Claimed by the Grumpy Alpha

My pack sold my future the night they promised me to a brutal alpha twice my age.

I was meant to obey. Smile. Bow my head. Become a bargaining chip in a mating alliance I never chose.

Instead, I ran.

I made it farther than anyone expected, deep into the wild land beyond Mercer Ridge, where only predators and the desperate survive. I should have died out there.

Then he found me.

A dark-eyed wolf with blood on his hands and ice in his voice. Silent. Merciless. Impossible to read.

He says he's only a border guard.

But he fights like a prince.
Commands like an heir.
And watches me like I'm the one thing he was never meant to want.

He keeps me alive. Keeps me close. Keeps dragging me deeper into a danger neither of us can outrun.

Then I learn the truth.

He was never my protector.

He was sent to hunt me down.

And the moment his hand closes around mine, the bond between us snaps into place.

My enemy.
My ruin.
My fated mate.

Callum

I was raised for duty, not desire.

For the throne. For war. For the kind of marriage that secures kingdoms and buries weakness.

Then I was ordered to track a runaway she-wolf whose disappearance threatens to ignite a blood feud between packs.

It should have been simple.

Find her. Return her. End it.

Instead, I found Nora.

Defiant. Wounded. Reckless enough to bare her throat to the dark and still come out fighting.

She is everything my world will destroy.

And everything I can no longer leave behind.

Because the woman I was sent to capture is not just mine by fate.

She may be the key to a power buried in royal blood, a secret the crown has killed to keep, and a destiny strong enough to tear the kingdom apart.

Let them come for her.

The council.
The alphas.
The throne itself.

I will burn every last one of them before I let them take my mate.