H ot, tattooed Gamma is closing the doors behind him, and I am left alone with my cruelly handsome bastard of a husband, who casually leans his fine ass on his desk.

I wasn’t aware he was already here in the bedroom, not with all the lemons on that desk behind him.

“You know what,” I pull myself up on my elbows. “I’m surprised you don’t have an armchair in that corner over there, to sit while swirling a glass of bourbon and looking at me in your bed. All main-love-interests dudes in the books have them.”

At least that’s what my brother says. Goddess, I miss him.

He arches his brow.

“What for? To look at their woman touching themselves?”

I snort with laughter.

“No, just sleeping. You seem creepy enough to do that.”

“Were you drinking wolfsbane?” He looks indifferent, but I can tell he is getting angry.

Or am I just projecting?

“Act like you didn’t make Atlas already report everything to you by the mind-link,” I fall back down on the bed, not caring about anything but the weird spinning in my head.

It was my first time drinking a wolfsbane-infused drink. It blocks werewolves' healing abilities, so it’s also my first time being drunk. But hey, I did a lot of ‘firsts’ recently, so why the hell not?

“Atlas? You call him by his name now? He’s still our Gamma. Is his dick in you right now? Huh?” He storms to the bed in a matter of seconds and crushes my body with his. “Was his dick inside you today? Did you fuck my Gamma?”

That escalated quickly.

“No, we just…” I wiggle under him, wanting to escape. I notice his whole face is sprinkled with dark red dots. Blood. He smells like blood, too.

“Do you want to fuck him?” Cain asks, pressing his groin between my legs and catching my arms in an iron hold.

When he presses them together over my head, I can’t hold my anger anymore, not while I’m completely immobilized by him, so I spit on him.

It’s barely a light spray, but I immediately regret my disrespectful recklessness anyway.

He is a fucking blood-covered Rogue Alpha Prince; what was I thinking?

He moves his free hand over his face, mixing the blood and something black on his fingers, with my spit. He licks his palm while looking into my eyes—probably to show me that no matter what I do, he can do worse. Then he smears it all over my face while I try to escape him.

“You sick fuck, leave me alone!” I scream and kick my legs, and wriggle my arms and whole body under him.

I can practically feel the sting on my cheek with a hit I anticipate from him. But he doesn’t hit me. He laughs coldly instead.

His mouth comes down on mine, and he kisses me feverishly. He always kisses me. And right now, I am starting to think it never has anything to do with any normal feelings toward me or even any sexual tension. No. He is driven by his desire to hurt me. It’s his way of stopping himself from harming me for real, probably because I’m his wife—we both know it’s more profitable for me to live .

He kisses me because it’s more profitable than killing me . The realization makes me dull and lifeless—he must have felt the shift in the way I kissed him back, because he abruptly cuts it short and looks at me with soul-searching eyes.

I feel uncomfortably naked under that gaze, so I look to the side.

“Look at me.”

I don’t.

“Look at me!” he roars with the alpha command, and I can’t help but do what he says.

He sighs and closes his eyes like he’s trying to calm himself down. I take a deep breath, too. Whoever came up with the brilliant idea of marrying us to each other didn’t think it through. Two royal-alpha-blooded werewolf generals are not the calmest combination.

“You are drunk and clearly in need of some calming down,” he says finally, as if he wasn’t the one to go all hotheaded on me a few seconds ago. “Take a bath, I’ll clean you.”

He lets me roll out from under him, and I go to the bathtub without arguing. I know there’s no point. He’ll clean me anyway. I just hope the water is warm.

“I haven’t seen any servants here since the first morning. Did you tell them not to come when I’m here?” I ask, taking the rest of my clothes off and sitting in the water that is indeed freshly filled.

“No, they are probably in the library, reading the anatomy books.”

I look up at him.

“Are you… are you joking?”

“About the library? Yes, they can’t read, as far as I know. But they are scared of you throwing more stuff at them.”

He grabs something and stands behind me.

“I’m not—” my sentence comes to an abrupt stop when my head is violently pushed down under the water. Cain is holding me down with his strong, big hand.

I struggle to breathe— bubbles of air leaving my mouth while my drunk brain asks me to scream in panic.

He lets me go, and I shoot up; splashing water around me, desperate to inhale something that is not liquid.

“What the fuck, Cain?!” I scream with a sore throat, turning back to see him smirk at me.

“I just want to wash your hair. It is getting greasy, you know?” He reaches his hands to my head again, and I flinch, which makes him visibly irritated.

What did he expect after he tried to drown me?

“Don’t touch me,” I snarl.

“Sit back,” he commands.

I do.

I hate that he has this control over me. I hate it even more that he uses it.

I observe his moves with as much hatred as I can muster. He soaks a yellowish square bar in the water and uses it to wash my hair.

“What’s that? Soap?” I ask, dreading the fuzzy effect it will have on my wavy hair.

“It’s my shampoo.”

“You have hipster eco shampoos here?” I lift my brow at him. It would actually be smart, less plastic waste.

“What’s a hipster?” He pauses, cleaning the strands for a second.

“Never mind.”

“Anyway,” he’s back to massaging my head, and I try not to flinch again, “They sell these bars at one of the stands in the market, where Atlas took you today. I know they do custom hair products, too. They mix them according to your hair type, weather conditions, and fucking hormones or whatever. Anyway, you can go there tomorrow and order something for yourself if you want.”

