#Chapter 1 Down the aisle

Hannah POV

“Fuck me to death if you must, you asshole,” I sobbed.

I felt defeated as I lay beneath the Alpha King’s hardened body; he was pressed heavily against me. My body squished against his bed. Tears stained my features and he stared around my face, curiously. He paused for a long moment, breathless and trembling.

Just moments ago, he was ripping my custom-made wedding gown off my thin body and shredding it to pieces. I watched it crumble to the ground around me as he gripped my small body in his hands and held me close to him. He hungrily pressed his lips against mine, nibbling at my lips and taking me in.

I couldn’t breathe.

I trembled uncontrollably as he pressed me against his bed, kissing every mark of my body and biting me until I bled. I felt the blood trickling down my shoulder blade as the sharpness of his teeth dug into my flesh. I screamed out in agony, silently begging for him to stop but the words were too afraid to leave my mouth.

His dark blue gaze had gone wild and at that moment, I truly feared for my life. I feared that the night of my wedding night was going to be the end of my life altogether. 

The memory of the day invaded my mind as I kept thinking to myself, “how did I end up here?”

…

“He will kill me, father. Just as he killed his first luna. You couldn’t possibly want that for me,” Amy sobbed.

She sat in the hospital bed with gauges wrapped around her wrists. She said a thousand times before that she would much rather die from her own hands than the hands of the Alpha King. I didn’t blame her for being frightened of him. He was known to be the fiercest creature that walked our lands. He kills for fun and has battle scars across his face that he keeps covered with a mask.

“Amy, stop being hysterical,” her mother, my stepmother, Naomi scolded as she grabbed onto Amy’s hands and squeezed them tightly. It was her way of consoling her daughter, but Amy pulled her hands away and turned to our father.

“Please,” she begged again. “I can’t marry him. If you care anything about me, you won’t make me…”

“Enough of this,” my father hissed. “The Alpha King requested that he marries my daughter, and I will not go against his wishes. You will not embarrass this family.”

“But father,” she sobbed. “I’m not your only daughter.”

They all paused for a moment as they processed her words; slowly, my father and Naomi turned to face me. I was at the far end of the hospital room, my back pressed against the wall and my head kept down. Up until that point, I was used to being ignored. Since my younger brother, Liam, and I were born, he’s never paid any attention to us. We were Omega’s so he considered us weak and vulnerable. We had no real potential to be something in this world and thought of fathering omega wolves, embarrassed him.

It drove him to abandon us along with our mother. As the Alpha of our pack, he exiled us. It drove my mother to depression. She tried hard to care for us as we lived as rogued wolves. My brother was born of a medical condition that needed constant treatment. My mother didn’t have much money and worked, as a nurse, from sunrise to sunset so she could provide for our little family and get my brother the help he needed to survive.

For as long as I could remember, we lived on our own and did everything we could to survive. But the depression grew too much for my mother; I could see her body weakening almost daily. The light in her eyes was dimming and she was losing all hope.

I tried hard to keep our family together, but there was only so much a 15-year-old could do. She died a few months after my 15th birthday.

Liam was only 14.

Once word got out of her death, my father requested that my brother and I returned to this pack and lived under his roof.

Despite living in the house of an Alpha, they never made either of us feel welcomed in their home. We lived the last 5 years as outsiders. My father keeps my brother alive with bare minimal efforts and uses his condition to get what he wants from me.

As they continued to pour their stares into me, I felt a sob escaping through the back of my throat.

I couldn’t marry Alpha King Sebastian even if I wanted to. I was already engaged to someone that I loved dearly.

My fiancé Thomas and I promised to marry in a few months.

“I’m sorry,” I heard myself saying softly. “But I can’t marry Alpha King Sebastian.”

Naomi scoffed as she stood from the bed, folding her arms across her chest.

“You are the eldest sister,” she hissed. “Amy is suffering right now, and you can’t do her this one favor? Who raised you to be so ungrateful and selfish?”

I flinched at her words; I tried to do everything for everyone. This was the one thing I was asking to not do, and I was being labeled as ungrateful and selfish. I swallowed hard to keep another sob from escaping my lips.

“You’re just like your mother,” Naomi spat, making me flinch at her words. I knew she didn’t mean it as an endearment.

My father stared at me with his lips thinning out in a disappointed line. But before he could speak, Amy broke through the silence.

