Jack Miller

My husband has come back from Zurich changed. Not that it was obvious to anybody but me, but it was obvious enough for me to realize. It wasn't only the way he held his fork, or the fact that he had stopped humming in the shower, or kissing my forehead instead of my lips. I had convinced myself it was nothing when he kept asking me whether I was dreaming or not. But then I found the photograph, and I found his other passport, with another name on it, Julian Cross. So that means the man I have been sleeping with for the past year has not been my husband. He has merely been pretending to be him, and for how long has he been doing that? A year perhaps? Two? He certainly knows how to act, because when I confronted him about the picture, and the passport, he merely smiled. It seems that my real husband is still alive, in a cell of some kind, at the mercy of his so-called twin, who has been deceiving me for a year. I must continue to play his wife, to smile in interviews, to throw dinner parties while a man watches me from the shadows, waiting for the right moment to strike. His twin has not only kidnapped my husband, but he also wants something from him, something that makes him willing to kill my husband and everyone he loves if he thinks it will get him what he wants. If I want to save my husband, I must do whatever it takes to find out what it is first. Because the moment I think I have it figured out, I will have to make sure that I do not make any mistakes. One wrong move and my husband will be dead. It has already been a year of this cruel charade, and I would rather die than spend another day without him.

Abandoned at the pack border as a pup, Lyra has spent twenty years being called broken. She has never shifted, never felt the call of the moon, and never belonged. So when she is dragged before the pack for a public rejection ceremony—the Alpha's cold-eyed command to sever the fated mate bond she never asked for—she is not surprised. She is only waiting for the final humiliation to end. But the ritual does not break the bond. It awakens it. In a burst of silver fire and ancient magic, Lyra's long-dormant wolf finally stirs—not as the beast the pack fears, but as something far more dangerous. A Silver Wolf. A creature of legend, thought exterminated centuries ago. A living symbol of a prophecy the Council tried to erase. Alpha Kael Ashwood has spent three years pretending he does not feel the bond. He has built his rule on cold discipline, on loyalty to the pack above all else. But the corrupted ceremony does more than expose Lyra's true nature—it brands them both with the marks of the Ancients, forging a connection that cannot be denied or destroyed. Now, hunted by the Council's assassins, betrayed by those they trusted, and drawn together by a bond that defies every law of their world, Lyra and Kael must flee into the frozen wilderness. To survive, they must learn to fight as one. To win, they must uncover the truth about Lyra's past, the extinction of the Silver Wolves, and the ancient magic now stirring beneath the thawing ice. But the Council will not let a prophecy come to pass. The Shadow's Hand is already hunting. And the bond that saved Lyra's life may be the very thing that destroys them both. Claimed by the Alpha is the first book in a sweeping shifter romantasy saga of fated mates, forbidden power, and a love strong enough to remake the world.