My Convicted Wife is My Mate (Bella and Kane) novel Chapter 1

chapter 1

BELLA’S POV

The cold never really left me anymore.

It had settled into my bones somewhere during those three years inside Ironvale Correctional Prison, and no matter what I did, I could not shake it off.

It lived in me now, whether I wanted it there or not.

Standing at the back entrance of Club Velvet in a short skirt and long stockings, I pulled my arms across my chest and told myself it was fine. It was fine. I had been colder than this. I had survived worse than a November night with no coat.

I held my tray of empty glasses against my chest in the club as I breathed.

This job wasn’t really a job, if I was being honest with myself. I was here because I was desperate enough to try anywhere that didn’t require me to hand over a resume. When I applied, the manager Kirk had told me there was no room on the official payroll.

But I had a face the customers would like, he said. So, he would let me work the floor, carry drinks, keep the tips. He would look the other way about the paperwork.

I said yes. I didn’t have a choice.

Nobody told you what it was actually like, being released.

I had imagined it, in the long quiet hours of my cell.

What actually happened was that they handed me a paper bag with my belongings in it and forty dollars in a white envelope and pointed me toward a bus stop.

I had gone home first. Of course, I had.

But to my surprise, a woman I had never seen before opened the door. She told me she had purchased the property from a Mrs. Yolanda Jameson, fourteen months ago. She told me this was her home.

The name hit me like ice water down my spine.

My stepmother.

She had erased everything my mother left behind. Her jewelry. Her journals. Her clothes. And now—after using her daughter’s crime to frame me, to put me away—she had sold the house my mother left to me.

How dare she.

I wanted to howl. If my wolf were still here—my poor, once-proud wolf, my beautiful Anna—we would tear them apart. We would make them pay.

But…but…

I stood on that path for a long time after the woman went back inside. I didn’t cry. I had learned, a long time ago, that crying on the street only made you a target.

I went to the nearest payphone to call my father's number. The line rang six times and then gave me a mechanical message telling me the number was no longer in service.

I held the receiver for a moment after that. Then I called Damien.

Damien. My mate.

Three years ago, when everything came crashing down, he looked at me with an expression I’ve spent a thousand nights trying to decode. Then he stepped back. He let them take me.

Even as I screamed his name, insisted I was innocent, shifted into my wolf and fought back—my claws leaving bloody furrows in the ground in pure rage—he just stared at the floor. He wouldn’t watch as the silver net closed around me, trapping me like an animal. He wouldn’t watch as the wolf-cops drove their silver blades into my belly—even though his child was inside me.

I only surrendered to save that child. To keep them from beating it out of me.

I gave birth alone in that freezing prison cell. Ezra. They ripped him from my arms five minutes later. That was the first time I begged. The first time I let the guards see me cry.

Please. Give him back. Please.

And when I screamed for Damien—when I begged him to do something, anything—he said:

“Bella. Don’t act like a crazy wolf.”

He looked at me—at the blood, at my hands gripping his sleeves—and sighed.

“When you get out, we’ll get married. You’ll see him again.”

I let go. In that endless, drowning dark, those words were the only light I had.

On my body were wounds and scars. The cruel inmates and vile guards had tormented me for three years.

In that hellhole, I felt like I was on the verge of death every day. If it weren't for my belief in Damien and my Ezra, if it weren't for the hope that he would marry me when I got out, I don't think I could have made it.

But for him, for our future, I finally endured it all.

…

I tried again. And again.

His number was dead, too.

I put the receiver back and walked away from the payphone and didn’t let myself think about either of them again. There was no room for it. I had my puppy to find.

Ezra…

-

I had tried for real jobs.

I went to the diner on Fifth street. The woman behind the counter told me they would call. She didn’t. I went to the grocery store on Marsh Street, and the florist on Henley.

Every single one of them ran a background check. They never called back after that.

A wolf accused of poisoning an Alpha's fiancée. To them, I was a plague.

So, I was here, carrying drinks for men who looked at me with lustful eyes all the time.

I told myself, every morning, that today would be the day I found a lead on Ezra.

A record. A file. A name to follow. I had contacted the pack administration office three days ago - anonymously, from a borrowed phone, because I knew better than to use my real name - and asked about records of children placed through the pack ward system three years ago. The woman on the phone told me she could not release that information without authorized documentation, and the call had ended there.

"The table in the corner," the manager said, not looking at me, pulling me from my thoughts. "They need drinks."

There was no time to think now. I shook my head and followed his gaze.

Three massive men. Muscles corded beneath ink that vanished into their collars. The biggest one had a jagged notch out of his ear. He caught me looking and smiled. It wasn't a nice smile.

All wolf shifters. They were thug wolves. I knew the type.

I took their order and set the drinks down without making eye contact. Whiskey. Neat. Three of them. I thought that was it. I turned to walk away—

His hand shot out, shoving a crumpled bill into the front of my apron. Right where it sat against my chest.

"Keep 'em coming," he said, grinning. "That's for the view."

I pulled the bill out and set it on the table without looking at it. Twenty. I kept my face blank and started to step back.

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