I Poked the Alpha King’s Chest While Drunk—Then He Slung Me Over His Shoulder and Took Me Home

Let me tell you how I died, not literally, but socially, professionally, and in every way that matters to a woman who built her reputation on never, ever flinching. It started with my index finger pressing into the chest of a man who felt less like a human being and more like a cliff face someone

had stuffed into a bespoke suit. The bass thumping through the speakers at the Rusty Hal cut out mid-beat, leaving nothing but the echo of my own tequila-soaked voice bouncing off the sticky walls. "Sit down, mister," I said. "You make a better door than a window, and I'm trying to see if my tab's still

open." The entire bar went silent. Not the polite kind of silent, the kind of silent that happens right before someone gets buried in an unmarked grave. The biker wolves in the corner set down their pool cues. Mac, the bartender, a grizzled old fox shifter who'd survived three territory wars, actually ducked behind the

counter. I heard the click of him cocking a shotgun under the bar, not aimed at the stranger, aimed in my general direction like he was considering putting me out of my misery as a mercy. He didn't look like a tourist. He looked like a natural disaster that had learned how to knot a

tie. His face was all brutal angles, cheekbones sharp enough to slice paper, a jaw that could have been carved from marble by an artist who was angry about something. Dark hair pushed back, still damp like he'd walked through the rain without caring. And the eyes. Oh, the eyes. They weren't brown, they weren't

blue, they were molten gold, glowing faintly in the dim bar light like two coins pulled fresh from a furnace. Royal gold, alpha gold. My buzz evaporated so fast I actually felt the hangover arrive early, like it had been waiting in the wings with a baseball bat. This wasn't some corporate wolf slumming it in the rogue