I look up at him to search his eyes for any possible explanation for this sudden human conversation, but he’s too occupied with cleaning my head.

I hate to admit his shampoo soap smells great, and if I don’t end up with hay on my head, maybe I will go check out that stand…

There’s a knock on our doors, and someone opens them without waiting for an invitation.

“Sorry to interrupt,” it’s the maid that Cain struck on the cheek for forgetting my meal, “Luna, I heard your people like to drink teas back in your kingdom, so I thought I would make you some.”

She puts the tray with a pot, cups, and something else on the desk.

“Tea? I love tea, thank you!”

“Do you want it with sugar, or ho—” she stops with a shocked face when she finally turns our way and sees her Alpha cleaning me.

I stifle a laugh, knowing that his way of humiliating me just backfired.

“Is there something wrong, Klara?” He asks, highly irritated. Either at the girl, or the fact that it looks like he is acting lovingly toward his wife.

The girl, Klara, is lucky she didn’t come during one of the times he kneeled before me—she wouldn’t have escaped him alive.

“Everything’s great, Alpha. Do you want tea, too? Your Highness?”

“Can you make us two teas with honey? You brought honey, right? I can smell it from here. And a squeeze of lemon juice. Don’t skimp. Thank you!” I send her a big smile.

She bows and turns to the tray again.

Cain uses this moment to push me into the water again but doesn’t hold me this time. I emerge annoyed at him, but don’t say anything, just push my wet hair back from my face. I catch the quick look that Klara gives us.

I guess she’ll no longer think her Alpha has any loving side to him, maybe that was his point .

Cain undresses himself quickly but shamelessly, and squeezes into the bathtub with me.

I shoot my brow up in a questioning look, but he ignores me and lays back—resting his head on the rim with closed eyes. His legs are bent on both of my sides, and his dick is floating freely before me.

“Your Highnesses,” Klara brings a tray with two steaming cups.

“Thank you,” I take both of them and give her a polite smile.

She bows and quickly leaves the room.

I hold two cups, waiting awkwardly for Cain to take one, but he is still ignoring me.

“Take one, please,” I say finally with a soft voice.

He opens his eyes, looks at me, and takes a cup. We start to drink at the same time.

It’s delicious. Probably Earl Grey, but with a strong taste of lemon and wildflower honey, it’s hard to tell.

“Fuck, it is good,” Cain says, breaking away from his almost empty cup.

“Lemon.”

“Mmm,” he finishes it and puts the cup on a chair behind the bathtub.

I drink mine slowly and catch his gaze again. He looks down at my exposed body, and I can see his dick getting harder and bigger by the second. My breath hitches at the unwanted memory of its salty taste, so I look away.

I feel weirdly conflicted about having sex with him again. My nipples are hardening at the thought of being filled by him, but my elevated heart rate is caused by pure stress at the memory of him pushing me under the water just for his sick fun.

He doesn’t make a move on me, other than squeezing my waist with his arm later at night—which doesn’t do a great job of calming my confused mind.

Horny and scared, that’s what I am.

When Rogue Prince doesn't try to take me the next day, either, I become suspicious.

It’s not like I want to have sex with him, but if he wanted to, I wouldn’t say no. Not because of who he is—I am just not opposed to having some pleasure while being stuck in this whole arranged marriage situation, and I know he could give me that… I think it’s weird that he doesn’t want to.

My ego doesn’t like it either.

I’m still on my period, but he seems like a guy who would just take out my menstrual cup if he wanted to fuck me. He’s a ruthless Rogue Alpha Prince, for fuck’s sake, he’s not afraid of a little blood. He’s probably even turned on by it.

My period is done after three days, like with any other werewolf female, and all my days keep looking exactly the same. Breakfast in bed from servants who seem to be impressed with my prowess. Dressing up like Cain and making him take me to the office—where he would not so discreetly test me about my strategy knowledge against his officers, for an hour or two. Then—forced on me—exploring the city with hot Gamma Atlas, who is quickly becoming my friend. Dinner in the hall with pack people and Cain, who has blood splatter on him in different patterns every evening.

I keep up my facade of being a royal princess and loving Luna in front of everyone, but it’s an act. Never in my life have I felt like such an imposter by doing all I was trained to do so perfectly. Only behind closed doors—alone with Cain—do I let myself feel angry, bitter, hotheaded, and truly myself.

When we are alone behind closed doors every night, he commands me to participate in his little ritual of scrubbing me clean against my free will—before he scrubs himself from all the blood, about which I’m too afraid to ask. Then we lay down under the covers, spooning, always the same way; while he wraps me with his warm, strong arms, burrows his face in my neck, and… falls asleep.

It's Friday night, and my ego is starting to feel rejected. I’m never alone for long enough to blow off some steam by myself. Maybe that’s why I finally turn around in Cain’s arms to face him. His arm tightens around my waist, but his eyes are closed. I kiss his soft lips tenderly.

He kisses me back. No passion, no tongue, just a peck.

“Mmm, I’m so tired,” he murmurs and tries to burrow his face into my neck again.

I blink and look at his sleepy self. He does look tired, I realize. And cute. But he’s undeniably the strongest werewolf of our generation. Why is he tired? What does he do all day when I’m sent for a stroll with my babysitter of a Gamma, and no real responsibilities? Does it have anything to do with all the blood he has been sporting recently?