The Alpha's Secret Bedwarmer

The Moon Goddess had a twisted sense of humor

The chandeliers in the Blood Moon Pack home glistening consistently like diamonds above, shone warmly golden on the annual Mating Ball. It was heavy with the odor of expensive perfume and roasted venison beneath the underlying electric musk of shifting hormones.

Two hundred and fifty wolves in the ballroom celebrated power and lineage and fortune.

For me, it was just another Tuesday shift.

"More champagne, you dumb girl," a sharp voice hissed in my ear.

I didn't flinch. I turned, head still bent, and offered the silver tray. "Of course, Miss Bianca. My apologies."

Bianca, the daughter of the Beta, grabbed one of the crystal flutes from my tray. Her freshly blood-colored, manicured nails scraped against my skin as she wore her red satin dress, which clung very well to her curves, and was intended for the Alpha's eyes.

"Try not to trip," she whispered in my ear. "We wouldn't want the 'Defect' to ruin Alpha Kade's big night, would we?"

She banged off my shoulder as she sashayed away while her laughter tinkled like broken glass.

I tightened my grip on the tray my knuckles turned white. Ignore her, I told myself. Just survive the night. Put the tips in the jar under the floorboards. One day, you'll have enough to leave.

Elara Vance, twenty years old. Orphan. Servant. And the only wolf in Blood Moon Pack history to not be able to shift.

They called me "The Defect." "The Wolfless."

My father, a former Gamma, turned to gambling and drinking when my mother died, leaving to me to clear off all his debts at the very pack house where I should've been a high-ranking member. I did not have a wolf by my side to protect me, neither did I have claws to fight, and above all, I had no status to shield me from their cruelty.

But I had something that he did not: strength. Their sorrows could break my body with work, but they would never, ever, break my spirit.

I moved toward the shadowed corner of the room hoping to fade into the background.

And just like that the music stopped, and the chatter went dead like it was all held in suspense.

The heavy double doors at the top of the grand staircase groaned as they opened.

Alpha Kade was home.

The temperature in the room seemed to drop about ten degrees. An entire wave of pure power rolled down the stairs, heavy and suffocating. It was a Prime Alpha -- dominating, ancient, and awfully terrifying.

I looked up, unable to stop myself.

He was an ebony apparition standing tall in only the black-tuxedo-clad broadest shoulders holding guillotined strokes. His hair was messy ink-black, falling sideways over his forehead, and his jaw was dressed in indifference, shaping a perfectly straight line.

But his eyes stole my breath. Blue-not the soft calm of the sky, but the electric, glowing blue of an impending storm at sea.

He walked down the steps for every inch making a pronouncement of authority that would part the crowd.

A servant shouldn't stare at the Alpha.

But I couldn't move.

He stepped on the last step and raised his head abruptly.

He froze.

His nostrils flared and drew air.

And then, it hit me.

Thump.

An electric jolt crashed against my chest, hard, almost making me drop the tray again. It wasn't really painful. It was magnet, hook deep under soul, yanking me toward him.

Mate, a little instinct, very dormant, whispered back there in my mind.

Impossible. I am wolfless. I aren't meant to have a mate.

Kade's eyes, lethal in their glow, darted across the room in frantic searching. Past the Elders, past the beautiful she-wolves preening for his attention, past Bianca in her red dress.

At last, he saw me.

Time stopped. The sounds of the party faded into a dull roar. In fact, all I could see was him.

For a heartbeat, I saw something raw in his eyes: shock, recognition, a flicker of the same pull I felt.

Then his gaze drifted downward.

He saw my oversized gray servant uniform. He took in the shoes scuffed and cruddy. He noted the fraying ribbon in my messy brown hair.

The shock in his eyes vanished, to be replaced by a wall of ice. His lip curled in a subtle sneer of disgust.

He started walking toward me.

The crowd gasped, realizing where the Alpha was heading. All eyes turned on me, and whispers hissed like snakes.

"The servant?" "No, it can't be." "Look at him. He is furious."

