Chapter 46

Chapter 46:

I had logged into my bank account expecting my modest savings from my part-time library job. What I found was a massacre. The Hyde Pack hadn’t just cut me off — they had drained every joint account my father had access to. My personal savings remained, but they were painfully modest.

I scrolled through a jewelry website. Platinum bands cost thousands. Gold was out of the question. Even silver — which neither of us could wear, given its effect on Lycans — was too expensive for anything that looked halfway decent.

Tears pricked my eyes. I was the Mate of the Alpha King, and I couldn’t afford a ring that wouldn’t turn his finger green.

Then I saw it.

Tungsten Carbide.

It was an industrial metal. Dark, heavy, and virtually indestructible. It wasn’t precious. It wasn’t beautiful in any traditional sense. It was forged for endurance — harder than steel, impossible to scratch or bend.

It was perfect. Not because it was cheap, but because it was strong. Unyielding. Like the man sleeping down the hall. Like I wanted to be.

𝗣𝘰р𝗎𝗅а𝗿 𝘀𝗍o𝘳𝗂еs o𝗻

The pair cost less than two hundred dollars.

I selected a simple brushed dark grey design. It looked like it could withstand anything — just like what we were building together.

Before I pressed the purchase button, I noticed the option for engraving. My fingers hovered over the keypad. This wasn’t a business transaction anymore. This was a gift. A promise.

I typed Fortune into the field for his ring.

I typed Prosperity into the field for mine.

It wasn’t a mockery. It was a prayer — a small, desperate hope that these rings, these cheap industrial rings, would carry enough luck for both of us.

I turned off my phone and let the darkness swallow me whole. I had done my part. I could only pray that when the King saw his ring, he wouldn’t read it as an insult, but as the only armor I could afford to give him.

The package arrived the next morning, wrapped in plain brown paper that looked pitifully small in the center of the massive foyer table. There was no branding, no velvet box stamped with a jeweler’s crest — just a padded envelope that weighed next to nothing.

I took it to my room, my heart thumping a nervous rhythm against my ribs. When I tore it open, a cheap black drawstring pouch fell into my palm. I tipped it over, and the two rings clattered out.

Tungsten carbide. Dark grey, brushed metal with a heavy, industrial feel. They were cold to the touch.

I held them up to the light, and a wave of nausea rolled through me. They looked exactly like what they were: eighty-dollar bands bought online by a desperate girl. I thought of the Luna of the Blackwood Pack, whose finger was weighed down by a platinum band encrusted with diamonds so large they caught the light from across the room.

And I was about to offer the Lycan King this?

“He’s going to laugh,” I whispered, my fingers curling tight around the metal. “Or worse, he’ll think I’m mocking him p>