The Alpha's Unwanted Bride

Divia's POV

"Two hundred. Not a coin more."

The woman's voice slices through the hall. I stand with my arms crossed, listening to my own price get haggled over like I'm a sack of grain.

"She's healthy. Strong back," my mother says, not once looking at me.

"Plain," the woman says. "An Omega, no less. Barely worth the two hundred."

I don't flinch. I stopped flinching years ago.

Weak Omega. Broken. Resonance-null. I've heard every version of it since I was old enough to understand what my blood wasn't.

"Two hundred and fifty," my father says. "She's obedient. Quiet. Won't embarrass anyone."

Coins hit his palm. He counts them without looking up once.

That's what I'm worth. Two hundred and fifty coins, and a daughter nobody will miss at the dinner table tonight.

"My employer needs a housemaid." The woman grips my wrist. "Move."

I don't look back. I'd already decided I was leaving this house for good. I just hadn't planned on being sold first.

The Ashcombe pack house is bigger than anything I've ever stood inside. Marble floors. Firelight in every hall.

And it's wrong.

Through an archway, a wedding banner hangs torn halfway off the wall. Two maids yank it down, whispering.

"She's still gone," one breathes.

"Hush."

A long table is set for a feast. One chair sits stripped bare, the place setting removed, like no one could bear to look at it. Every servant keeps glancing at the same staircase.

"Kitchens are that way," the woman says, shoving a tray into my hands. "Don't speak unless spoken to. Don't look the Alpha in the eye. Omegas don't get that privilege here either."

I nod. I've learned nodding is safer than asking why.

Three steps later, I collide with someone rounding the corner too fast. The tray flies. Glass shatters across the marble.

"Watch where you're going." The voice is low, sharp as a blade.

I look up, and my stomach drops.

He's tall enough that I have to tilt my head back, and his eyes are gold, the kind of gold that doesn't look human. His gaze flicks over my dress, my dirt-smudged hands, and something like disgust crosses his face.

"An Omega." He says it the way my mother says plain. "Of course it's an Omega making a mess of my floor."

Heat crawls up my neck. I drop to my knees, gathering glass with shaking hands.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean..."

"I don't care what you meant." He doesn't crouch. He doesn't help. He stands over me like I'm something to step around. "Clean it. Quickly."

I grab for a shard too fast, and it bites into my palm. I bite down a gasp, not wanting to give him the satisfaction.

He sees the blood anyway.

Something changes in his face. Not kindness. Confusion, maybe. He crouches then, grabbing my wrist harder than he needs to, turning my hand over to look.

The second his skin touches mine, fire shoots up my arm.

It isn't a shiver. It's a brand, white-hot, racing straight to my chest, and something buried so deep inside me I didn't know it was alive claws its way upright and howls.

My wolf. My useless, silent, broken wolf, screaming for the first time in my life.

He goes rigid. His pupils blow wide, gold burning so bright it looks like fire caught behind glass.

"No," he says, and it isn't anger anymore. It's fear. "Not an Omega. Not now."

"What is happening to me?" My voice comes out smaller than I want it to.

He doesn't answer. He's still holding my hand like he can't make his fingers let go, like his body has overruled something in his mind and he hates it.

"Anyone who sees this will use it against me," he mutters, almost to himself.

Footsteps pound down the hall.

"Alpha Kael, I've been looking everywhere..." A man skids around the corner and stops dead. His eyes drop to our joined hands, and the color drains from his face. "Tell me that's not what I think it is."

Kael doesn't let go. "It is."

"Then the timing is either a miracle or a disaster." The man drags a hand down his face. "Three days until moonrise, Kael. No bride at that altar, and the council hands Callan your title."

"A bonded mate can't be refused by the council." Kael's eyes haven't left mine, and there's nothing warm in them. Only calculation.

The advisor stares at me like he's doing the same math and hating the answer.

"She's an Omega. A kitchen girl. They'll say you bonded with the first stray thing that bled on your floor."

"I know exactly what they'll say."

He says it like it costs him nothing, and that's what hurts worse than if he'd shouted it. I am a problem solved. Nothing more.

"Then we have one," he says.

"You don't even know my name," I whisper.

"I don't need it." His grip tightens around my bleeding hand. "I need you to say yes."

Yes. The word sits in my throat like a stone I refuse to swallow.

I think of the locked door. The leftovers. My father counting coins without once looking up. I have spent my whole life being told I am less. I will not spend it being told I am nothing.

I lift my chin, meeting eyes I was told never to meet.

"And if I say no?"

Something flickers across his face, quick as a struck match. Not softness. Something closer to surprise that I'd dare ask.

"Then I lose everything my father built," he says. "And you go back to the house that sold you for two hundred and fifty coins."

The words land exactly where he wants them to.

I open my mouth to answer.

The doors at the end of the hall slam open, and a woman's voice rings out, clear and furious.

"Kael. What in the moon's name is going on here?"

Every head in the hall turns.

Standing in the doorway, her copper hair wild and her wedding gown still half-laced, is the bride who was supposed to be standing where I am now.

Thank you for reading!

The story builds gradually at the beginning, but the tension, secrets, and emotional intensity increase significantly as the story progresses.

If you continue, you’ll see the stakes and the connection between Divia and Kael become much stronger.

— Ankie Diamond

Divia's POV

Three days.

That is how long it takes for strangers to decide the rest of my life.

They measure me. Pin silk against my skin. Twist my hair into something that does not belong on a girl who was sold for two hundred and fifty coins. Not once does anyone ask what I want. Not once does anyone use my name like it matters.

Marta, the woman assigned to me, only repeats the same line every time I open my mouth.

“Just show up. That is all that is required of you.”

By the morning of the wedding, I still do not know where I will sleep that night. I do not know if the man waiting at the altar has spoken a single word about me since the night he claimed me. I only know that the pack house has been whispering.

I hear them the moment I step into the great hall.

“That’s the one? The village Omega?”

“I heard he paid for her like livestock.”

“Poor thing has no idea what she’s walking into.”

I keep my chin up. I have practi