Chapter 1 - The One Night Stand
959 Words
The elevator doors slid open to the 80th floor, and the entire Blackwood Group went silent.
Luna Carter kept her head down. Her heels clicked against the cold marble floor as she rushed past the rows of secretaries with their perfect manicures and designer bags.
She didn’t belong here.
Not with her second-hand blazer. Not with the dark circles under her eyes from pulling a double shift at the diner last night. Not with the hospital bill folded in her purse that said her mom had 48 hours left to live if they didn’t pay $20,000.
“Miss Carter. CEO Blackwood needs the Henderson report. Now.”
Luna nodded at her supervisor and ran.
She’d been Damian Blackwood’s personal secretary for 3 months. Three months of coffee he never drank. Three months of meetings where he never looked at her. Three months of pretending she wasn’t terrified of the rumors.
*Damian Blackwood. Alpha of the North Pack. Ruthless. Cold. The devil in a Tom Ford suit.*
Werewolves ran the city. Humans worked for them. That was the rule.
Luna knocked twice on the mahogany door.
“Enter.”
His voice was ice.
She pushed the door open and froze.
Damian Blackwood wasn’t at his desk. He was standing by the floor-to-ceiling windows, a glass of whiskey in his hand, his tie loosened. The city lights made shadows across his face. He looked like sin.
And he looked drunk.
“Report,” he said without turning.
Luna placed the folder on his desk. “The Henderson merger, sir. All the documents are si—”
“Do I look like I care about Henderson right now?”
He turned. Gray eyes. Dangerous. His shirt was half-unbuttoned and she could see the faint scars across his chest. Alpha scars.
Luna took a step back. “I’ll come back later.”
“No.” He crossed the room in two strides and cornered her against the door. He smelled like whiskey and something wild. Something that made her knees weak. “Everyone left you here with me on purpose. Didn’t they?”
Her heart hammered. “Sir, I—”
“Shut up.”
His hand came up and cupped her jaw. His thumb brushed her lower lip and Luna’s breath caught.
This was wrong. He was her boss. He was an Alpha. He was engaged to Victoria Hayes, the most feared she-wolf in the pack.
But her mom was dying. And she was so tired.
“One night,” he murmured, his breath hot against her ear. “No names. No consequences. Tomorrow, you forget this happened.”
Luna should have screamed. Should have run.
Instead she nodded.
The world tilted.
---
Luna woke up to sunlight burning her eyes and a pounding headache.
She was in a bed that wasn’t hers. Silk sheets. A room the size of her entire apartment.
And a man’s arm draped over her waist.
It all came back in a rush. The whiskey. The office. The elevator. The way he’d growled her name like a prayer and a curse.
One night. No consequences.
She scrambled out of bed, grabbed her clothes, and ran.
She didn’t see him for 3 weeks.
She told herself it was better that way.
Until she threw up in the bathroom at work and the pregnancy test came back positive.
---
Two months later
“Miss Carter, CEO Blackwood will see you now.”
Luna’s hands shook as she clutched her bag. Inside was the ultrasound photo. 8 weeks. A tiny bean with a heartbeat.
His heir.
She pushed the door open. Damian was behind his desk, looking exactly the same. Cold. Perfect. Untouchable.
Except when his eyes landed on her stomach, his entire body went still.
“What are you doing here, Carter?”
“I’m pregnant.” The words came out flat. Clinical. Like if she said them without emotion, they wouldn’t be real. “With your child.”
Silence.
Damian leaned back in his chair. “And?”
“And I need money for my mom’s surgery. And I need—”
“You need nothing.” He stood. “Because you’re going to marry me.”
Luna laughed. It came out broken. “Excuse me?”
“A contract marriage. 9 months. You carry my heir. You stay in my house. You play the part of Luna Blackwood.” His gray eyes pinned her. “In return, I pay your mother’s hospital bills. I give you 5 million dollars when you deliver. And I make sure no one in this pack ever touches you.”
He was offering her a cage made of gold.
“And if I say no?”
“Then tomorrow the tabloids run a story about a gold-digging secretary who slept with her boss for money. Your mom gets kicked out of the hospital. And I take my child from you the second it’s born.”
Luna’s blood went cold.
He wasn’t asking.
He was claiming.
She looked at the photo in her hands. At the tiny heartbeat on the screen.
“Fine,” she whispered. “Contract marriage.”
Damian’s jaw ticked. For a second, something like regret flashed in his eyes. Then it was gone.
“Good girl,” he said softly. “Sign the papers. The wedding is Friday.”
Luna signed.
She didn’t know that the moment she did, every she-wolf in the pack, including his ex-fiancée Victoria, just declared war on her.
She didn’t know that Damian Blackwood never intended to let her go after 9 months.
And she definitely didn’t know that the baby inside her was already changing her.
Because no one told the human secretary that Alpha heirs don’t just get conceived.
They get chosen.
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