak, her heavy silver cane crashed against the polished marble floor with a gunshot crack.

"Kneel!"