The Alpha King’s Contract Luna

Liora’s POV They told me to wear white. That should have been my first warning. Omegas in Silver Ridge don’t wear white. We wear gray, we carry trays, and we keep our eyes on the floor. But Dane sent the dress himself, with a note in his own handwriting. Tonight, everything changes. I read that note eleven times. For three years, I had been his secret. He found me on my eighteenth birthday, and he had hidden me ever since. “Wait until I’m Alpha,” he would whisper, kissing the inside of my wrist where no one could see. “Then nobody can tell me who to choose.” Tonight, he became Alpha. So I wore the dress. I pinned up my hair with my mother’s silver comb. I even smiled at the girl in the cracked mirror, the one who scrubbed the pack house floors to pay off her dead father’s debt. “You look like a bride,” my little brother said from the doorway. “Go to bed, Tobi.” “Is he finally going to tell them?” My heart jumped. “Go to bed.” But I was still smiling when I left. The great hall was full. The whole pack was there, with candles on every table. Dane stood on the platform in black, the Alpha’s ring already on his finger, and when his eyes found me, the bond pulled warm in my chest the way it always did. “Liora Hale,” he called. “Come up here.” The whispers started at once. The omega? Why is she in white? Isn’t that the gambler’s daughter? I walked through them with my chin up. My legs were shaking. Three years of hiding, and it was ending right now, in front of everyone. Dane took my hand. His palm was cold. “This omega,” he told the pack, “is my fated mate.” The hall gasped. My eyes burned. Finally. “I’m telling you this,” he went on, “so that all of you can witness what I do next.” A door opened behind him. Selene Ashford walked out. She was the daughter of the richest Alpha in the north, and she wore white too. Her dress was silk, and mine was not. She slid her arm through his like she had done it a hundred times, and from the way he leaned into her, I knew she had. “No,” I whispered. Dane dropped my hand. “I, Dane Corwin, Alpha of the Silver Ridge Pack, reject you, Liora Hale, as my mate and my Luna.” I have been hungry. I have been beaten by debt collectors. I buried both my parents before I turned twenty. Nothing ever hurt like that. The bond didn’t just snap. It tore, like something with roots being ripped out of my chest. My knees hit the platform. Inside me, my wolf screamed once and went silent. Somebody in the crowd laughed. Dane crouched down so only I could hear him. He smelled like her perfume. “Did you really think I would put a debtor’s daughter beside me?” he said softly. “You were sweet, Liora. You kept my bed warm while I waited. But a Luna brings an alliance, and you bring nothing. Now accept it, and don’t make this ugly.” I looked at him and tried to find the man who used to kiss my wrist. I couldn’t. So I stood up on my own, and I wouldn’t let him see me cry. “I, Liora Hale, accept your rejection.” Something flickered in his eyes. Maybe he had expected me to beg. Then he straightened and smiled at his pack. “One more thing. As Alpha, I am calling in the Hale debt. Forty thousand, in full, in thirty days.” He didn’t even look at me. “If it isn’t paid, her brother will work it off in the mines.” Tobi is twelve years old. I don’t remember leaving the hall. I remember rain, and the white dress dragging through the mud. I remember thinking that I would sell my hair, my blood, and my body before I let them take him. None of it would be enough. When I reached our cabin, a black car I had never seen before was parked outside. The front door was open. I ran in, then stopped. A man was sitting at my kitchen table. He was the biggest wolf I had ever seen. He had dark hair and wore a dark coat, and his eyes were the color of a winter sky. He didn’t stand or smile. He just watched me drip rain onto the floor, as though he had all the time in the world. Then his scent reached me. It was cold pine and smoke. My wolf, who had gone silent on that platform and who I thought was dead, lifted her head. “Who are you?” My voice cracked. “Where is my brother?” “Asleep. Unharmed.” His voice was low and calm. “Sit down, Liora.” “How do you know my name?” He slid a single sheet of paper across the table. At the top was a seal every wolf alive knows, the crowned wolf. It was the mark of the Alpha King. “One year,” said Ronan Blackthorne. “My name, my protection, and my mark on paper only. In return, I pay every coin you owe before sunrise.” I stared at him. “Why me?” For the first time, something moved in those cold eyes. “Because tonight you became the only wolf in this kingdom with nothing left to lose.” He set a pen on top of the contract. “Sign, and you will never owe anyone again.” He leaned back in my chair. “Except me.”