Alpha's True Mate

Aria dies with Chloe's claws in her throat, then wakes on Claiming Day, the phantom pain of three men's hands still burning on her skin. In her previous life, Chloe intercepted her fated connection to Alpha Hawk, leaving Aria to be claimed by the three Fulton brothers—rich, perverse Alphas who drugged her champagne, pinned her wrists like iron chains, and took what they wanted night after night until she begged the Moon Goddess to let her die. Now she stands in the pack hall, nails digging into her thigh, watching Chloe point at the Fulton crest and declare "I want them." Chloe calls Hawk a psycho, refuses to play the grieving widow, and announces the Fulton Alphas are loaded. Their mother Martha beams. Aria bites her tongue to keep from laughing, but a darker unease coils in her stomach—last time Chloe begged for Hawk, and now she is jumping face-first into the very hell Aria escaped, staring at Aria with dark, searching eyes as if she remembers the past life too. Aria walks out of the pack hall, legs shaking, the Moon Goddess's second chance burning in her veins.

The claiming day drags on. When the heavy oak door finally slams shut, Hawk stands before her—a mountain of a man with a tired smile on his rugged face. Aria scrubs her skin raw, curls up on the farthest edge of the king-sized bed, and reminds herself of Chloe's old claim that this brutal Alpha couldn't even get hard. But sleep brings no safety. The nightmare swallows her: drugged champagne, six heavy hands, silk sheets soaking with blood while the Fulton brothers fed on her screams. She wakes shrieking. Hawk presses a steaming towel to her face with clumsy gentleness, brushes off the sentries at the door, and offers a care no one gave her in her past life. Then he walks into the bathroom, finds her discarded nightgown on the wooden rack, and lifts it to his face. He inhales deep, one hand braced against the stone wall, breathing turning heavy and rough. Aria cracks the door and sees him rigid, caught. She slips on a wet spot, stumbles into his chest, his bathrobe falling open, his arm locking around her waist. He leans close to her ear and murmurs that his wolf is restless tonight.