The Alpha CEO’s Unloved Wife

Escape Plans 

Baron rose with the dawn, dressing with the golden light over him like a benediction. She watched him, wondering how something so beautiful could be the source of so much pain. He saw that she was awake and came to sit on the side of the bed, putting his hand onto her shoulder.

“It is a small thing, Jane,” he told her firmly. “My grandfather was murdered, his fortune stolen, my family’s pack scattered, and my family was cast out in poverty. These things happen to us in life. It would be nice if they did not, but they do. If my family can rise from their losses, and my mother and father still stand proud amongst their peers knowing all that was said of them, then you too can rise above this.

“Take today to recover, rest, but tomorrow night, I expect you to be ready to go out, do you understand, Jane?” He tilted his head until she had no choice but to meet his eyes. “Say: yes Baron.”

“Yes Baron,” she repeated obediently, hating him.

“Good,” he squeezed her shoulder and rose. “I will see you at dinner tonight.”

She lay in bed and thought on what he had said. A photo compared to the loss of a loved one, fortune, pack, and pride, seemed like a small thing, in theory, but the reality was that its repercussions would be felt for years, she knew. That was what pack life was like.

There would never be a time that she could walk into a gathering and not see sly looks and hands covering whispered gossip. Men would see the exposure of her body in that photo as invitation to touch and indecently proposition her. Her children would come to her after being teased about it by their peers.

As an omega, she was a victim who could not defend herself, and her alpha husband, who could offer some protection, openly kept and paraded his alpha mistress and so might as well have publicly declared his indifference to her. She was prey, set amongst natural predators. And they would prey, and prey, and prey until she was stripped to the bone.

may speak freely. Bullies feed off the reactions of their victims. At the moment your bully grows fat off your misery. You need to stand up, shake it off, and pretend, at least, to be indifferent to the injury. Otherwise, the bully

replied. “You do not understand

not a wealthy man,” he replied. “And I understand what it is to be in a lesser social

shame on them. Late in the evening, around the time that Baron would have issued his announcement, the messages went silent. There were no condolences or comfort offered, no balm to the insults of their

had started working for, telling her tersely not to worry about returning. She had let them down, she thought, feeling the

that started the next week, entering her credit card details from memory. She had lost her job, but she would try again,

was an escape from her situation, she

onto her laptop and sat picking

door, come to collect the tray. “I can return, madam, if you are

him, carefully keeping her screen angled away from

building her resume, though it was frightfully thin on information: her contact details, her education, and the course she had signed up

be discouraged. She had won that first job with nothing; she

bed, lying awake and trying not

in, as if it were a normal thing to do. He undressed, hanging his clothing over the back of the chair, and slid into the bed, his skin coming up against hers in a way that sent her body into a wave of desire. She tried to push it down and away, but knew, from the expression on his face, that he had scented

to her breast, sliding his skin against hers as he descended, before lifting her legs over his shoulders. She

slipping through her easily, and he groaned as he sank into her. She pressed off her heels, arching her back, pushing into his thrusts with energy, desperate to feel something other than despair, wanting another release to ease