My Husband Traded Me to the Enemy Alpha King

My husband traded me to his enemy.

I woke up in the enemy Alpha King's bed.

Later, when I finally came back home, I found him beneath my cousin, calling me dirty.

---

The black coat still smelled like him.

Cedar. Smoke. Something cold, like iron left out in snow. Thorne's scent clung to the wool and sank into my skin, and every breath made my skull throb harder. Whatever Elias had put in my milk hadn't fully left my blood.

The Frostmere guards at the gate stared at me.

"Luna Vesper?" one of them said. Then he looked away fast, as if he'd seen something he shouldn't have.

I didn't answer. I walked straight up the stone path to the main house, bare feet numb, the coat dragging behind me like a flag of surrender.

The front hall was quiet.

Too quiet.

Then I heard it. A woman's laugh, low and breathless, coming from upstairs.

From our bedroom.

I climbed the stairs one at a time. My hand found the door. It wasn't even locked.

Elias was on the bed, shirt open, his hands gripping a woman's hips. She was straddling him, her head thrown back.

Mara.

My cousin.

"Well," I said.

My voice came out flat. Almost calm.

Elias jerked upright so fast Mara nearly slid off him. "Vesper. What are you—how are you here?"

"That's your first question?" I stepped inside.

Mara didn't move off him. She just pulled the silver straps back onto her shoulders and smiled.

"Cousin," she said sweetly. "You're back early."

I fixed my eyes on Elias. "Explain it. Explain why you handed me to Blackridge. And then explain why she's in my bed."

His jaw worked. He stared at the floor. At the blanket. Anywhere but my face.

"I wasn't going to keep you anyway," he muttered.

"What?"

"Look at you." Now he did glance up. "You're covered in his scent. You smell like another male. No Alpha keeps a woman his enemy has already touched. So yes. I moved on."

Mara draped her arms around his neck. "The pack needs a Luna who's clean, Vesper. You understand."

Clean.

Something inside my chest cracked so quietly I almost didn't hear it.

Three days ago, this same man had been on his knees in front of me, sobbing.

---

"They've taken the eastern ridge."

Elias had burst into the study with mud on his boots and blood on his sleeve. "Blackridge has two thousand wolves at our border. Two thousand, Vesper. We have six hundred."

I'd stood up from the desk. "Then we call the northern alliance—"

"They won't come. Nobody wants to fight Thorne." He grabbed both my hands. His were shaking. "He sent terms. Just one."

"What terms?"

He couldn't say it at first. His eyes filled. Then the words spilled out.

"You. He wants you sent to Blackridge. As a political exchange. Or he takes all of Frostmere by the next moon."

I pulled my hands out of his. "No."

"Vesper, please—"

"No. I'm not livestock, Elias. I'm your *mate*." I backed toward the door. "If this is what Frostmere costs, then I'm leaving Frostmere."

He broke. Fell to his knees and cried into his palms, and I hated how much it hurt to watch.

"Okay," he choked. "Okay. You're right. I'll find another way. And if you want to go, I'll let you go. I'll give you your freedom. Just… stay for dinner tonight. One last dinner. Let me do that much."

He cooked it himself. Roasted venison. Bread from the village. A tall glass of warm milk with honey, the way my mother used to make it.

I drank half the glass before the room started to tilt.

The fork slipped from my fingers. I reached for the table edge and missed.

Elias caught me before my head hit the floor. He held me against his chest, almost tenderly.

"I'm sorry, Vesper," he whispered into my hair.

Then nothing.

---

I woke up to dark wood beams and a ceiling I didn't know.

The sheets were black. The bed was enormous. And a man stood at the foot of it, arms folded, watching me.

He was tall, broad through the shoulders, with a scar running pale through one eyebrow. His eyes were gray as winter water.

I didn't need anyone to tell me who he was. I knew his scent. I'd smelled it on the wind at the border for months.

Thorne. Alpha King of Blackridge.

I scrambled backward until the headboard hit my spine. "Don't touch me."

"I haven't." His voice was deep and very even. "Your husband's men dropped you at my gate four hours ago. Unconscious."

"My husband." I laughed. It came out ugly and cracked. "Of course."

Thorne tilted his head. "He sent a letter with you. Said you'd agreed to the exchange willingly. Said you'd be honored to serve as Blackridge's wife."

"*Willingly?*" I shoved the sheet away. "I told him no. I told him I'd leave the pack before I'd let him sell me."

He went still.

Then he crossed the room in three long strides and caught my chin in his fingers—not hard, just firm enough to turn my face toward the lamp. He studied my eyes. Breathed in once, sharply, near my throat.

His expression darkened.

"Nightroot," he said. "In your blood. Enough to drop a full-grown wolf."

His grip on my chin loosened. He stepped back, and for a long moment he said nothing at all.

Then, quietly: "He drugged his own mate and wrapped her up like a gift."

"And called it peace."

Thorne turned away, toward the window. His shoulders were rigid. "I asked for an alliance by marriage because I thought Frostmere would send a willing daughter. Not this."

"So what happens now?" My voice shook. I hated that it shook. "You keep me anyway? You've already got me."

He looked back at me, and something unreadable moved behind those gray eyes.

"I don't keep women who were forced through my door," he said. "You'll go home at first light."

He pulled the black coat from the chair and tossed it onto the bed beside me.

"It's cold on the road."

---

Now I stood in my own bedroom, wearing his coat, and my husband looked at me like I was something the dogs had dragged in.

That was when I noticed the rest of it.

The bottle of red wine on the nightstand. Two glasses. A cake on the dresser, half eaten, with white frosting.

And on top, piped in crooked red letters:

*Free at last.*

"You threw a party," I said.

Mara giggled. "It was a small one."

Elias reached for his wineglass like I wasn't even standing there. "Frostmere is safe. The war's over. That's worth celebrating, isn't it?"

"I'm standing right here."

"Not for long." He took a long swallow. "Thorne sent you back, which means he rejected the deal. Which means you've humiliated me in front of the most powerful Alpha in the north." He set the glass down hard. "You're done here, Vesper. Pack your things."

Mara stretched out across *my* sheets in *my* dress and smiled at me over his shoulder.

My marriage. My title. My home.

All gone in a single night.

I didn't cry.

I pulled Thorne's coat tighter around me, breathed in cedar and smoke and iron, and smiled back at her.

"You're right," I said softly. "I'm done here."

Because somewhere across the border, there was a man who had looked at me and seen exactly what Elias had done.

And I was going to make sure he never forgot me.