The Mad Alpha's Substitute Bride

(ALICE)

The tension in the room is now so thick that it could be cut with a knife. Darian is looking at me, and I can’t figure out what he’s thinking. There was a time when I could easily read his emotions in his eyes, but not anymore. Of course, back then, he was able to deceive me into believing that he cared about me. After a few moments of silence, he nods. "Very well. If I have any questions, I will reach out to you at your office."

I stiffen. Darian should not be able to harm me because I am now part of the human world. In the eyes of the government, I am a human under their protection, and I am not exactly low profile in this city. But Darian can make my life miserable. I may have tried to bury the past and move on with my life, but I have not forgotten what he put me through: the humiliation, the agony.

In all my twenty-two years up to that point, nobody had managed to break my spirit. Not even the worst beating that Thomas had inflicted on me had wounded me so deeply. But Darian? He took our bond and made a mockery of it. He earned my trust and violated it in the worst of ways. All because someone like me had dared to be his fated mate. All those things about his father not wanting him to choose me? What a load of crap. Darian just wanted to hurt me. He broke me to the point that I finally lost the desire to live.

Well, the joke’s on him. He may have ripped my soul to shreds, but he left me with something so precious that he can never understand.

Mira!

I forgot about Mira! If he finds out about our daughter—

My knees nearly buckle at the thought. What am I doing getting angry when I should be scared? Darian is the prince of the Wolf Kingdom. If he discovers our daughter’s existence, he can take her from me as a form of revenge. Worse, he can put her through the same agony he put me through, just for having my blood in her veins.

I have never felt such a sickening fear. Bile rises up in my throat.

I have to leave. I have to get out of here. Even if Mira is registered in the human world, it won’t take much for wolf shifters to kidnap her. And after what Darian did to me, I have no doubt that he will do much worse to my daughter.

"Alice?" Katherine sounds worried as she grips me. "What’s wrong?"

The room is spinning, and I see Darian move toward me, but before he can so much as touch me, I gasp, "I’m fine. Just fine. I should probably eat something. I’ll head out now, Katherine."

Without so much as another word to anybody else, I gather my things and rush out of the boardroom. I know that if I leave the building, Darian will catch up to me. What if he kidnaps me? What if he decides to kill me? The safest place right now is Katherine’s office.

I rush past her startled assistant and my own team members, who have been waiting in the corridor. I hear my name being called, but I ignore it.

Slamming Katherine’s office door behind me, I drop everything in my hands and fall to my knees beside the wastepaper basket in the corner, proceeding to throw up in it. It’s only after I’ve emptied the contents of my stomach that I sit on the floor, panting. My whole body feels cold.

How do I protect my daughter? There’s no way Darian is going to leave her alone. Mary never tells me anything about him or the Wolf Kingdom. She knows I needed to cut out that part of my life. I should call her...

My hands grope among my things for my phone, and I realize that I must have left it in the boardroom.

I stare blankly at the carpeted floor.

If I call her right now, I’m just going to send her into a panic. I don’t know how the laws in the Wolf Kingdom work when it comes to children. I need to find someone—I need a lawyer versed in shifter laws, and that can only be another shifter. But if it comes out that my child is descended from the royal family, even my own shifter lawyer will turn on me.

What do I do? Should I relocate? I could leave the country. I have my law degree; I should just have to take a few exams to be able to start practicing somewhere. That might work. The royal family’s jurisdiction ends on this continent. And since I am no longer registered as a wolf shifter, I don’t need the permission of the royal family of whichever continent I decide to relocate to.

I struggle to hoist myself up, and then I sink into the two-seater couch, my head buried in my hands.

I can do this. I can uproot my whole life. I’ve done it once, and I can do it again. But even if I escape to another continent, Darian is powerful enough to be able to get to Mira using other means. If he discovers that he has a daughter, which he no doubt will, he will find us.

I’ll have to change our names. Of course, if I change my name, I will have to start from scratch: a new law degree, a new career. It might be easier than the first time around, but the stress it will put on Mira, not having her mother around once again, is not going to be good for her. But I’m doing this to protect her!

I don’t know what to do. Stay or go?

I never changed my name because once it was removed from the wolf shifter registry, I knew Darian would never come looking for me. As far as he was concerned, I was probably dead. After all, the condition he left me in was as close to death as one can get. He had wanted to finish the job by branding me, at which point my heart probably would have stopped.

Still, he had no reason to believe I was alive this whole time. And now that he knows, his pride will not allow him to leave me alone. He’ll want to destroy me all over again. When he finds out I had the nerve to give birth to his child, even more so.

What do I do?

The door of the office opens, and I look up to see Katherine entering. "Alice! What’s—" Her eyes settle on the wastebasket, and she pales. "What happened? Are you okay?"

I could tell Katherine. She’d help me.

I open my mouth, but then I remember that I fed her the same lies as everyone else. That I had been married, and Mira was my deceased husband’s daughter. I can’t tell her the truth now. I can’t even imply that Darian is some ex-boyfriend. It won’t work. She thinks my supposed husband was the only man I’ve ever been with.

I still suck at lying, it appears.

"Stomach bug," I murmur, my insides twisting.

She gives me a relieved look. "If that’s all it is, I’ll get you some medicine. Or maybe it’s just nerves from that meeting." She walks over to her desk and opens a drawer, which I can see is stocked with over-the-counter pills. "Darian Wild seems very interested in you."

"No shit," I mutter under my breath, folding my hands together as I try to calm down.

She comes over to me, holding out two pills and a glass of water. Some human pills work for me, while some don’t. But there’s no adverse reaction if I pop a pill or two. I swallow them, chugging the water.

She sits in the armchair next to me and crosses her legs. "So, what was going on in there?"

"What do you mean?"

My friend scoffs. "Cut the crap, Alice. You two already knew each other. It was evident to everybody in the room. Darian was looking at you like he wanted to take you right there on the table. And you looked like you wanted to cut his balls off."

I wipe my damp hands on my thighs. "Okay, maybe we’ve met before."

"To use your words, no shit." She narrows her eyes. "He was agreeing to everything you were saying. You could’ve told him to take zero profit from us, and he would’ve allowed it. I’ve never seen a man so desperate to please someone. He didn’t take his eyes off you for even a minute."

I’m silent, trying to figure out what to say to her. "Alice?"

I get to my feet. "He’s no one important." Running my fingers through my short hair, I try to figure out my next move. "I need to get back to the office. Have they left?"

"Yes, but—"

"I have to go, Katherine. I’m sorry. I need to sort out my head."

I begin walking toward the door, but she stops me. Searching my eyes, she asks gently, "If anything was wrong, you would tell me, right?"

I stare at her, my heart sinking. "I—"