Sold to Bastard Alpha after My Divorce! novel Chapter 211

Chapter 211: Chapter 211

Rebecca’s POV

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The fur was scratchy.

That was the first thing I’d noticed, two weeks ago when Magnus had deposited me in this chair like I was some kind of prize he’d won. The pelts that covered it were old and poorly cured, stiff in some places and weirdly soft in others, and they smelled like animal and mildew and the particular unwashed musk of men who had stopped caring about basic hygiene somewhere around the time they decided civilization wasn’t for them.

I sat in it every day.

I sat in it straight-backed, chin up, Vixen perfectly composed under my skin, projecting every ounce of Silver Fang authority I had left. Because if I slouched for even five minutes, one of these animals would take it as an invitation.

There were thirty-seven of them.

Uncounted rogue wolves, ranging from young and feral to old and feral, housed in a converted warehouse complex somewhere in the outer ring of the territory. No windows worth mentioning. Leaking ceiling in the east wing. Cooking smells that would have made any reasonable person lose their appetite entirely.

I was the only woman here.

I was aware of this fact constantly. Every hour of every day. The way you’re aware of a thorn in your shoe — not always screaming, but always *there.* The looks they gave me were the particular kind that men who have spent too long outside of any social structure give to anything female that wanders into their orbit. Calculating. Measuring.

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The door banged open at half past two.

I heard Magnus before I saw him. That particular heavy tread, the one that announced itself. The sounds of the men in the outer space stirring, shifting, the instinctive animal awareness of the apex predator returning to his den.

I set down the comb I’d been dragging through my hair and stood up.

Composed my face.

He came through the doorway like he owned everything, which he believed he did. Magnus Blood Crown at sixty-two, stripped of his title and his territory and his legitimate authority, exiled by his own son — and somehow still managing to take up more space than any man I’d ever met.

His red-gold eyes were bright.

He was in a good mood.

That should have been a relief. It was not.

"Rebecca." He crossed to me in four strides. His hands found my waist before I could manage so much as a greeting. He pulled me against him, and I went — of course I went — and then his mouth was on mine.

I kissed him back.

I made myself kiss him back.

His hands were too tight on my waist and he smelled like blood and unwashed skin and the faint metallic undertone that always clung to him now, that rust-and-iron scent that Tyrant — his inner wolf — wore like a coat. He tasted like whiskey and violence and I kept my hands flat on his chest and my face perfectly still and I kissed him back.

When he finally pulled away, he was grinning.

"You should see your face," he said. Like he found something delightful about me.

"I’m looking at you," I said. Sweetly. "My face looks exactly the way it should."

He laughed. He liked that. He liked things that had edges, liked to think he’d met his match, liked the performance of it.

Good. Let him think that.

He settled onto the fur-covered chair — *my* chair, technically, the one I occupied during the day — spreading himself across it with the loose-limbed confidence of a man who had never in his life questioned whether he belonged somewhere. His long legs stretched out in front of him. He reached for the bottle on the table beside it.

"Sit," he said.

I sat on the arm of the chair. Close. The way he liked.

"Tell me," I said. "You look pleased."

"Pleased." He rolled the word around. "Yes. I am pleased." He took a long drink. Set the bottle down. "The eastern checkpoint."

I kept my expression warm and interested. Just the right amount of eager. "I heard the commotion earlier. The men were excited about something."

"They should be." He leaned back, satisfied with himself in a way that filled the whole room. "Two of Kael’s perimeter warriors dead. A third hanging on, last I heard. And the boy knows it was me — that’s the beautiful part." He pointed at his chest. "I made sure of it. Left something for him to find."

"Smart," I said.

"Of course it was smart. I trained him. Every instinct he has, every tactical move he makes — I built that." He looked at me. "And I know every counter to it."

I nodded slowly. "So you’ve mapped their defenses."

"You want to be Luna." He said it like he was offering something magnificent. "You’ve always wanted it. That boy—" His lip curled. "My son was too stupid to see what he had in you. Too distracted by a Shadow Moon Omega with pretty eyes."

I kept my face perfectly still.

"I’m not my son." His voice was quiet. Almost gentle, the way it got when he was at his most dangerous. "I understand ambition. I understand wanting the thing you were made for." His hand came up, and he pressed two fingers under my chin, tipping my face up. "You help me take this back. You prove your loyalty. And I will put you on that throne myself."

"Luna," I said softly.

"Luna," he confirmed. 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

His fingers stayed under my chin. Not hard. Just there. A reminder of how easy it would be for them to be hard.

"And if you’re loyal—" He said the word with a particular weight. "—completely, utterly, wholly loyal. Not just to the goal. To me." His eyes met mine, and there was nothing warm in them at all. "Then you’ll have everything."

He lowered his hand.

Let the silence sit.

Then he said, very quietly: "But Rebecca. If I find out you’ve been keeping things from me. If I find out you’ve been talking to anyone you shouldn’t. If I find out that pretty little head of yours has been working on something behind my back—"

He didn’t finish the sentence.

He didn’t need to.

He just looked at me, with those red-gold eyes that his son had inherited the color of but none of the coldness, and let me fill in the rest myself.

I looked back at him.

I held his gaze.

I nodded.

Slow. Obedient. Perfectly performed.

What an absolute, delusional, power-drunk madman.