The Contract
1363 Words
The growl ripped out of Alaric's throat like something tearing loose.
Seraphina dropped the pen and backed into the exam table, heart slamming. His pupils had swallowed the gold completely. Red, feral, animal. His men outside the door didn't move — like they'd seen this before and knew better than to interrupt.
"Alaric. Look at me."
He didn't answer. His hands were shaking on the table's edge, claws pushing through his fingertips, splitting the skin. A drop of blood hit the contract and bloomed across her signature like ink.
Seraphina did the only thing her instincts screamed at her to do. She stepped forward — closer, not farther — and pressed her palm flat against his chest.
The effect was instant.
His breathing broke, ragged, then slowed. The red bled out of his eyes like ink dissolving in water, gold rising back up underneath. The claws retracted. Under her hand, his heart hammered once, twice, then steadied into something almost human.
"There," she whispered, more to herself than him. "There you are."
Alaric opened his eyes and looked down at her hand still flat against his chest, then up at her face, and something moved across his features that looked dangerously like relief.
"That's the fastest he's calmed in weeks," he said quietly.
Seraphina pulled her hand back like she'd touched fire. "Don't get used to it. That was an emergency. Rule one starts now."
"Understood." But his eyes lingered on her palm a second too long before he straightened, composed again, Alpha again. He slid the blood-stained contract back toward her. "Sign it again, cleanly. Please."
This time she didn't hesitate. She signed her name beneath his on a fresh copy, and just like that, Seraphina Lark became a fake Luna.
---
The pack house was nothing like she remembered from the outside. Bigger. Colder. Guards at every gate, eyes that tracked her from the moment the car passed the treeline.
"Everyone will assume we reconciled," Alaric said as the car climbed the drive. "No one outside this house knows about the contract. Not the pack. Not the Council. If it gets out that you're paid to be here, my cousin will use it to strip my title before the Summit even starts."
"Your cousin?"
"Cassian. He's been circling this pack like a vulture since my mate died. If he finds one c***k in this story, he'll rip it open." Alaric's jaw tightened. "Which means from the second you walk through that door, you are Seraphina Voss. My mate. My Luna. Nothing less."
The front doors opened before they reached them. A tall man stood in the entryway, arms crossed, smile too wide to be friendly. Same sharp cheekbones as Alaric, same build, but his eyes held none of Alaric's restraint — they crawled over Seraphina like they were pricing her.
"Cousin." Cassian's voice was smooth as oil. "You didn't tell me you'd found your mate's replacement so fast. Convenient timing, don't you think? Thirty days before the Summit?"
"Careful, Cassian." Alaric's hand found the small of Seraphina's back — not quite touching, hovering close enough that the warmth of it reached her through her coat. For the cameras, she reminded herself. For the act.
Cassian's smile didn't move, but his eyes did, flicking to Seraphina with open suspicion. "I remember you. The little omega doctor. Didn't he reject you once? Called you weak, if I recall."
Seraphina's spine went rigid. Before she could answer, Alaric's hand pressed flat against her back — real contact now, deliberate — and his voice dropped into something low and lethal.
"That's not a story you want to finish in front of me."
Cassian held his hands up, laughing, but his eyes stayed sharp. "Just making conversation. Welcome home, Luna." He said the word like it tasted wrong in his mouth. "The pack's gathering in the east hall tonight. Founders' blessing, remember? Perfect chance for everyone to meet your — miracle reunion."
He walked off before Alaric could object, and dread settled cold in Seraphina's stomach. "Tonight? I thought I had time to prepare."
"You don't, apparently." Alaric exhaled hard. "The Founders' blessing happens once a season. Every ranking wolf in the pack will be there. If we don't show up together, tonight, Cassian will have his opening before the sun rises."
---
The east hall was already full when they arrived — firelight, low drums, dozens of pairs of eyes turning toward the doorway the moment Alaric stepped through it with Seraphina's hand folded into his. She felt every gaze land on her like a physical weight. Whispers rippled through the crowd, low and fast.
"She's human."
"She smells wrong for a Luna."
"He rejected her once already—"
Alaric's grip tightened, steadying, and he leaned down to murmur against her ear, close enough that anyone watching would read it as tenderness. "Ignore them. Smile. This is a performance, not a trial."
She smiled. It felt like glass in her mouth.
An elder stepped forward to bless the union, murmuring old words over clasped hands, and the entire hall held its breath waiting to see if the new Luna's scent would hold. Seraphina felt the moment his wolf pushed against the surface again — a shudder that ran down Alaric's arm into her fingers — and she squeezed his hand hard, grounding him, the way she had in the clinic. The tremor passed. The elder nodded, satisfied, and the hall exhaled with him.
Only Cassian didn't look satisfied. He watched from the shadows with the patient, hungry look of a man filing away evidence for later.
---
Her room was three doors down from Alaric's — his idea, not hers, though the space between them felt thinner than it should have. That night, unpacking the single suitcase she'd brought, she heard it. A low, animal sound through the wall. Pain, or something close to it.
She found Alaric on the floor of his room, back against the bed frame, knuckles white where his claws had come out again, breathing like he was drowning on dry land.
"You're supposed to be down the hall," he ground out.
"You're supposed to not be dying." She crossed the room and knelt in front of him before her brain caught up with her body. "Where does it hurt?"
"Everywhere. He wants out, Seraphina. Every hour you're not near me, he claws closer to the surface." His eyes flicked to hers, red bleeding in at the edges again. "I didn't lie about the thirty days. But I may have underestimated how fast it's getting worse."
She reached for his hand on instinct — the same instinct from the clinic — and the second her skin met his, his whole body went still, like something in him finally exhaled.
"This is going to be a problem," she whispered.
"Which part?"
"The part where your wolf apparently doesn't understand the concept of a fake relationship."
A rough sound came out of him that might have been a laugh, if laughing didn't currently look like it hurt. "He's never understood boundaries. Rule one is going to be difficult."
"Rule one is non-negotiable."
"Tell that to him." Alaric nodded down at where her hand was still wrapped around his, neither of them letting go. "He thinks you're his. He's thought so since the second you walked into that clinic. He doesn't care what contract we signed."
Seraphina pulled her hand back, slower than she meant to. "Well he's wrong. I'm not his anything. I'm an employee with a thirty-day contract and a little brother who needs surgery money."
"Right." Alaric's eyes tracked her as she stood, something unreadable in them. "Of course."
She was almost at the door when his voice stopped her.
"Seraphina."
"What?"
"The healers ran a full blood panel on you before I came to the clinic. Standard protocol before any bonding claim." His voice had gone very careful, very quiet. "I got the results an hour ago."
Something cold slid down her spine. "And?"
Alaric looked at her the way a man looks at something he's about to lose all over again.
"You're not human, Seraphina. You never were."
- Writer
