The Alpha CEO’s Unloved Wife

The Hyenas Gather 

Exhausted, she only woke when Baron leaned over and kissed her cheek. She was on her stomach in a tangle of sheets, as their last round of sex had left her. He was showered and had dressed, the fresh scent of his cologne still heavy on his skin after recent application. His cheeks were smooth, and his hair slicked back as he preferred it.

“I have to go into the office,” he told her, stroking his hand down her spine. “Sleep, Jane. It is still early, and we have a function tonight.”

She could not fall asleep again and so she rose and had a shower before stripping the over-used bedding off the bed and stuffing it into the hamper. She dressed in running gear, and cautiously made her way through the house hoping to avoid Angelique. As she reached the front door, movement on the landing caught her attention, and she looked up meeting Angelique’s eyes, before she dropped her gaze and hurriedly escaped into the morning.

She ran to the café and knocked on the kitchen door.

“Good morning,” James opened it. “We were beginning to worry,” he added as she stepped inside. “It has been a few days.” His eyes searched her for bruises. She had deliberately worn a long sleeve running top to hide the now yellowing bruise left by Baron’s teeth on her shoulder and so knew there was nothing for him to see.

She smiled brightly. “I just couldn’t get away, I am sorry. They would stop me if they knew, so sometimes it’s just harder than others.”

“They?” Patrick was in the kitchen unpacking boxes onto the shelves.

“It’s complicated,” she rolled up her sleeves.

you think. I don’t think he will hurt me. Not on purpose. But my family… and Angelique… Well, they would be furious. Baron

exchanged a look with Patrick. “I don’t even know where to start with

somehow, disappear,” she dropped her voice to a whisper. “I often fantasize about becoming invisible, just… dissolving away, vanishing out of sight, so that no

unhappy start to their marriage, she thought angrily. Baron had been cold and cruel, and deliberately trying to wound her, because of what Alice had said, and perhaps that made a difference,

just not that

and she would still be the runt, the weak, snivelling, pathetic omega of the pack. She would still humiliate and embarrass Baron at social functions because she would still be the subject of the pack’s vindictiveness. At some point, their opinions on her would penetrate, and Baron would look at her with distaste and wonder what he had been thinking in

had brought him her as his true mate and come to resent Jane as

kisses, their laughter and exclamations loud. One of them spotted her cross the lawn, and all turned in unison to stare

she-wolf to hide. How would Angelique explain her demotion from

arranging petit fours and canapes on high tea

be to your room quickly

and for once, it was not Jane being laughed at, but included in the joke, a part of the pack, rather than the subject of its vitriol. Here, it was Angelique who

it felt like, she thought, to be included rather

she snuck past it on her way to the back stairs. She wondered if he were in it, or whether he had gone to the glossy tower in the city. It was impossible to know. She crept