“Father, I’m already in love with someone I wish to marry. Please don’t make me marry that creature.”

My father pulled his eyes from me to glare at Amy; this was the first he was hearing from this. This was the first any of us was hearing of this.

“Who might that be?” Father asked, narrowing his eyes at his youngest daughter.

“It’s Thomas,” she announced. “We are in love and wish to marry.”

My heart felt heavy in my chest as she spoke the name of my fiancé. He hadn’t mentioned anything about seeing my sister and falling in love with her. Just yesterday he was telling me that he couldn’t wait to make me his wife.

My eyes found Amy’s and a smirk appeared on her mouth.

“He doesn’t wish to marry Hannah,” Amy continued. “He never did. He has my heart and I have his…”

I nearly stumbled backward, further into the wall. She was only two years younger than me, but she acted like a child. She was entitled and felt she needed everything I had. Including my fiancé.

I felt sad that he couldn’t tell me this himself.

“Then it’s settled,” Naomi said, turning back to me with a plastered smile on her face. “Amy will marry Thomas and Hannah will marry Alpha King Sebastian.”

“What?” I blurted; I was still in shock over the betrayal. “I can’t…” I tried to protest again.

“Enough,” my father snapped, once again. “I promised the Alpha King a Luna and I will provide him with a Luna. I won’t hear any more of this. Hannah, you will marry him. If not, it will be your brother that will pay your debts.”

“I’m sorry?” I asked, I felt the color draining from my features.

“Just as I said,” my father sneered. “Your brother will pay the debt. I’m currently paying his medical expenses. I’ll keep paying them and make sure he has the help that he desperately needs, only if you marry the Alpha King.”

My mouth nearly dropped to the ground. He was threatening my brother’s life to get me to marry Alpha King Sebastian.

“You can’t be serious,” I whispered hoarsely.

“He’s serious,” Naomi cut in.

It took everything I had not to crawl into a ball and start crying my eyes out. I couldn’t believe this was happening right now. There was no air left in the room to satisfy me at that moment. But I had no choice; it was either I married Alpha King Sebastian, or my brother died. He was the only full-blood relative I had since my mother died. The only one I had left. I couldn’t lose him. I wouldn’t lose him.

“Okay,” I said, after a long pause. “I’ll marry the Alpha King.”

I stood at the front of the chapel with a heavy heart.

It wasn’t because I was marrying the most feared wolf to walk our lands. It wasn’t because he was 25 minutes late for our wedding. It wasn’t even because I was being used as a pawn to get close to the Alpha King, my future husband’s, family.

It was because my brother’s life was at stake if I didn’t go through with this wedding. His medical condition was only worsening with every passing year, and he needs extensive treatment to keep him alive. The treatment my father, Alpha Steven, threatened to take away from him if I didn’t agree to marry Alpha King Sebastian.

“I apologize for being late. I got held up with some work.”

Sebastian stood before me, tall and fierce. He wore a mask over his face to cover the battle wounds that disfigured him. He wouldn’t allow anyone to see beneath his mask and no one would dare cross that boundary. As he entered the chapel, the crowd of hundreds of people, fell silent. No one dared to speak without permission while in his presence. Even my father, his wife Naomi, and their shared daughter, Amy, remained silent as he joined me at the front of the altar.

I hoped he didn’t notice how nervous I truly was. As he took my hands in his, I had a moment of panic because of how clammy my palms were. He didn’t seem to notice, or he didn’t seem to care. I tuned out most of what the pastor was saying. All I could think about was my poor younger brother, Liam, laying in that hospital bed and fighting for his life.

His only hope of survival was me.

“You have to admit; he’s quite handsome,” My inner wolf, Nora, breathed from within me. I often ignored her antics, but she was quite loud when she wanted to be. In this case, though, she wasn’t wrong. Even though I couldn’t see his face, the rest of him was more handsome in person and up close.

My face reddened as the pastor instructed us to kiss; he seemed oddly hesitant. I could tell from his posture, that he wanted to refuse. The pastor looked nervous as the silence grew thick between us. I could tell a million things were running through the pastor’s mind at that moment.

After a bit longer, I sighed and stood on my tippy toes, pressing my lips against Sebastian’s. I heard some soft gasps around the room as everyone held their breaths.

My heart was beating heavily against my chest as my body trembled uncontrollably. However, I tried to contain myself so I wouldn’t look like a fool in front of the Alpha King and his kingdom.

His