The Wolf King's Unwanted Mate

Author: Freda Shade

Chapter 1 The Seventh Tribute

Word Count: 981 | Released on: 21/05/2026

ordenmaar open

e sound rolled across the snow-blind courtyard and settled into Ziva

did not move a single muscle sh

ked through these

hem walke

reathing even and her face arranged into something that gave nothing away. Her pack Alpha had told her th

e tribute document without looking up from his other corr

long before that moment. Tha

hin up and looked at Vordenmaar the way it deserved to be

omething that could contain people. Towers disappearing into low clouds. The cold here was different from lowland cold.

nest looking. Then

ughly forty minutes between changes. One visible exit from her current positi

of it and wa

aiting inside

had performed this exact reception before and found it unremarkable. She looked at Zivah the way

the Ossian

ssaly. F

up her bag and followed and found she preferred this to false warmt

l swallowe

e back of Zivah's neck feel alert without knowing why. She walked and memorised simultaneously. Left turn after the second archway. Right turn at the stairwell. A

idn't look

things the newer sections didn't. Zivah noted the locked door at the corridor's end before she was shown to her room. Heavy lock. Iron r

re already burning, the logs recently placed, the flames still finding their height. Someone had set a water jug on the

tood in th

enth hour. Permitted areas will

sked the one that mat

is the

st before it arrived. She said, "I'll have someone show you

fade. Then she listened to the s

. Fear she didn't acknowledge had a way of surfacing at the worst possible moment, so she felt it completely.

. Then she fo

hen she decided that surviving Vordenmaar and enduring it were two different things entirely. She

e in the corner. She had spotted the

map in the ho

und something

er. Pulled it out and held

Done carefully. With something sharp and enoug

ord.

er back and understood with complete clarity that she was not the first wo

Chapter End

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The Wolf King's Unwanted Mate

Freda Shade Werewolf

“Six women entered Vordenmaar before her. None came back. Zivah arrives at the Wolf King's citadel not as a willing bride but as a political transaction. Signed over by her own father without a pause in his breathing, she walks through those black iron gates with one intention. Survive long enough to leave. She never planned to find a journal hidden beneath a floor stone, written by a woman who stopped mid-sentence on day fourteen and never wrote again. Never planned to discover that the silver-haired elder with the warm smile has been using the tribute arrangement as a private bloodline search for decades. Never planned to find herself in a midnight library sitting in charged silence across from a king who outlawed the very word for what is happening between them. Ravn Ashvael didn't want a mate. He wanted control. So five years ago, after loss carved him open inside his own walls, he did what powerful men do with unbearable things. He made it illegal. Declared fated bonds a political fabrication, signed the decree into law across twenty-three pack territories, and built his entire identity on top of the grave. Then she walked through his gate and his wolf knew her before he finished reading her name. He refuses to accept it. She refuses to stay. But Vordenmaar holds secrets older than either of their plans, a hidden bloodline powerful enough to collapse kingdoms, an enemy who has been patient for thirty years, and a connection building between two people who have every reason to resist it and no real power to stop it. He outlawed the bond. She came with an exit strategy. Neither is going to survive what happens next with their walls intact. The Wolf King's Unwanted Mate is a slow burn paranormal romance built for readers who tell themselves one more chapter at midnight and find themselves breathless at dawn.”