Claimed by the Alpha, Desired by His Blood

 The silver tray trembled in my hands as I climbed the stairs to Alpha Zane’s chambers.

 Bananas. Water. Fresh towels. The usual post-sex amenities he demanded whenever he entertained his women—which was often enough that I’d memorized the routine by heart.

 My heart shouldn’t have clenched anymore. After eight years of serving in this pack house, I should have been numb to it. But some foolish part of me—the girl who’d watched him save my dying pack when I was fourteen, who’d built him into a god in her mind—still ached every time I delivered this particular tray.

 Pathetic, I told myself, the word as familiar as my own name.

 I knocked once, then another time. No answer.

 Standard procedure when the Alpha was… occupied… was to leave the tray outside. But Head Servant Geraldine’s voice echoed in my skull: “He wants it brought in immediately. Don’t make me repeat myself, fat thing.”

 I pushed the door open.

 The scent hit me first, sex and sweat and the cloying fragrance of whatever she-wolf had earned his attention tonight. Then the sounds: flesh slapping against flesh, her high-pitched moans, his low grunts of exertion.

 I should have looked away. Should have set the tray down and fled like I always did.

 But I didn’t.

 My eyes found him on the bed—completely naked, every muscle in his back flexing as he drove into the woman beneath him. His body was a work of art, all power and predatory grace, and even knowing I had no right to look, I couldn’t stop myself.

 The woman noticed me first. Her gaze flicked over his shoulder, finding me frozen in the doorway, and her lips curled into a smirk even as she moaned louder.

 “The fat thing is watching us,” she purred between gasps. “Enjoying the show, are you?”

 Alpha Zane’s head snapped toward me.

 The disgust in his eyes when they landed on me was immediate. Visceral. Like I was something rotting he’d found on the bottom of his shoe.

 “Out,” he snarled.

 He didn’t stop or bother to even slow down.

 Instead—and this was the part that would replay in my nightmares for weeks—he grabbed the woman’s hips and flipped her onto her hands and knees, positioning her so she faced me directly. Then he slammed back into her, harder than before, his eyes locked on mine with cold cruelty.

 “Since you’re so eager to watch,” he growled, his voice dripping with disdain, “get a good look. This is what a real woman looks like when she’s being fucked by an Alpha.”

 The woman threw her head back and screamed his name, her perfect body arching in ways mine never could.

 I stumbled backward, the tray clattering from my hands. Fruit rolled across the floor. Water splashed against the doorframe. I didn’t care.

 I ran.

 Down the hallway, past the sneering faces of other servants who’d heard the commotion, past the guards who didn’t even bother hiding their laughter. I didn’t stop until I reached the servants’ quarters, locking myself in the bathroom with shaking hands.

 My reflection stared back at me from the cracked mirror: round face flushed with humiliation, body soft in all the places the slim she-wolves were carved and angular.

 Fat thing. That’s what they all called me. Even the other servants.

 But hearing it from her, while she writhed under him… while he looked at me like I was nothing…

 Heat flooded through me suddenly—unwanted, horrifying heat that had nothing to do with embarrassment and everything to do with the images burned into my brain. The way his muscles had moved. The rough dominance in his voice. The raw, primal power of him.

 My hand slipped between my thighs before I could stop myself, desperate and ashamed, but the touch brought no relief. Only frustration. Because it wasn’t my hand I wanted. It was his—and that was the cruelest joke that had ever played.

 I gave up and turned the shower to freezing, letting the icy water shock the heat from my skin and the foolish dreams from my head.

 I stayed under that spray until my lips turned blue and my fingers pruned. Until I could breathe without seeing him. Until the ache between my legs dulled to something manageable.