My Contractual Luna: Curing The Alpha's Decay

KIERA'S POV

The impact drove every ounce of air from my lungs.

My spine struck the cold flagstone of the Ancestral Sanctuary with a sickening crack, sending blinding white lightning through my nervous system. Around the raised dais, hundreds of gathered pack members inhaled sharply-a collective, suffocating gasp that rippled through the sacred hall.

I blinked, clearing the static from my eyes. Standing over me was Kirt Hodge, heir to the southern territory and the man my father had bound me to in a political betrothal. The air around him was rank, reeking of sour, unearned dominance and the rancid tang of an insecure predator.

"Are you truly this pathetic, Kiera?" Kirt sneered down at me, curling his upper lip to bare yellowed canines. "You couldn't even withstand a simple binding bow. What a useless, broken Omega."

Deep beneath the cage of my ribs, something that had lay dead and frozen for an eternity stirred. The phantom chains of my inner she-wolf shattered into ash. Tear his throat out, her voice rose from the dark, ancient and vicious. He carries no claim to our blood!

I stared up at him. Bile rose in my throat, hot and bitter. Kirt's sneering face blurred, bleeding into the horrifying memory of my past life: the roar of crimson flames, the suffocating stench of burning dried aconite and sage, and Kirt laughing with his arm clamped around my closest friend, Janice, while my grandfather's sacred Healer scrolls burned to cinders.

'The Weeks line ends today,' he had whispered into my dying ear. 'Your ancestral power belongs to the Hodge pack now.'

That fire had been the last thing I felt.

Until now.

I sucked in a ragged breath. The Goddess hadn't sent me to the underworld. She had hurled my soul back into my nineteen-year-old body, straight onto the sacrificial marble of our Betrothal Ceremony.

The ache in my bruised back was instantly incinerated by a wave of pure, frozen wrath. I dug my fingernails into my palms until the skin split, using the sharp copper scent of my own blood to tether my mind to the present.

I scanned the dais. The faces of the high-ranking pack wolves were carved from contempt and cruel amusement. To them, I was merely the orphaned daughter of a fallen Healer clan, an Omega with diluted bloodline value, ready to be swallowed whole by the ambitious Hodge family.

Then, my eyes drifted upward.

Perched on the high obsidian balcony overlooking the sanctum, draped in shadows, sat Alpha Alcide Barnes. The supreme sovereign of the Silverthorne territory. He sat with his elbows braced on the stone armrests of his throne, looking down on his nephew's betrothal with lethal, glacial detachment.

Our gazes collided across the cavernous expanse.

The moment those ice-blue eyes met mine, a violent tremor ripped through the marrow of my bones. My inner wolf, who had whimpered in fear throughout my previous life, snapped her head up. Her fur bristled, not in terror of his crushing aura, but in absolute, magnetic resonance.

Up on the balcony, Alcide's bored posture stiffened by a fraction of an inch. His broad shoulders squared against the dark fabric of his tunic, his pupils dilating until the ice vanished into predatory obsidian. He had felt the shockwave too.

"Oh, Goddess, Kiera! Are you hurt?"

A shrill voice shattered the silent current. Janice Morgan rushed to my side, her eyes welling with expertly summoned tears as she knelt beside me. "Kirt, how could you push her? She's delicate!"

She reached out, extending her manicured hands to help me up. But before her fingers could graze my skin, the breeze carried her scent to my flared nostrils-underneath the heavy mask of expensive tuberose perfume was the sour, bitter stench of betrayal and raw greed.

I twisted my shoulder, letting her grasp empty air.

Kirt immediately stepped between us, shielding Janice behind his broad frame as if I were the rabid beast. "Cease this insolence, Kiera," he growled, the vibration thrumming in his chest. "Stand on your feet and complete the blood-pledge. You are embarrassing the Hodge name before the Alpha."

My eyes didn't look at his face. They dropped to Janice's collarbone.

Peeking out from the lace of her bodice was a smooth, tear-shaped obsidian pendant. The Weeks Hearth-Stone. My mother's dying warding relic. In my first life, I had spent weeks weeping over its mysterious disappearance, only to see Janice proudly flaunting it as a gift from Kirt after our vows.

A terrifying, razor-sharp calm settled over my soul.

"Did you hear me?" Kirt barked, stepping closer until his shadow smothered me. "I am counting to three. If you do not bare your wrist for the silver blade, I will have the guards hold you down."

"Please, Kiera," Janice pleaded, her fingers clutching Kirt's sleeve, playing the gentle mediator. "The entire Pack is waiting. Don't make this ugly."

I planted my bleeding palms flat against the cold stone. Slowly, deliberately, I rose.

Every trace of the fragile, trembling girl they had spent years manipulating was gone. When I lifted my chin and locked my eyes onto Kirt, there was no adoration. No fear. Nothing but the dead, predatory silence of an executioner.

Kirt involuntarily stepped back half a pace, his instincts recoiling from something ancient and lethal in my stance that his dull mind could not comprehend.

From the first row of Elders, an old wolf murmured, "The girl's scent... it has shifted."

