My Alpha Forced Me to Serve His Chosen Mate

I smelled him before I saw him.

Dark cedar and rain-soaked earth. It hit me like a wall, cutting straight through the pine and mud of Briarwood's eastern border, and my knees almost buckled right there in the crowd.

No. No, no, no.

My wolf stirred — faint, barely a whisper these days — and let out a sound so small and broken it made my chest ache. She knew. She always knew before I did.

I pressed my fingertips hard into the inside of my wrist and forced myself to breathe.

The wolves around me were already shifting, murmuring, pressing closer to the tree line where our Alpha, Gerald, stood with his Beta and Gamma. I was near the back. I was always near the back. Low rank meant you stood where no one had to look at you, and that had suited me fine for three years.

Until now.

They came through the trees in formation. Silverfang warriors — two dozen at least, all in human form but carrying themselves with the kind of discipline that made our patrol wolves look like teenagers. They fanned out along the border in a clean line, and the crowd went quiet.

Then he walked through.

Winston Sullivan.

Seven years, and my body recognized him before my brain caught up. He was taller. Broader. The lean, hungry angles of the boy I'd fed soup to on a freezing November night had been replaced by something harder, something built. His jaw was sharper. His dark hair was cut short. He wore a black coat over a simple shirt, and he moved like the ground belonged to him.

Because it did. He was an Alpha now.

The Silverfang Pack. One of the most powerful territories on the East Coast. I'd heard the rumors over the past year — a young Alpha rising fast, annexing smaller packs, building alliances that made the old guard nervous. I never looked up his name. I couldn't afford to.

A woman walked beside him. Tall, dark-haired, beautiful in the effortless way that Alpha daughters always were. She had her hand resting lightly on his arm, and her posture said everything: chosen mate. Future Luna.

My wolf whimpered again. I dug my nails into my wrist.

Behind Winston, a broad-shouldered man with close-cropped hair and watchful eyes took position at his right flank. His Beta. He scanned the crowd with the calm efficiency of someone cataloging threats.

Gerald stepped forward. Our Alpha was not a weak man, but he was not a fool either. Briarwood had forty wolves. Silverfang had hundreds. The math was simple.

"Alpha Sullivan." Gerald's voice was steady, but I could see the tension in his shoulders. "You're on Briarwood land."

"I am." Winston's voice carried across the clearing without effort. Low, unhurried, final. It pressed against my skin like a physical thing — Alpha tone, but not even fully deployed. Just the natural weight of what he'd become. "And as of this morning, Briarwood land is