I wanted to run, but my feet were rooted to the floor. I straightened my spine. If this is it, I thought, I will face it upright.

Kade stopped three feet from me. He was huge, towering over me by at least a foot. The smell of him: rain, sandalwood, and raw power. It made my head swim.

"Elara," he spoke. His voice was deep, a low rumble that reverberated through the floorboards.

I whispered, "Alpha," my voice betraying me despite my strongest tries.

Kade gave me a glance like I was a stain smudged on his expensive carpet. He did not lower his voice: he wanted everyone to hear.

Finally, Kade spoke coldly: "The Moon Goddess tests us all, but this... this is a cruel joke."

He took another step closer to me; now his heat was intoxicating, but his words were poison.

Kade bore his eyes into mine. "A pack is only as strong as its weakest link. I need a Luna who is a warrior. A Queen who can lead the hunt and bear strong Alpha heirs. I need a wolf."

He paused, dismissively appraising me from head to toe.

"You have no wolf, Elara. You are empty. You are weak."

Tears pricked the corners of my eyes, hot and stinging. I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood. I wouldn't cry. I wouldn't concede to Bianca.

I quietly stated, "I work harder than anyone in this room."

Kade scoffed. "Work? All you do is scrub floors, and that is all you are good for."

He turned away from me to address the crowd. His final stance crushed my heart before the words had even escaped his lips.

Kade's voice was the reluctant bellow of thunder reverberating off the vaulted ceilings. "I, Alpha Kade of the Blood Moon Pack, reject Elara Vance as my fated mate."

Snap!

Immediate and blinding agony struck. A thin wire that connected the two hearts was severed violently.

I gasped and dropped the silver tray with a crash that sent the crystal smashing to the floor and champagne splattering against my legs.

I fell to my knees, hand on my chest, struggling to breathe. My heart felt like it was being torn apart.

Kade stiffened.

For a split second, his hand flew to his chest, clutching the fabric of his shirt across his heart. The color drained from his face. He felt it too. The rejection bond worked both ways-it hurt just as much for the rejector as it did for the rejected.

But he was Alpha. He did not fall. He gritted his teeth, forcing his hand down and into his side, concealing pain behind a mask of indifference.

"Get her out of my sight," Kade growled to the guards. "She's ruining the mood."

Two huge warriors advanced. They grabbed me by the upper arms in a bruising grip and virtually lifted me off the-glass-covered floor.

"Wait," I managed to choke out.

The warriors halted.

I looked at Kade. He had turned away, refusing to look at me.

"Alpha," I said. My voice gained strength from the simmering anger in my gut.

He halted but did not look back.

"You call me weak," I continued, my voice cutting through the silence. "You rejected me because I have no wolf, but it takes a truly weak man to humiliate a woman just to prove his strength to a crowd."

Gasps spread through the room. Bianca looked horrified. The Elders looked furious.

Kade's head slowly turned. His blue eyes burned with fury and something else, something dark.

"Remove her," he growled. "Now!"

The guards pulled me backwards, my heels protesting across the floor. They pulled me through the kitchen doors and shoved me through the back exit.

I stumbled and landed, hands first, in the cold mud of the alleyway. Rain told no mercy as it drenched my uniform in moments.

Behind me, the heavy steel door slammed shut. I heard the turn of the key lock.

Inside, music started up again. Laughter erupted. The party continued oblivious to my very existence.

I just sat in the mud, shivering. The pain in my chest turned into a dull throb, a hollow emptiness where the bond used to be.

I looked down at my hands. They were starting to bleed because of the fall.

"I hate you," I whispered into the rain. "I hate you, Kade."

Little did I know then, inside the warm ballroom, Kade was not celebrating.

He was standing by the bar, so hard was he gripping a glass of whiskey that it cracked in his hand. The pain in his chest was unyielding. And for the first time in his life, the silence in his head had been shattered.

Wolf within him howled in grief. Madness, the Alpha Insomnia, was creeping onto the edges of this mind.

He had rejected his peace, and the storm would come now.