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.

door with his gaze politely averted. “Madam,” he said. “If I 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 will continue, not stop, greedy and glutenous off

she replied. “You do not

what it is to

the salad he had brought her for lunch and lay in the bed reading through the messages from her family as they had grew increasing irate, berating her for bringing 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 earlier communications, just silence as Baron’s explanation was

had started working for, telling her tersely not to worry about returning.

next week, entering her credit card details from memory. She had lost her job, but she would

her situation,

her laptop and sat picking at her lunch tray and

the tray. “I can return, madam, if

him, carefully keeping her screen angled

resume, though it was frightfully thin on information: her contact

that first job with nothing; she could

she ate with more appetite, showered, and went to bed, lying awake and trying not to think of the next evening, but her imagination running wild with images of eyes staring, mouths laughing and

his skin coming up against

legs over his shoulders. She arced, her eyes closing, her fingers pulling

slipping through her easily, and he groaned as he sank into her. She pressed off her heels, arching her back, pushing into his