The Hidden Alpha's Innocent Contract Mate

“My family tried to sell me to a monster. Frankie Glover was a low-ranking Warrior from the Glover Pack, notorious for his violent temper and wandering hands. To everyone else, I was just a wolfless girl with no rank, no claws, and no power to fight back. To my mother and sister-in-law, I was even less than that. I was a price tag. So I ran. In the middle of a freezing Chicago storm, I jumped into the first Uber I saw and begged the dangerous-looking driver to take me anywhere but home. He smelled like cedar, rain, and something darker beneath the scent suppressant on his skin. I should have been afraid of him. Instead, I heard myself say the craziest words of my life. "I'll pay you five hundred dollars a month. Just... marry me." I expected him to throw me out. He drove me straight to City Hall. By morning, my family had disowned me, Frankie was furious, and my new husband had become the only thing standing between me and the Pack that wanted to claim me. Everyone thought Damien Montgomery was just a broke, unaffiliated Uber driver. A Rogue with no money, no status, and no Pack behind him. Then Frankie cornered us at a restaurant. He threatened my best friend. He mocked her child. He tried to hit me. Damien caught his wrist before the blow landed. "Don't touch my wife." The room went silent. Even the wolves stopped breathing. One moment, Damien was the quiet man who drove a beat-up Toyota and lived in an old apartment building on the edge of neutral territory. The next, he snapped Frankie's wrist, exposed his fake Rolex scam in front of everyone, and made three Glover Pack Warriors run like frightened dogs. That was when I started to understand. My husband was hiding something. The spacious top-floor apartment. The black credit card he claimed was just a bank promotion. The way Pack men lowered their eyes around him before they even knew why. The terrifying grandfather who showed up alone with a jade wolf-fang heirloom and called me the Luna of the family. None of it made sense. Damien said he was nobody. But nobody did not carry the scent of old bloodlines under layers of suppressant. Nobody did not make wolves tremble with a single word. Nobody did not look at a wolfless girl like she was already his. I married a stranger to escape one monster. Now I'm beginning to wonder if I accidentally married the most dangerous Alpha in Chicago.”