I smoothed down the hem of my ceremonial white gown. I didn't look at Kirt again. I turned my eyes fully onto Janice, and the corners of my lips curved into a cold, merciless sneer.

KIERA'S POV

The silence in the Ancestral Sanctuary stretched so thin it hummed.

"What is that look?" Kirt hissed, his pride bruising at my unyielding posture. "Kiera, lower your eyes before your future master."

I did not blink. With deliberate, languid movements, I reached up and adjusted the tangled silver pins in my hair, brushing away the dust of the flagstone as if he were nothing more than a stray dog that had barked out of turn.

My total disregard struck him harder than an insult. To an arrogant Alpha-blood, an Omega's indifference was the ultimate heresy.

"Are you deaf, bitch?" Kirt roared.

His patience snapped. He lunged, his thick fingers hooking into a claw to seize my collar and force me to the floor.

Because of a past life drenched in his sudden violence, my muscle memory responded before thought could even form. I pivoted on my back heel, shifting my center of gravity by a mere inch. His hand cleaved empty air, the force of his own momentum causing him to stagger off-balance.

A sharp gasp rippled through the spectators. Janice's theatrical tears vanished, replaced by an ugly twitch of disbelief.

Kirt spun around, his face purple with humiliation. "You dare dodge an heir?"

His humanity slipped. A low, wet snarl rattled from the back of his throat as his eyes bled into a feral, muddy amber. His fingernails elongated, thickening into blackened lupine claws. He lowered his stance and charged straight for my trachea, aiming to rip out my vocal cords.

He expects prey, my inner wolf whispered fiercely. Show him a butcher.

I did not scramble backward. Instead, I stepped directly into his blind spot, slipping beneath his raised claw.

As the sole surviving heiress of the ancient Weeks apothecary line, my hands had dissected the muscular and nervous systems of thousands of werewolves. I didn't need brute strength. I knew where the biological kill-switches were buried.

My left hand flashed out like a viper. My thumb, dusted with the potent, concentrated aconite extract I kept stitched into the lining of my ceremonial cuff for botanical preservation, struck viciously upward-driving straight into the tender, unshielded nerve junction beneath his jawline where the carotid artery split.

Kirt's charge stalled violently. A strangled, choking gasp ripped from his throat as the localized neurotoxin and physical trauma paralyzed his motor reflexes in a split second. His amber eyes bulged in absolute terror.

Before his dead weight could touch the floor, my right hand seized the heavy ceremonial oak stool resting beside the altar.

"Goddess preserve us!" an Elder shrieked.

Channeling every memory of my grandfather's dying screams in the fire, I brought the solid oak leg down across the vulnerable hollow behind Kirt's temple with all the leverage in my body.

CRACK.

The heavy wood struck with a sickening, hollow thud.

Kirt's eyes rolled back into his skull. An ordinary human's skull would have caved in completely, but an Alpha-blood's violent regenerative biology fought the trauma-trapping his nervous system in a state of paralyzed, rattling shock. His knees turned to water, and he crashed onto the pristine white marble like a falled tree, a thick line of dark crimson spilling from his hairline.

He wasn't dead-his lupine heart was too stubborn to stop-but his consciousness and his beast were shattered for the night.

Absolute, petrified silence smothered the sanctum. The gathered wolves forgot how to breathe.

My chest heaved, pulling in the hot, metallic scent of fresh blood. The thrill running through my veins was intoxicating. My inner wolf threw her head back and let out a phantom howl of triumphant vengeance.

Instinctively, my gaze flicked toward the high balcony.

Alcide Barnes had not called for the guards. He had risen from his throne, his massive frame leaning over the obsidian parapet. His glacial blue eyes burned with an electrifying, dangerous hunger. He was not disgusted by the violence; he was watching me the way an apex beast watched a newly crowned huntress.

He was allowing me to bleed his brother's heir.

"Aaaah!" Janice's shrill, glass-shattering scream finally broke the spell. She threw her hands in the air, pointing a quivering finger at me. "You... you murdered him! Guards! She's feral! Kill her!"

I dropped the blood-splattered oak leg. It hit the marble with a dull, hollow clatter.

I turned my head toward her, wiping a speck of Kirt's hot blood from my cheek with the back of my hand. "Murder?" I said, my voice slicing through the stillness with surgical clarity. "An heir who cannot survive a simple discipline strike from an unarmed Omega has no right to lead a hunt, let alone claim me."

"Blasphemy!" An Elder lunged to his feet from the high council bench, his beard quivering with fury. "Kiera Weeks! Violence at the sacred altar is treason against the Pack! To spill the blood of your betrothed-"

"Betrothed?" I cut him off, my voice echoing off the vaulted stone ceiling with raw authority that made the old wolf flinch. "When he struck me to the floor like vermin, where was your sacred law? When he brought his mistress to stand on the sacred circle of my ancestors, where was your honor?"

The Elder's mouth flapped open, but no words came out.

Suddenly, a heavy, snarling figure broke through the crowd. Brenda Hodge, Kirt's mother, charged onto the dais like an enraged sow, her face contorted in vicious hysteria. "You little whore! You broke my son's skull!"

