Betrayed and Sold as the Lycan King's Wolfless Bride

Adriana POV:

I woke to a stranger breathing beside me.

A sharp, stabbing pain shot through my skull, pulling me from a thick, suffocating darkness, and the first thing I saw was not the familiar cracked plaster of my bedroom ceiling, but the hard profile of a man I did not know.

He lay on the other side of the vast bed, tall and broad-shouldered beneath the tangled silk sheets. In the faint light filtering through the curtains, I could just make out the unforgiving line of his jaw, the shape of a mouth that looked far too cruel to belong to anyone safe. He was dangerous.

My heart hammered against my ribs.

I bolted upright. A wave of dizziness washed over me, and my stomach churned in protest. I was naked. Completely, utterly naked under a heavy silk duvet.

My skin was a roadmap of unfamiliar marks. Angry red crescents dotted my collarbone, and a cluster of deep purple bruises, unmistakably teeth marks, marred the soft skin of my shoulder. A dull, aching soreness pulsed deep within my body, a testament to a night I could not remember and did not want to imagine.

The air was thick with a scent that wasn't mine. Cedarwood and rich leather, a smell so potent it felt like a physical presence in the room, coating my tongue and clinging to the back of my throat.

It wasn't Julian Hayes.

Julian, my fiancé, smelled like crisp sea air and clean linen. He was the future Alpha of the Hayes Pack, the man I was supposed to marry in three weeks, the man my family had paraded beside me as if our engagement were already a crown on my head.

This scent belonged to someone else. A predator. A dominant, aggressive Alpha scent that made the very marrow of my bones tremble.

The ceiling was wrong.

This was smooth, white, with ornate molding I'd only ever seen in magazines.

My eyes darted around the dimly lit hotel suite.

My emerald green gown, the one I'd spent a month's savings on, lay in a heap on the floor. It was torn, ripped from neckline to hem, a casualty of some violent haste. Beside it, a man's black suit jacket and trousers were discarded with equal carelessness.

Panic, cold and sharp, seized my heart.

I couldn't remember.

I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to piece together the fragments of the night.

The Pack gala. Music. Shimmering lights. Julian standing across the ballroom, surrounded by elders from the Hayes Pack and my father's pack, while I played the dutiful fiancée everyone expected me to be.

Then Isabelle.

My stepsister, the golden daughter of my father's second wife, the girl who had hated me since the day our families were forced under the same roof. Isabelle, who smiled at Julian too softly. Isabelle, who had never forgiven me for being chosen as his future Luna instead of her.

She had drifted toward me with a flute of champagne in her hand and that saccharine smile on her lips.

Her smile.

That was the last clear thing I remembered.

The realization hit me like a punch to the gut, knocking the air from my lungs.

Isabelle had drugged me.

A low, satisfied groan rumbled from the other side of the vast bed.

A strangled gasp caught in my throat. I clapped a hand over my mouth, my breath coming in ragged, silent pants. I had to get out. Now. Before he woke up.

My movements were clumsy, jerky with fear. I slid out of the bed, my bare feet sinking into the plush carpet. The morning air was cold against my exposed skin. I snatched a man's white dress shirt from the back of a chair and pulled it on. The fabric was heavy, smelling intensely of him, of that cedar and leather scent that felt like it was branding me from the inside out. It was suffocating.

My handbag. I spotted it on a sofa across the room. I darted towards it, my eyes glued to the sleeping form on the bed. My fingers fumbled with the clasp, desperately searching for my phone, my keys, anything.

My gaze fell on the hotel's notepad and a sleek, black pen resting on the bedside table.

A sudden, white-hot surge of rage and humiliation burned through the fog of my fear. I couldn't just run away like a scared rabbit. I couldn't let him think this was anything other than what it was: a violation.

I snatched the pen. My hand shook as I scrawled a few jagged words onto the paper.

Last night was a mistake. Forget it.

It wasn't enough. The words felt weak, pathetic. I rummaged in my bag, my fingers closing around the cool metal tube of my lipstick. Red Dragon. I uncapped it and pressed a defiant, crimson kiss mark at the bottom of the note. A final, silent fuck you.

I slapped the note down on the nightstand. The small sound was like a gunshot in the silent room.

The man on the bed stirred again, a deeper rumble in his chest.

My heart leaped into my throat.

No more hesitation. I grabbed my bag and ran. Barefoot and clad only in his shirt, I fled the suite, my footsteps silent on the carpeted hallway. I didn't stop running, not until I burst through the hotel's main doors and into the biting morning wind.

The cold air hit me, a brutal shock to my system. Only then, standing on the cold pavement of a city just beginning to wake, did the tears of shame and violation finally fall.

Damien POV:

I woke to an empty bed.

The sweet, intoxicating scent of jasmine and rain-the scent of my fated mate-still saturated the sheets and clung to my skin. My inner wolf snarled, a low, guttural sound of displeasure. She was gone.

I sat up, the silk sheets pooling around my waist. The morning light cut across the room, illuminating the lean, hard muscle of my torso. My gray eyes, sharp and predatory, scanned the suite. It was a wreck. A testament to the storm we had unleashed on each other.

Fragments of the previous night returned in sharp, uneven flashes.

The Pack gala. Too much aged bourbon. Too many elders pressing for alliances I had no interest in entertaining. Then a brutal, clawing heat beneath my skin, a sudden sickness that had made the crystal chandeliers blur and the ballroom tilt beneath my feet.

I had left before anyone could see weakness in me.

This suite belonged to the Montgomery family, reserved for our Alphas whenever pack business brought us to the city. No one entered it without my permission. No one even came near this floor unless my men allowed it.

And yet she had.

I remembered the door flying open. A woman stumbling inside, breathless and wild-eyed, her brown hair tangled over her shoulders, the scent of jasmine and rain crashing into me so hard my wolf had nearly torn through my skin.

Mine.

She had looked at me as if I were both salvation and danger.

Then the memory dissolved into heat, skin, broken gasps, and the unbearable certainty of the mate bond snapping into place.

Then I saw it.

A piece of hotel stationery on the nightstand, held down by nothing but the weight of its own audacity. And on it, a smear of defiant red lipstick.

I picked up the note. The handwriting was a furious scrawl, all sharp angles and desperate energy.

Last night was a mistake. Forget it.

A slow, dangerous smile touched my lips. A mistake? Our fated, goddess-given claiming?

"A mistake?" I repeated the word aloud, the sound a soft, cold rasp in the quiet room.

The amusement vanished as quickly as it came, replaced by a surge of pure, undiluted rage. In a single, violent motion, I crushed the paper in my fist. The fragile note, and its insolent lipstick kiss, crumpled into a worthless ball.

No one had ever dared.

No one had ever looked upon what was mine and called it a mistake. Especially not the woman who was destined to be my Luna.

I closed my eyes, reaching out with the nascent bond that now connected us. It was faint, fragile, but it was there. A shimmering thread of her essence, her fear, her defiance. She was still in this city. She hadn't gone far.

My wolf paced restlessly inside me. Find her. Claim her. Mine.

I grabbed my phone from the nightstand and dialed my Beta's number. It was answered on the first ring.

"Ethan," I said, my voice low and laced with an authority that permitted no argument. "Find her."

I paused, picturing her flushed face, her tangled brown hair spread across my pillows.

"A brown-haired girl," I commanded, the possessiveness in my voice as sharp as a blade. "She'll be wearing my shirt. And she smells like me. Find her and bring her to me."