Fated To The Grumpy Alpha

She came to his town with sixty-three dollars and nowhere else to go. He needed a cook. His wolf needed something else entirely. Mira Ashford's life fell apart in twenty-two seconds. One bad livestream. One viral meltdown. Four years of building her food channel — gone overnight. Sponsors dropped her. Her lease ran out. Her bank account hit sixty-three dollars and stopped. Then she found the job posting. No company name. No salary listed. Just four words — Cook Wanted. Remote Location — and a phone number she wasn't sure she should call. She called it anyway. The man who answered was short, cold, and direct. Forty-seven seconds later, he hung up. Two days later, Mira drove five hundred miles into a forest town called Harrow Falls and walked into a diner that smelled like old coffee and lost potential. She was not prepared for Kade Thorne. Six foot four. Dark hair. Eyes that shifted from brown to gold when he looked at her for too long. The kind of man who filled a doorframe and said nothing — and somehow that silence was louder than anything she'd ever heard. She was even less prepared for what he said next. "I need you to pretend to be my girlfriend. One year. Fifty thousand dollars." Kade is the Alpha of a werewolf pack. His father has chosen his mate. He has ten days to show up at the pack gathering with someone of his own choosing — or lose the right to choose at all. Mira needs money. Kade needs a shield. Simple deal. Clean rules. No crossing lines. Except his wolf recognized her the second she stepped out of that car. And her hands wouldn't stop shaking the first time he touched her face. Now Mira is walking into a room full of wolves, wearing a green dress, standing at the side of an Alpha who isn't supposed to mean anything — while everything in the room, including the man beside her, tells her she's already in too deep to pretend. The deal was supposed to be easy. The bond had other plans.