Sold to the Alpha King, Pregnant by a Stranger Chapter 02

Sold to the Alpha King, Pregnant by a Stranger Chapter 02 — The Ghost and the Phantom

Desert heat hit me like an open oven the second the truck doors opened.

Sable was waiting at the bottom of the ramp in all black, sunglasses on, tablet in hand. My assistant. My fixer. The only person on this earth who has never once asked me to be someone smaller.

“Ninety minutes to weigh-in,” she said. “Your odds moved. You’re a favorite now, which is annoying.”

“Who’s the headline?”

She paused. Just half a beat. But Sable never pauses.

“The Phantom,” she said. “He came out of retirement. Tonight.”

My stomach dropped and then soared, which tells you everything about me.

The Bloodmoon Circuit isn’t street brawling. It’s the oldest illegal blood sport our kind has — masked wolves, no packs, no names, no shifting allowed. Just fists, speed, and the kind of pain that reminds you you’re alive. They run it out of a decommissioned silver mine two hours outside the city. From above, it’s nothing. Below, it’s a neon colosseum carved into rock, packed with money and teeth.

I loved it more than I have ever loved anything.

Because here’s the joke: I’m wolfless. Twenty years old and no wolf has ever answered when I called. In my mother’s house that made me garbage. In that pit it made me unpredictable — no wolf to read, no scent-tell, no dominance signature for opponents to lean on. They swung at empty air and I put them on the floor.

Eleven fights. Eleven wins.

I taped my hands in the back trailer, pulled on matte black, and locked the blank silver mask over my face. No one had ever seen it come off.

The announcer’s voice rolled through the stone.

“The Ghost. Undefeated. Untraceable.” Screaming. “Against the wolf who has never — not once in six years — lost. Your Phantom!”

He walked in and the temperature changed.

I don’t mean poetically. I mean the crowd dropped. Two hundred wolves lowered their eyes at the same time, an entire room bending its neck to a man in a black mask who hadn’t said a word.

Only I didn’t bend.

I couldn’t. No wolf to make me.

He noticed. His head tilted a fraction of an inch, and I felt his attention land on me like static crawling under my skin.

Then the bell.

He was faster than anything I’d ever fought. Every combination I threw, he was already leaving. Two rounds in, my ribs were screaming and my mouth was full of blood, and I was smiling, because he was breathing hard too and nobody had ever made the Phantom breathe hard.

I had studied every fight tape of his that existed. Six of them. And I knew the one thing he did every single time he got tired: he dropped his left shoulder a hair before he pivoted.

Round three, he dropped it.

I was already in the air.

My elbow caught his jaw, his knee buckled, and the entire mine went silent for a full second before it detonated. Fifteen hundred wolves screaming so loud dust fell from the ceiling.

The Phantom hit the ground.

The Phantom, who had never hit the ground.

Refs swarmed. Money changed hands. He got to one knee, mask still on, and looked up at me. I couldn’t see his eyes. I could feel them, and it was like standing too close to a fire.

Then he raised two fingers to the side of his mask and gave me the slowest, most amused salute I’ve ever received in my life.

He walked out through the crowd and was gone before I could climb out of the cage.

I laughed until my ribs hurt.

Sable met me in the tunnel. “You just beat the Phantom.”

“I know.”

“Wren, do you understand who might be under that mask—”

“I don’t care.” I ripped my tape off with my teeth. “I’ve got three days of freedom left and I intend to waste every second of them. Buy me a drink.”

Two hours later, at a rooftop bar with marble floors and forty-dollar cocktails, a man sat down across from me and said, “You should be more careful who you humiliate in public.”

And my heart, which had never reacted to anyone, slammed once against my ribs like it recognized him.