The Alpha CEO’s Unloved Wife

The Pack Run
Baron and Angelique were late returning, and there was barely time between their arrival and leaving for them
to change into sweats before the limousine was out front waiting to take them to the Corbyn pack land.
Angelique was almost frenetic with energy, her eyes flashing with her wolf. “A run is exactly
what I need tonight,” she wrapped her fingers into the sweat–shirt that Baron wore, and rubbed her cheek against him, as if
seeking to scent mark him before the run. “A run and a hard, fast, dirty f-k,” she purred.
Jane pressed her side against the door and wondered if there would ever be a point where
she would wish often enough and fervently enough for invisibility that the universe would grant it to her.
“Angelique,” Baron jerked his head away from her. “Enough.”
Angelique threw herself back against the seat, crossing her arms over her chest, petulant. “After
today, Baron,” she said through her teeth. “I would think you would be a little more appreciative.”
“I am appreciative,” he said. “But you are pushing boundaries that I am unwilling to cross.”
“I am the wounded party here,” she hissed. “I am the one who...”
“Enough” his voice was curt. “Enough. Let‘s just enjoy the run.”
The interior of the limousine settled into silence and Jane watched their
reflections in the tinted window. Angelique was brightest, her shining golden
hair and pink velour tracksuit showing clearly in the glass. The lights picked across the plains of Baron‘s face dramatically, highlig
hting the
perfection
of his bone structure, his high cheek bones hollowing his cheeks, and his strong jaw just beginning to show stubble. The first tim
e she had seen Baron had been at a run just two months before. As an omega and younger daughter, she had not been included
in the social functions of the pack, and the elite of the city, and so she had never encountered him, her only knowledge of him
from snippets of conversation
overheard between her father and sister, and the gossip that circulated through the packs during the runs.

Baron‘s grandmother had taken her young family to her parent‘s pack after the loss of her
mate, and Baron‘s father and Baron had been raised on the other side of the
country as a result. When Baron had returned, he had already been a successful
businessman with considerable wealth behind him, and in the two years since he had been back, he
had continued to build that wealth and through it obtain a social position in the city‘s elite and the various packs.
That first run, she had seen him the moment he had stepped out of his car, and every instinct
within her had lit up: mate. He had met her eyes several times during the mingling before the run, and she had thought that
he had felt it too, that immediate connection, that fated pairing between mates.
After the run, he had somehow been at
her side as they had waited for the cars to return, and he had asked her name, quietly, with the conversations of those
around them hiding that they spoke together at all. The next day, her father had told her that she would be
marrying Baron at the next full moon, as was traditional, and she had been thrilled, believing that she
had somehow managed to find her true mate, and would leave her unhappy family home for a happy marriage.
She had not seen him again until the wedding –
he had not called, made no effort to meet her, and small doubts had begun to edge in. However, it wasn‘t until the
moment that she had been waiting for her cue to enter the ceremony and she had heard Alice remark to one of the other bridesm
aids that it could have been her wedding as
Baron had asked for her first, and that Jane had been offered instead, like a consolation prize, that
the doubts had begun to really take hold.
The weight of that comment had sat heavily on Jane‘s heart, but she had told herself that she had felt that connection and that
Baron had shared it too, and that had kept her going throughout the day, until he had
come drunk to her bed, and, in the morning, Angelique had been at the breakfast table. Now, she thought watching him in the
reflection, here they were at their first run as
husband and wife, with his mistress openly included and accepted, and she knew that Alice had been right. Jane had been a fool
to think that someone like Baron would see and want someone like Jane, that fate would bring two such opposites
together. Baron had wanted into the Corbyn pack, and Jane had simply been the means by
which to do so. They were admitted through the
gates and the limousine joined the slow crawl of cars up to the meeting ground before the chauffeurs circled away again. Jane
wondered what the human chauffeurs thought of this large gathering of people in the center of a private nature reserve at night.

Baron kept Jane’s hand on his arm, as if it were a formal gathering rather than just a run, preventing her from
slipping to edges as she normally would. “I have not forgotten that you owe me an explanation, Jane,” he
said under his breath as he made his way to where her family were gathered. Jane flicked her eyes up to him and away, pain
and anger clawing its way through her chest. “Why does it even matter?”
“What do you mean by that?” He frowned.
“Baron,” Matthew Corbyn greeted him.
“We will talk soon,” Baron muttered under his breath to Jane before smiling
widely and stepping towards Matthew, releasing Jane in order to shake hands. Jane took
the opportunity to let the pack swallow her, easing her way back to the edges where she could slip into the shadows of the trees.
She slipped off her shoes and tucked them into the roots of the tree. There had been many pack runs during
her life when she had shifted back after to find that her clothing and shoes had gone missing, and so she had learned
to undress in secret, hiding her clothing.
“Have you got the picture?” A beta only a year or two her senior asked his
friend as they stopped on the opposite side of her tree. “I didn‘t get it during the first round. I‘m told it‘s really something.”
“Here,” his friend pulled his phone out of his
shoe. They were both barefoot, beginning to strip ready for the shift to wolf, and phones and wallets were being stuffed into the
toes of shoes for safe keeping. He flicked through, and Jane saw herself on the screen, bare, the flash of the camera picking up
every detail.
“Oh god,” the first guy moaned. “Send it to me. F-K, that‘s f–king hot.”
“Isn‘t it just. You know what they say about omegas though” the second replied.
“Do you think it‘s true?”
“From that photo, yeah, don‘t you? Western would never say though, lucky bastard,” the
second turned off his phone and returned it to his shoe.
“And there‘s not exactly a lot of them around, so we‘re not likely to ever know.”

“They say she almost caused a mob when she went on heat. How come we didn‘t know about omegas until she‘s already f–king
married to Western? I always thought they were, you know, like cubs, mentally deficit or something.”
“I didn‘t even know she was an omega, I just thought she was being ostracized for some reason,” the other shrugged as
he stripped to his skin. The rest of their conversation was carried on in wolf-form as they shifted, sitting next to the neat piles of
their clothing, waiting for the signal that the pack was moving into the forest.
Jane pressed her back up against the tree, her heart racing in her chest. The signal was given, and there were barks and
howls, the ground shaking under the mass of foot falls as the pack raced across the
clearing and into the trees on the opposite side to Jane’s position.
She stripped off her clothing, pushing them into a knot in the tree, and shifted into her wolf, stretching and shaking out her
silvery–brown coat. The air was heavy with the scent of other wolves, too thick for her to be able to tell if any came to close, and
so, as she always did, she picked her way carefully through the forest, following the shadows, until she was sure that she
had put enough distance between her and them in order to run.
She flew through the undergrowth, lost in the wildness of her own nature, the sound of her own
footfalls, the pull of her breath, the feel of the air passing through her coat, the scents of the forest, and the secrets of the night.
It was this feeling that she tried to capture in her human form when she ran, the
feeling of oneness with the world around her, the sense of place and belonging, of being complete and whole in herself.
She slowed as she reached her special place, going down on her belly
to wriggle through the blackberries that guarded it, before shifting back to human form. She carefully picked her way
through the rocks until she could wade into the water, the chill of it against her skin stealing her
breath as she acclimated and the bank sucking at her toes. She dove under striking out into the center of the pond, turning over
under the water in order to see the perfect, bright circle of
the moon pulled into distortion by the ripples. She surfaced, and felt hands catch her, pulling her up against a hard body, skin
warm against hers.
“Did you think I wouldn‘t notice you sneak away?” Baron wondered.