Page 86 of Sold to Three Alpha Kings

Wayne’s brows arch, and he glances at Sinth and me.

“Know your place, woman. You’re speaking to an elder.”

“No, I am speaking to someone who disregards the Kings’ mate and ridicules her every chance he gets,” she shoots back, her tone firm and authoritative.

“I will not stand here and be insulted by a…shiftless wolf.” He tries to walk away.

Her voice stops him before he can even take a step forward.

“You will go nowhere, Elder Edgar, until this ‘shiftless wolf’ is done talking.”

He doesn’t move. All eyes are on the two of them now.

I haven’t seen this version of her before, and I must admit, I’m thrilled.

“Shame on you,” she says, her eyes shifting across the other elders. “Shame on all of you who think cruelty makes them strong.” Her voice is steady, carrying clean across the hall.

They don’t speak.

“Unfortunately for you, your insults are a few years too late because I’ve been called worse by my own family.” A pause. “I won’t spend the rest of my life listening to strangers say the same thing dressed up as concern for these packs.”

Edgar sneers, swallowing hard. “But concern is exactly what this is.”

“No. Concern doesn’t sound like contempt.” She doesn’t raise her voice. She doesn’t need to. Something in her tone holds the whole hall still.

His jaw locks.

“Concern would be asking how I was recovering. Concern would be asking about the child I’m carrying, instead of calling it a risk to be managed or discarded.”

A murmur moves through the crowd. Not hostile this time. Uncertain, listening.

She turns slowly, taking in the full breadth of the hall, meeting eyes rather than looking past them. “You should be thanking your stars that I’m the one handling this situation and not my Kings.” She lets the words settle. “Left to them, you’d be on the floor by now, bleeding from more places than one.”

She’s not wrong. We would’ve pounced on him if she hadn’t stepped forward first.

“You know how violent they can be.” She looks right at him. “And I could’ve easily let you meet your fate at their hands. But I chose not to. Not because I’m weak. Because I refuse to let one bitter man decide what kind of person I become.”

The crowd in the hall is affected by her words, and most of them have their expressions softening involuntarily.

“I know what most of you think when you look at me,” she continues, turning slightly to address the gathered pack members instead of just Edgar. “Shiftless girl. No wolf, no worth, no business standing where I’m standing. And trust me, I understand that fear.”

Something frozen is starting to thaw inside of me.

“Because I carried it myself for most of my life. I was told, over and over, that I was less than everyone around me.”

She pauses, letting the silence stretch.

“My father told me that. My stepmother told me that. An entire village told me that, every single day, until I believed it as easily as I believed my own name.”

A woman in a corner already has tears in her eyes as if she’s touched by Charlize’s story.

”I came to this island already convinced I was exactly what they said. Extra. Unwanted. A burden nobody asked for.”

Something shifts across the faces watching her. Not agreement yet. But attention, real attention, the kind that listens instead of waiting to argue.

“I was wrong to believe it. So are you.”

I watch her without breathing, something building in my chest I don’t have a name for yet.