Betrayed and Sold as the Lycan King's Wolfless Bride

Adriana POV:

I woke with a naked stranger asleep beside me.

He lay across the vast bed, tall and broad-shouldered beneath tangled silk sheets. In the pale light leaking through the curtains, I could make out the hard line of his jaw and a mouth far too severe to belong to anyone safe.

Dangerous.

A sharp pain stabbed through my skull as I bolted upright. Dizziness rolled over me. The duvet slipped, and cold air touched bare skin.

I was naked.

Red crescents marked my collarbone. Deep purple bruises—teeth marks—darkened one shoulder, while a heavy soreness pulsed through the rest of my body.

The room smelled of cedarwood and leather. Potent. Male. Alpha.

Not Julian.

My fiancé smelled like sea air and clean linen. In three weeks, I was supposed to marry Julian Hayes, future Alpha of the Hayes Pack, and become the Luna my father had spent years grooming me to be.

But the man beside me was not Julian.

The unfamiliar ceiling, the luxury suite, and my emerald gown torn from neckline to hem told me the same thing.

I pressed trembling fingers to my temples and forced myself to remember.

The Pack gala. Julian entertaining elders from the Hayes and Nichols Packs while I smiled dutifully at his side. Isabelle approaching with champagne, sweetness coating every word as she congratulated me on becoming the future Luna she had always wanted to be. I had taken one sip. The ballroom had blurred. Her smile had sharpened.

Then nothing.

Isabelle had drugged me.

The stranger gave a low groan and shifted.

I clapped a hand over my mouth. I had to leave before he woke.

I slipped from the bed, snatched his white shirt from a chair, and pulled it over my body. The fabric drowned me and carried his scent so strongly it made my stomach twist.

My handbag lay on the sofa. I grabbed it, then froze.

For all I knew, Isabelle had dumped me into the room of some high-end male escort—or I had dragged him upstairs myself in a drugged haze. Either way, I refused to creep out looking ashamed while he woke convinced he had conquered me.

Anger cut through the panic.

I opened my wallet and pulled out ten hundred-dollar bills. Then I looked back at the sleeping man, at the bruises on my skin, and took one bill away.

“Nine hundred,” I muttered. “That’s already generous.”

I scattered the cash across the duvet, grabbed the hotel notepad, and wrote:

“Your fee is on the bed. No need to thank me.”

“Face and body: ten out of ten. Technique: ZERO.”

I drew an enormous zero beneath the words. Then I uncapped my Red Dragon lipstick and pressed a crimson kiss beside it.

There. Let him wake up believing I had hired him—and found him disappointing.

The stranger stirred again.

I seized my bag and ran.

Barefoot and wearing only his shirt, I fled down the corridor, through the marble lobby, and into the biting morning wind. The moment the hotel doors closed behind me, the humiliation I had been holding back finally broke loose.

I stood on the pavement, shaking and crying, with no idea how I would explain any of this to Julian.

Damien POV:

I woke to jasmine and rain—and an empty bed.

My wolf surged beneath my skin, furious at the absence of the woman whose scent saturated the sheets.

Mate.

I sat up and let the fragmented memories return.

The Pack gala. Bourbon. Elders pressing unwanted alliances. Then a vicious heat ripping through me, too sudden and violent to be natural. I had retreated to the Montgomery suite before anyone could witness weakness.

No one was allowed onto this floor without my men’s approval.

Yet she had stumbled through my door, brown hair tangled, eyes glassy, her jasmine-and-rain scent hitting me hard enough to bring my wolf to the surface.

Mine.

She had been burning with the same unnatural heat. The moment I caught her, the mate bond had snapped between us with brutal certainty.

After that came skin, breathless pleas, and a night neither of us had been strong enough to stop.

A rustle drew my attention downward.

Hundred-dollar bills slid from the duvet and scattered across my lap.

I stared at them.

Nine hundred dollars.

Then I saw the note.

“Your fee is on the bed. No need to thank me.”

“Face and body: ten out of ten. Technique: ZERO.”

A huge zero filled the bottom of the page beside a red lipstick kiss.

For several seconds, I simply looked at it.

She thought I was an escort.

Worse, she had paid me nine hundred dollars and rated my performance a zero.

A low, disbelieving laugh left me. It died almost immediately.

No one mocked Damien Montgomery. No one reduced the Lycan King to a paid night’s entertainment and escaped before breakfast.

Especially not his fated Luna.

I closed my fist around the note until the paper crumpled and the lipstick mark disappeared between my fingers.

Reaching through the new bond, I found only a faint thread of fear, fury, and jasmine. She was still nearby.

My wolf prowled inside me.

Find her.

I grabbed my phone and called my Beta. Ethan answered on the first ring.

“Find the woman who left my suite,” I ordered.

“What woman?”

“Brown hair. Jasmine and rain. She’s wearing my shirt.”

My gaze dropped to the insulting pile of cash.

“And Ethan?”

“Yes, Alpha?”

“Bring her to me before she finds another way to offend me.”