The Wife He Gave Away Became the Alpha's Only Weakness

“The cold salt from my own sleeve still crusted on my cheek when he handed me across the threshold, trading me like a sack of damp grain to men who smelled of stale tobacco and swamp water. I remember the grit of the floorboards under my bare knees after the door slammed shut. I remember the sound of boots retreating down the gravel path, heavy and unhurried, as if the man who called himself my husband hadn't just left me to rot in the outer districts. They thought I was currency. They thought a discarded wife from the southern packs would arrive broken, shivering, and ready to sweep ash from a hearth that wasn't hers. Instead, I sat on the edge of a cot that smelled of old wood and wolf pelt, listening to the silence of my new cage. It didn't take long for the house to shift. The guards stopped looking through me and started watching the way my hand hovered over the iron latch. And then came the new Alpha-the one they said tore rival packs apart with his bare teeth. When he walked into the low-ceilinged kitchen, his coat wet with rain, his eyes didn't pass over me as an afterthought. They locked onto mine with a sharp, heavy focus that felt less like ownership and more like a trap snapping shut on the wrong foot. He thinks he inherited a ghost to keep his hearth warm. He hasn't noticed yet that the knife I hid under the mattress is still sharp.”