The Alpha’s Forbidden Contract Bride

Four years ago, my parents made a deal with the devil.
They sold me to the Draymore pack to settle a debt. A bride for the nephew. A wedding in three days. A mating bond by the end of the week. My parents walked free and I walked into a life I never chose.

Simple. Transactional. Survivable.
Until the night before the wedding, when he walked into my locked room.
Not the nephew.
The uncle.
Alpha Kade Draymore. The Shadow King. The wolf other Alphas whisper about in fear and won’t say his name too loud. A man so untouchable that even his own family won’t meet his eyes.
He stood in my doorway and looked at me like I was something he hadn’t expected. And then he said the words that split my life in two.

“My nephew is weak. He’ll break you just to prove he can. If you’re smart, you’ll run.”
“And if I’m not smart?” I whispered.
His silver eyes pinned me to the wall. “Then you’ll die here. Slowly.”
So I ran.
I disappeared into the human world with nothing but a stolen car, a fake ID, and a secret I didn’t even know I was carrying yet.
I was pregnant.
Not with the nephew’s child.
With his.

Four years later, I have a life.
A small apartment. A job I love. Two beautiful, wild, impossible children with silver eyes and strength that has no business existing in four-year-olds.
I told myself we were safe. That the Draymore pack had forgotten the girl who ran. That Kade Draymore — the Alpha I spent one stolen forbidden night with — had no idea what he left behind.
I was wrong.
He didn’t forget.
He’s been hunting.

And then he shows up.
Filling my doorway like he owns the air inside it. Those silver eyes — the same silver eyes I see every morning on my children’s faces — looking at me like four years was nothing. Like I never ran at all.
“You ran,” he says. “You stole something that belongs to me. And now you’re going to pay for it.”
He doesn’t know about the twins. They’re at my neighbor’s. Safe.
Or so I think.

Because when I tell him the contract was with the nephew, not him, and he has no claim on me?
He doesn’t ask. He commands.
Seventy-two hours. Pack everything.
“We were never supposed to happen,” I tell him.
“I lied.” He steps closer, his hand finding my jaw, his voice dropping to something that does dangerous things to my pulse. “That night was the only real thing in my life. And I’ve been paying for letting you go ever since.”
“I don’t belong in your world—”
“You belong to me.” His thumb brushes my cheek. “From the moment you looked at me like I wasn’t a monster. From the moment you let me close when you should have run screaming.”

I should fight this. I want to fight this.

Now the choice is mine.
Stay with the Alpha who hunted me, forced my hand, and is willing to burn every law to the ground to keep what’s his.
Or run again — and lose the only family my children have ever known.
My wolf already knows the answer.
She’s always known.