My Alpha Claimed Me, Then Sent Me to Die

POV: Wren

The silver blade felt cold even in the dream.

Alaric held it with both hands. Those hands had once caught me when I fell from the east tower stairs. They had steadied my shoulders through my first shift and fastened every clasp I was too impatient to reach. Now they drove poisoned steel beneath my ribs.

My blood splashed his knuckles. Around the altar, the clan howled for my death.

I laughed through a mouthful of iron.

“There are no pups,” I whispered. The illusion around my stomach shattered like glass. “There never were.”

His wolf-gold eyes widened. The High Alpha’s perfect mask broke, and grief stripped him bare.

I touched his jaw, leaving red across his skin. “I curse you, Alaric. By the Blood Moon, you’ll live long enough to regret this. Every morning, you’ll remember me. Every night, you’ll search for me in the dark.”

He screamed.

I woke before the blade reached my heart.

My spine arched from sweat-soaked sheets. The tower ceiling stared down at me, pale in the moonlight. My pulse battered my ribs. For one breath, I could still smell blood and burning silver.

Just a dream.

Yet the curse remained on my tongue, bitter and almost sweet.

By sunset, the castle had filled with music.

The Blood Moon Banquet marked my eighteenth birthday and my formal entry into pack society. In practice, it meant two hundred wolves had come to inspect the orphan Alaric had dragged home six years ago.

“You look edible.”

A young Alpha caught my waist before I reached the dance floor. I knew his face, not his name. He had broad shoulders, an expensive black coat, and the confidence of a man who had never heard no often enough.

“Dance with me,” he said.

It was not a request.

I let him pull me into the crowd. My crimson velvet gown whispered around my legs. I had chosen the shade because it resembled fresh blood. Petty, perhaps, but the Elders had dressed me in white for six years and called it gratitude.

The Alpha’s hand slid too low.

I should have stepped away. Instead, I looked toward the high table.

Alaric was watching.

He sat beneath the carved crest of the Eastern Bloodline, dressed in formal black. His white-blond hair was tied at his nape. One hand rested around a silver goblet. The other tapped once against the arm of his chair.

His expression revealed nothing.

The goblet did.

A deep dent had formed beneath his thumb.

I smiled at my partner and let my hip brush his thigh. Then I met Alaric’s gaze across the ballroom.

His tapping stopped.

Challenge delivered.

I escaped during the first toast. The private terrace overlooked the Blood Pool, a black spring cut into the mountain beneath the castle. The Elders claimed it exposed forbidden desires. I had always assumed that was a story meant to frighten young wolves into obedience.

The night smelled of frost, pine, and stone.

Then it smelled of him.

“You shouldn’t have let him touch you.”

Alaric stepped between the columns without announcing himself. At six-foot-four, he blocked half the terrace. Moonlight caught the hard line of his jaw.

“Good evening to you too, High Alpha.”

“Wren. Go inside.”

“Make me.”

The silence sharpened.

I faced him. One shoulder of my gown had slipped during the dance. I hooked a finger beneath the velvet and tugged until the seam tore, baring the curve where a mate’s scent gland waited beneath the skin.

His nostrils flared.

“Six years,” I said. “You’ve kept me inside this castle for six years. You dismissed every tutor who flirted with me. You threatened the Northern diplomat when he asked to court me. You call yourself my guardian, but you act like a jealous mate.”

“Enough.”

“Is it Pack Law that keeps me caged?” I stepped closer. “Or can’t you stand the thought of another Alpha touching what you think belongs to you?”

Gold flooded his irises.

He crossed the space before I could draw breath. My back struck a marble pillar. One hand locked around my hip. The other caught the torn edge of my dress near my collarbone. His knee pressed between my thighs, holding me still.

My body answered before pride could save me.

Heat rolled through me. His breath brushed my ear. Beneath his restraint, I felt the brutal force of his wolf and the hard proof that his body wanted what his mouth denied.

“This is what you’ve been provoking?” he asked. His voice had gone rough. “You want me to claim you where the whole clan can see?”

“Yes.”

The answer escaped without hesitation.

His forehead almost touched mine. Whiskey warmed his breath. His mouth hovered over my lips, close enough to make every nerve in me ache.

“Please,” I whispered.

He released me as if I had burned him.

The cold rushed into the space between us.

“You’re a stray I took in,” he said. His face had turned empty. “Do not confuse protection with desire.”

The words struck harder than a slap.

I stepped back. My heel caught on the terrace edge, and my hand closed around the iron railing.

The bolts tore loose.

Metal screamed. The railing tipped outward, and the dark surface of the Blood Pool opened beneath me.

I fell.

The water hit like fire.

Pain ripped across my exposed arm. A red mark burned from shoulder to elbow, blistering into the shape of a twisting crescent. The sacred spring had found my desire and branded it forbidden.

Then Alaric crashed into the pool.

He caught me around the waist and drove us toward the surface. We broke through together. I choked, clawing at his shoulders while he dragged me onto the stone rim.

His jacket was gone. His soaked white shirt clung to his back.

Heat poured through the fabric.

I grabbed the torn seam and pulled.

Buttons scattered across the stone.

Scars covered him from shoulder to waist. Old ritual burns crossed newer ones, layered so deeply that some had healed into silver ridges. They were the same kind of marks the Blood Pool had just carved into me.

He had entered that water before.

Many times.

For me.

Alaric froze beneath my hand. When he looked at me, his mask was gone. I saw terror, hunger, and a love so twisted by restraint that it had scarred him to the bone.

Then his hand closed behind my head and forced my face against his chest.

“Forget what you saw,” he whispered against my ear. His arm tightened around my waist. “Or the Council will kill us both.”