THE ALPHA'S CURSED BRIDE

***TRICIA***

"I think Conry has lost his mind." Blake's voice was low, edged with something sharp as broken glass, as he eased the door open and stepped into the room. The air around him smelled metallic - anger made human. I patted the mattress twice, a small old gesture to steady him. "Sit," I said, fingers finding the familiar line of his jaw as if I could hold him steady that way.

He didn't meet my eyes at first. He sat with his shoulders hunched like a man bent under weather. When he finally spoke it was nearly a whisper.

"I sold your sister to Conry," he muttered. "He struck a deal I couldn't refuse."

The words stirred something inside me. For a second everything muffled - the hearth's hum, the distant clink of cutlery. "You sold my sister," I echoed, feeling the room tilt. "You... without telling me?"

Before I could finish, his hand closed around my throat. It was sudden and brutal. He slammed me back against the wall with such force that the breath left me like something taken and dropped. For a moment my world narrowed to the tight ring of his fingers and the drum of my heartbeat until the room spun.

"I thought he loved me," a small voice inside kept whispering. Everything I'd built - compromises and false loyalties - felt like a debt I now had to pay.

"I'm the Alpha," he said, voice flat as law. "You're here to support me. Do not question my authority."

His grip tightened. I tapped his hand, useless, begging, my taps swallowed into the silence. Then, mercifully, he let go. I crumpled to the floor, breath a small theft from the room.

When my vision steadied I crawled to my feet with the slow dignity of someone unmade and reassembling. I felt hollow, as if the center of me - my taste for power, my appetite for control - had been scooped out. I touched the place his fingers had burned and let out a painful grunt.

I never imagined the man I thought would make me important would see me as a tool to be controlled.

I packed because fury makes hands busy and because movement feels like control. I shoved gowns into trunks, slid letters into pockets, tucked combs into folds of silk. Each fold was a small ritual, a summoning of the woman I had been before ceremony swallowed her whole.

The door creaked. I ignored it and kept folding, believing that if I finished packing I might finish being the person who had stayed silent while my sister was bartered. When at last I closed the trunk and turned, my breath snagged.

Blake was on his knees.

The memory of my throat, the pressure of his hand, sat like a bruise. For a moment I thought it a trick - a new manipulation - but his head bowed, not swaggering, and when he lifted it, his eyes were wet with something not pride.

"What are you-" I began, but he cut in, words clumsy and raw.

"I don't know what came over me," he said. His voice cracked in places that hurt more than his hands ever did. "I sold her because I thought I was securing the pack. I thought-God, Tricia, I thought I could buy safety. Besides, you saw what she did at the party. Who knows what else she's capable of. All in all, I was wrong. I was... blind." He folded his hands like a supplicant, a strange, human gesture from a man who never begged.

The apology landed like a wound stitched with a tremor. He reached up, fingers trembling, and touched the place his palm had burned. Awkward, human - his hand didn't demand; it sought forgiveness.

For a long time I watched him: the rise and fall of his chest, the small shake of his shoulders, the way light made his eyes look younger than the man who'd strangled me. Two different men had swapped faces.

"You don't get to decide who I am," I said at last, voice small and raw. "Not like this. Not with my blood."

He flinched as if struck, then bowed his head. "You're right," he whispered. "I was a coward, thinking I could do what was necessary in the dark while still calling myself a leader. I failed you. The decision should have been yours to make. I am sorry."

The shame in him was real - not performance. This cut him open. He rose awkwardly, and for a moment I wanted to run into the night and never turn back.

Instead I stepped forward and sat across from him on the bed. The room hummed quiet. Outside, wind kept time with the trees. "Why?" I asked because I needed the word like air. "Why her? Why trade blood for a promise that sounds like a threat?"

He swallowed. "I really am sorry. I don't have an excuse. I thought I was protecting the pack. I was wrong." His words sounded honest, but doubt stayed with me.

I thought of nights I'd spent dreaming of a throne I didn't want and of the quiet bargains I'd made to belong. I thought of the way men like Blake wear duty like armor while the people inside suffocate. I remembered my sister's laugh - the small way she cut through everything with light.

"You were supposed to be better," I said. "You were supposed to be better than a man who bargains with women."

He closed his eyes. For once he couldn't argue duty into oblivion. "Tell me how to fix it," he said, voice raw.

"How are you going to fix selling my sister to your rival without starting a war that will cost packs?" I asked, tears blurring my vision.

"Tricia." He reached for my hands.

I let him take my hand. That surrender was not forgiveness but acknowledgment: two lives bound in ways that refused to be neatly cleaved apart. He lifted me and drew me close. His arms were solid and familiar, the smell of him an anchor despite everything.

He kissed my hair first - an apology without words - then my forehead. "I will fix this," he promised. "Words are not enough. I'll bring her back in a way that won't shatter the pack."

I wanted to believe him. I wanted to hurl myself into the current and let it carry me. His confession softened something inside the rigid shell I'd built, and forgiveness - uneasy and fragile - unfurled like a small flag.

We sat in the dim blue and let silence do the work of prayer. I forgave, but not fully. Doubt settled over me like a winter cloak - heavy and honest.

When he tightened his arms around me I did not pull away. The embrace felt like possibility braided with threat. I knew, with the stubborn certainty of someone who had loved and been hurt, that forgiveness is not a clean slate. It is a ledger that shifts across years.

He held me while the night moved outside in slow breaths, and I let myself be small and human - caught between the ache of betrayal and the hush of choosing. For now we were bound by vows and mistakes; later the truth would have a voice. Until then, we would learn, or unlearn, ourselves. Either would be honest. Either way, my doubts would stay; and he, if he was the Alpha I still hoped for, would spend his days proving otherwise.

I finally let sleep take me, unaware the news I'd receive tomorrow would change my story.