The Alpha's Wolfless Contract Luna

Elena's POV Thirty-seven interviews. Thirty-seven times, someone has turned to page two of my file and stopped reading. This woman stops faster than most. Her eyes go straight to the box marked Wolf Status, where one word is stamped in red ink. NONE. She closes the folder with two fingers, like it might stain her, and slides it back across the table. "Your credentials are very impressive, Miss Hale." I know what comes after that sentence. I could say it with her. "Unfortunately, the Council requires every officer to hold a functioning Wolf. Our people deal with Alphas every day." "I have a first-class degree in Pack law," I say. "I wrote my thesis on your own labour codes and found three clauses that contradict each other. I can fix them." She smiles at me the way people smile at a child who has drawn on the wall. "Then you understand the codes better than most. Including the one about Wolves." I keep my hands flat on the table so she won't see them curl into fists. That red word has followed me onto every form since my eighteenth birthday, when I sat up all night waiting for a Wolf that never came. I want this job because the Council writes the rules that put it there. From the inside, I could change them. She presses a button, and the door behind me opens. Outside, the Council Building is the tallest thing on Regent Square. White stone, bronze doors, and a crescent moon carved over the entrance that catches the afternoon light. When I was a girl, I thought it was the most beautiful building in the city. Today I walk down its forty steps and keep my eyes on the pavement. Mia is waiting on our bench at the edge of the square, shoes off, feet tucked under her. One look at her face tells me everything. "Well?" she asks. "They loved my credentials." "Mine too." She drops her head back against the bench. "The man said my Wolf was barely a rumour. He'd clearly been saving it all morning." Mia's Wolf came on time, but it came small. On a good day she can smell rain an hour before it falls. On a bad day she can't hold a shift for longer than a minute. Between the two of us, we've collected every kind of rejection the Council has to offer. I pull the silver pin from my hair, shake the knot loose, and twist it back up tighter. It's a habit when I'm angry. My mother says it's the only thing that keeps me from biting people. Across the square, a long black car pulls up at the foot of the steps. The crowd changes in an instant. Conversations stop. A group of junior clerks on the steps shuffle aside. Two men in grey suits get out first, then the rear door opens and a tall man steps onto the pavement. He is dressed in black, and he takes his time. Every head on the square dips a little as his power rolls across the stone, the way grass bends in a strong wind. Beside me, Mia sucks in a breath and drops her eyes to her knees. "Alpha Caelum," she whispers. "Northern Pack. Don't stare." I stare. Everyone around me is bowing to something I can't feel. My shoulders stay loose. My head stays up. All I see is a man with dark hair and a hard jaw walking toward a building that just threw me out. Halfway up the steps, he stops. He turns his head, and his eyes find me across the whole square. Grey eyes, pale and cold. For three seconds he looks at the only person on Regent Square who didn't lower her head. Then he frowns, like I'm a puzzle he has no time for, and goes inside. "Are you insane?" Mia hisses. "That man broke the Western Pack in a single winter. They say he's running for the High Council this year." "Then the High Council deserves him." I pull my eyes away. My pulse is running too fast, and I tell myself it's the heat. Mia is quiet for a while. Then she digs into her bag and pulls out a folded black card. "Don't be angry." "That's never a good start." She opens it. There's an address in the old harbour district and one line printed in silver. For those the moon forgot. "There's a bar on Kettle Street," she says quickly. "Tonight there's a private sale in the back room. A potion. It wakes a sleeping Wolf and strengthens a weak one. A girl from my building took it last month, and now she works security for the Eastern Pack." "Mia. That's the black market." "I know what it is." "People who go down there come back changed. Some of them never come back at all." "And people who sit on this bench?" Her voice cracks. "We've failed thirty or forty times already, Elena. When will we ever succeed?" I have no answer. That's the worst part. I think about the red word on my file. I think about the girl from Mia's building, who probably doesn't exist, and about how badly I want her to. "It's a scam," I say. "Potions can't make Wolves. Nothing can." "Then I'll find that out myself." Mia pushes her feet back into her shoes and stands. "I'm going tonight, with or without you." She means it. I've known Mia since we were six, and when she decides something, she walks straight at it and dares it to stop her. My whole plan for tonight was a hot bath and a new list of Pack offices to apply to. I look at Mia's face and fold that plan away. There is no version of this where I let her walk into Kettle Street alone. At eleven that night, the harbour district smells like diesel and old fish. Half the streetlights are broken. Mia holds my arm as we walk, and she's shaking, even though she's the one who dragged us here. Every few steps I check the street behind us. The street stays empty. Somehow that makes it worse. The rest of me keeps counting. A grey van parked with its engine running and nobody at the wheel. Two exits at the end of the alley, one of them blocked by bins. A woman's shoe lying in the gutter with the heel snapped off, left behind by someone in a hurry. The bar has no sign. There's only a red door under a flickering bulb and a large man sitting on a stool beside it, cleaning his nails with a knife. He looks at Mia first. His nostrils flare, and he nods, like she's passed some kind of test. Then he looks at me and breathes in slowly. "Nothing," he says. His smile shows too many teeth. "No Wolf at all. The boss is going to love you." Mia's grip on my arm tightens until it hurts. I open my mouth to tell her we're leaving. Behind him, the red door swings open from the inside.