Bound By the Alpha's Desire

A pack's territory on a full moon will claim whoever walks into it. Calla is human and walks into the Blood Moon pack's land on such a night, and Alpha Keal marks her as his fated mate before she has said anything about it. Her father is ill and she needs money for him, so she signs the contract Keal puts in front of her and becomes his lover under its terms. He is cold with her for the length of it and tells her she is slow and weak. The day the contract runs out she leaves, pregnant, and says nothing to him about it. She comes back to the city seven years later as a painter, with a small blond boy whose face is Keal's. Keal sees the child at her exhibition and cannot move. After that he is at her door with the old misunderstandings, taking them apart one at a time, and he brings the pack's council of elders in to confirm what he says. Calla goes from refusing to listen to being unsure. The boy points at a wolf drawn in one of her books and says, "Mom, I think I dreamed this one." Keal crouches to the boy's eye level and says, "That wasn't a dream. I was waiting for you to come back." Then Calla looks again at the letter that told her her father was dying, the one that put her into the contract, and recognizes the handwriting as belonging to one of Keal's rivals.