Title: Wrong Bed, Right Alpha: His Wolfless Bride

Nora POV:

"Tyler... slow down..."

He didn't.

If anything, the hand on my waist tightened, dragging me back across cool sheets until my spine met a chest that was hard and burning hot. A low sound rumbled against my neck. Not a laugh. Not a word. A growl.

Tyler had never growled at me before.

I couldn't open my eyes. My head was full of warm, heavy fog, and every inch of my skin felt like it was on fire. I'd been so thirsty. So hot. Then there had been a dark room, and a door that clicked shut, and a pair of arms that caught me before I hit the floor.

"Tyler," I whispered again.

The body behind me went still.

For one second, I thought he would stop. Then teeth grazed the side of my throat, right over my pulse, and the fog swallowed everything else.

The last thing I remember is a voice against my ear, rough as gravel.

"Wrong name, sweetheart."

The sun hit my face like a slap.

I groaned and rolled away from it, and my whole body screamed. My thighs ached. My hips ached. Places I didn't have names for ached. My mouth tasted like stale champagne, and my skull was being split open by a very small, very determined man with an axe.

Then I felt the arm.

It lay across my stomach. Heavy. Warm. Thick with muscle and dusted with dark hair.

Tyler's arms were slim. Tyler did Pilates.

I turned my head very, very slowly.

The man asleep on the pillow next to mine was not my boyfriend.

He wasn't anyone I'd ever seen. Black hair falling over a hard brow. A jaw that looked cut with a blade. Lashes too long to be fair on a man. Even unconscious, his face had a cold, closed-off arrogance, the kind of face you see on billboards for watches that cost more than a house.

I stopped breathing.

My heart started slamming so hard I was sure the sound would wake him.

Pieces came back in jagged flashes. My twenty-third birthday. The private booth at Velvet. Tyler pressing glass after glass into my hand, his friends chanting my name every time I tried to put one down. Tyler's lips at my ear: I booked us a room upstairs, babe. 3306. Go lie down. I'll be right behind you.

A keycard pressed into my palm.

A long hallway that kept tilting.

A door.

I looked down at myself, and my face went up in flames.

There were marks everywhere. My collarbones. The curve of my breasts. The insides of my wrists, where someone had pinned them. A dark bruise sat on the side of my throat, exactly where I'd felt teeth.

I hadn't been with Tyler. In four years, I'd never been with anyone.

And now I'd been with a stranger.

I slid out from under his arm one inch at a time. When my feet hit the carpet, my knees buckled, and I had to grab the nightstand to keep from going down. Something rolled off the edge. A silver cufflink. I caught it before it could hit the floor, set it back with shaking fingers, and didn't let myself look at what was engraved on it.

My dress was draped over the arm of a velvet sofa. My bra was hanging off the lamp, one hook torn clean off. My underwear was on the floor, trapped under a charcoal suit jacket that probably cost more than my rent.

I yanked it free and nearly sobbed.

I dressed in thirty seconds flat, grabbed my purse and my heels, and ran for the door barefoot. With my hand on the handle, I made the mistake of looking back.

He hadn't moved. One arm was thrown over the place where I'd been lying. The sheet had slipped low on his hips, and there were thin red lines across his shoulders. Scratches.

I'd done that.

I bit my lip hard enough to taste blood and slipped out.

The door clicked shut behind me. I turned, and my stomach dropped through the floor.

Brass numbers gleamed on the door.

3806.

Not 3306. Eight. I had been so drunk I'd read an eight as a three. But then how had Tyler's card opened it?

I didn't wait to figure it out. I ran.

The elevator ride down was the longest of my life. I kept my head bowed, my hair pulled forward over my throat, my heels dangling from two fingers. When the doors opened on the lobby, a bellhop looked at me, then at the marks on my neck, then quickly away.

I made it to the sidewalk before my phone buzzed.

Tyler.

Forty-one missed calls. Twelve voicemails.

My chest caved in. He had been looking for me all night, and I had been upstairs in a stranger's bed. I didn't deserve him. I'd have to tell him. I couldn't lie to the man I was supposed to marry.

I swiped to answer. "Tyler, I..."

"Where the hell were you?"

His voice was wrong. Not worried. Not relieved. Furious, and something else underneath. Something that sounded almost like fear.

"I'm so sorry," I whispered. "I need to see you. There's something I have to tell you, and you're going to hate me, but..."

"Do you have any idea what you've done to me?" Tyler snarled. "I told you 3306, Nora. Three. Three. Three. Mr. Chase sat in that room waiting for you all night, and you never showed up!"

I stopped walking.

People flowed around me on the sidewalk. A cab honked. Somewhere a dog was barking.

"Mr. Chase," I repeated slowly. "Your boss?"

Silence on the line.

"Tyler," I said, and my voice didn't sound like mine anymore. "Why was your boss waiting for me in our hotel room?"