Sold to the Alpha King, Pregnant by a Stranger Chapter 05

Sold to the Alpha King, Pregnant by a Stranger Chapter 05 – Thrown Out Barefoot

Here’s what I got to keep: a bathrobe.

Not my clothes. Not my car keys. Not the emergency cash in my nightstand or the necklace my grandmother left me

or the shoes on my own feet.

“You take nothing your father and I bought,” my mother said, holding the door open. “You’re a woman now, apparently.

Go find whoever put that in you.”

“Martha,” my father said. “It’s forty degrees.”

“Then she should have thought of that in Nevada.”

I stood in the hallway I’d grown up in and looked at the family photos on the wall. Staged smiles. Framed lies. A younger version of me in the back of every single one, half out of frame, like even the photographer had understood.

the hierarchy.

Delphine leaned on the banister above me in silk, glowing.

“Don’t be like that, Wren,” she said sweetly. “You always said you didn’t want him.”

“I didn’t.”

“Good.” She grinned. “Because he’d never have wanted you anyway. A wolfless bride? Please. I’m doing this family a

favor.”

I looked at my father one last time.

Just once. One fragile second of hoping.

He turned his head away.

That hurt worse than the slap. Worse than the screaming. Worse than being traded.

So I walked. I didn’t cry. I didn’t beg. That would have given them something, and they’d taken enough.

The door shut behind me. The lock turned. The cold came up through my bare feet like water.

And then I put my hand in the hidden pocket sewn into the lining of my robe – the one my mother had never found, because she had never once done my laundry – and pulled out my burner phone.

The mistake they made was thinking I had nowhere to go.

It rang twice.

“Miss Vale.”

“Sable. Pick me up. Front gate.”

No pause. Sable never asks why. That’s why she’s still standing when everyone else has fallen out of my life.

“Fourteen minutes.”

She was there in twelve. Matte black SUV, sunglasses, cropped hair slicked back, a bag on the passenger seat.

She looked at my bare feet, at the mark on my throat, at the tear tracks I’d sworn weren’t there, and handed me the

bag. Sneakers. Sweatpants. A hoodie. A bottle of water.

“How long have you had that packed?” I asked.

“Since your birthday.” She pulled onto the road. “You want the good news or the bad news?”

“Good.”

“You’ve got a penthouse at the Vanté. Paid six months in advance. Private entrance, no press, no scent–tracking on

the floor.”

“I paid six months in advance?”

“I figured we’d get here eventually.”

I laughed, and then the laugh cracked in half and I pressed my forehead to the cold window and let it happen for

exactly forty seconds. Then I stopped.

“Bad news?”

Sable’s hands tightened on the wheel.

“That crest on your ring,” she said. “I got a hit.”

I sat up so fast my seatbelt locked.

“You said it was untraceable-”

“It’s not in any public archive. It’s in a treaty archive. Sealed. My contact took one look and hung up on me and blocked my number.” She glanced over. “Wren. That is a royal mating crest. Not noble. Not high–pack. Royal. There’s

one house on this continent entitled to it.”

The mark on my throat went hot.

“Say it,” I whispered.

“House Draven,” Sable said. “You’re wearing the Alpha King’s ring.”