She lunged, her hand curved into a feral claw aimed straight at my eyes.

I didn't even shift my feet. I simply leaned back, letting the gust of her claws brush harmlessly past the bridge of my nose. Before she could recover her balance, I sidestepped her clumsy bulk and strode purposefully toward Janice, who was trembling on the floor beside Kirt's twitching body.

It was time to tear away their stolen pelts.

KIERA'S POV

Every step I took toward Janice echoed like a death knell against the marble.

Janice scrambled backward on her elbows, her manicured fingers clawing at the stone. Her manufactured sorrow evaporated, leaving behind the pale, ugly terror of a cornered parasite. She threw herself across Kirt's unconscious chest. "Stay back! Don't touch him! Elders, look at her! She's mad with jealousy! She's trying to slaughter us all because Kirt loves me!"

Murmurs of unease broke out among the lower-ranking pack members. An Omega driven mad by an Alpha's rejection was an easy lie, a comfortable story they had whispered for generations.

I halted two paces from them, looking down at her frantic squirming. A cold, dark chuckle rumbled from my chest.

"Jealousy?" I tilted my head, my eyes narrowing into slits. "You flatter yourself, Janice. One does not envy a scavenger gnawing on scraps."

Before Janice could formulate another lie, my hand struck out with the speed of an uncoiling viper. I did not strike her flesh. My fingers hooked securely beneath the silver chain resting against her throat.

I jerked backward with vicious force.

Snap.

The delicate silver links gave way with a sharp metallic ping. Janice shrieked, clutching her neck as the sharp edges scored a red welt across her pale skin.

I stepped back out of her reach and lifted my arm, dangling the teardrop-shaped black stone high beneath the chandelier light.

"Janice Morgan claims I am mad with jealousy," I addressed the entire assembly, my voice steady, resonant, and devoid of fear. "Then perhaps the council would care to explain why my mother's dying legacy-the Weeks family Hearth-Pendant, carved from obsidian and sealed with our ancestral blood-runes-is hanging around the neck of an outsider?"

A collective intake of breath rippled across the chamber.

In wolf culture, bloodline relics were sacred. To steal a fallen clan's ancestral talisman was an abomination punishable by the stripping of pack status. The suspicious glares that had been pinned on me instantly swung toward Janice like loaded crossbows.

Janice's face blanched to the color of curdled milk. She looked toward the Elders, then down at Kirt, searching desperately for a shield. "I... Kirt gave it to me!" she stammered, abandoning him without a second thought. "It was a gift! I didn't know it belonged to your mother! Kirt swore he bought it from a merchant!"

On the floor, Kirt let out a low groan, his eyelids fluttering as consciousness slowly returned. Blood was still matting his hair to his brow. He heard her words, his expression twisting in sheer, humiliating panic. He had stolen it from my bedchamber three days ago while I was attending the herb harvest.

"You didn't know?" I stepped closer, looking down into her dilated pupils. My scent flared, saturated with the dominant, ancient presence of an unchained Healer. "Yesterday morning, when I overturned my family's quarters searching for it, you sat on my bed. You drank my tea. You told me with that sweet, poisonous smile that I had likely lost it in the forest, and that I should stop fretting over old trinkets."

Janice's jaw trembled. She opened her mouth to deny it, but the absolute, crushing certainty in my gaze paralyzed her tongue. The scent of her guilt hung in the air-stale, sour, and unmistakable to every wolf with a working nose in the room.

"Silence!" Brenda Hodge snarled from behind me, her voice trembling with barely suppressed malice. "A simple misunderstanding over a trinket does not excuse treason against the bloodline heir! You will pay for Kirt's blood with your own skin!"

I ignored the shrieking mother. I slipped the cold obsidian stone around my own neck, feeling the familiar, warm thrum of my mother's residual magic settling against my collarbone. It was home.

Then, I turned fully toward the dais of Elders, raising my right hand high toward the grand skylight that framed the midday moon.

"Before the Moon Goddess and the ancestors of Silverthorne," I proclaimed, the ancient words rolling off my tongue with ringing clarity. "I, Kiera of the House of Weeks, declare the betrothal contract between myself and Kirt of the House of Hodge void and severed. Their family is corrupt. Their honor is hollow. I reject this alliance, and I sever my blood from his."

A dull, aching throb flared across the palm of my hand as the ancestral betrothal thread snapped, but there was no soul-rending agony. We were never mates. We had never been marked by the Goddess. It was merely the burning away of a parasite's leash.

Kirt, struggling onto his hands and knees in a pool of his own blood, stared up at me as if the sky had fallen. To be publicly dumped, stripped of Healer inheritance, and denounced by an Omega at the very altar meant social and political death for an heir.

Janice, seeing the tide turn completely and realizing she was stripped of every defense, squeezed her eyes shut. She clutched her heart, let out a high-pitched, theatrical whimper, and collapsed backward onto the cold flagstone, feigning unconsciousness.

I looked down at her limp body, a cruel, mocking smile touching my lips.

"Fainting to escape judgment?" I whispered, loud enough for the front rows to hear. "How very convenient."