The Alpha's Contracted Luna

The Contract

LILA'S POV

The office took up the entire top floor of a building with no sign on it, just glass and steel looking down over a harbor I still hadn't learned the name of after five years in this city. A woman in a grey suit walked me down a hallway that smelled like nothing at all and stopped outside a set of double doors.

"He'll see you now," she said, and left before I could ask her name.

I pushed the doors open myself.

He was standing at the window with his back to me, and even from behind I could tell he took up more space than the room needed to give him, broad shoulders under a black shirt that fit like it had been made for exactly that body and no other

When he turned, I understood why the whole floor had felt like it was holding its breath just to get me here.

He was, without question, the most handsome man I had ever seen in person, dark hair, a jaw sharp enough to look carved, eyes so pale blue they looked almost silver in the light off the water behind him. None of it made him feel warmer. If anything, it made the coldness worse.

"Miss Carter," he said. "You're late."

"Your assistant gave me the wrong floor. Twice."

Something flickered across his face, not quite amusement, gone before I could be sure it had been there at all.

"Sit," he said.

"I don't take orders from men I've just met."

"Then stand." He didn't seem bothered either way. "I need this to be brief."

I stayed on my feet, mostly out of principle, though fourteen hours in the same shoes made a chair sound better than anything else in the room. "I was told this was a consulting position," I said. "For the pack medical program and nobody mentioned I'd be meeting the Alpha himself."

"You were told what got you through the door." He said it like a fact he was mildly bored of repeating. "You won't be consulting. You'll be my wife."

I laughed before I could stop myself, short and disbelieving. "I'm sorry, what?"

"One year," he said, like I hadn't spoken at all. "A contracted marriage. You live in my house, wear my ring, and stand beside me at the events that require it. At the end of the year, the contract ends and you walk away with more money than you'd see in a decade at that hospital."

"You don't know anything about what I make at that hospital."

"I know exactly what you make. I know what you owe on your flat. I know you haven't taken a full day off in eleven months." The room went very quiet, and I could hear my own pulse in my ears. "How do you know any of that?"

"Because I looked." He said it like the question itself interested him more than the answer would. "People rarely ask how. Most ask why. You're the first in a while who got the order right."

"That's not an answer. That's a violation."

"It's business," he said. "I'm very good at it."

I crossed my arms, mostly to keep my hands from shaking. "And if I say no?"

"Then you say no." No threat in it at all, which somehow made it worse. "I'm not here to convince you, Miss Carter. I'm telling you what's on the table."

I studied him a moment longer, looking for something underneath that flat calm, and found nothing. "Why me," I said. "Out of everyone you could have chosen."

Something moved behind his eyes, there and gone too fast to name. "You fit the requirements."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the one you're getting today." He crossed to the desk, picked up a folder, and held it out. "The terms are simple. No affairs outside the marriage, on either side. No public embarrassment. You attend what I require and nothing more. In private, you keep to yourself and I'll keep to mine."

"Sounds romantic."

"It isn't meant to be." He set the folder down when I didn't take it right away. "This is a business agreement, Miss Carter. Not a courtship. I need that understood before you sign anything."

"And if I break one of your rules?"

"You won't." No hesitation. "That's not a warning. It's just what I know."

I picked up the folder and read it through twice, standing there in that cold, glass-walled office, while he watched the water instead of watching me.

The terms were exactly what he'd said, a year, a ring, enough money to clear everything I'd been carrying since the night I walked out of Silver Fang with nothing but a bag and a torn dress.

I thought about eleven months without a single day off, about my mother's photograph still tucked in a drawer, about the promise I'd made myself the night I left that ballroom, that I would never again let anyone else decide what I was worth. This wasn't that. This was me deciding it myself.

I signed my name on the last page before I let myself think twice.

Damien took the folder back without comment, checked the signature once, and set it aside like the matter was already closed. "We'll announce it Monday," he said. "The wedding will follow within the month."

"That's fast."

"I don't see the benefit in waiting." For the first time all afternoon, something almost like approval crossed his face when I didn't argue.

I picked up my bag and walked toward the door, telling myself the unsteady feeling in my chest was relief. Only relief. Nothing else had any right to be in there yet.