The Alpha's Contracted Luna

The Alpha's Choice

Lila's POV

Elena found us before I'd fully caught my breath from the corridor, reading the whole scene in one practiced sweep. Kieran's back retreating down the hall. Damien's hand still wrapped around mine. Whatever conclusion she landed on, it clearly hadn't improved her mood.

Her dress was scarlet silk that particularly screamed for attention and she wore it like an armor she'd put on specifically for tonight.

"Some people get very confident once they've married into power," she sneered.

"Some people get very uncomfortable when they realize they don't have power over someone anymore." I snapped back.My voice was low but confident, and I watched the impact it had on her. She swallowed hard, gave me a hostile glare, then turned to leave—her heels striking hard against the marble floor of the hallway.

I felt a slow movement in my chest, something that had gone strangely watchful ever since the chapel and the strange light.

My wolf was now awakened, though I couldn't feel her power . That was the first time she'd stirred enough for me to actually notice her doing it, a low warm hum somewhere under my ribs that felt closer to a held breath than a growl.

Across the room, half hidden near the far pillar, a man I didn't recognize caught Kieran's eye for exactly one second too long. There was a brief interaction between them, whatever it was, I knew they were up to something. I made a mental note of it.

The summit resumed, and I should have known the peace wouldn't survive the first exchange. The Hall smelled like old wood and candle smoke.There was a faint copper smell in the air, left behind by many wolves who’d been on edge for too long.

I could feel Damien beside me, close enough that I could feel the heat coming off him. His prescence gave me a sense of protection.

"Forgive me for asking," one of the older Alphas said, "but isn't this marriage rather convenient?"

Another picked it up before the first had finished. "A disgraced Carter daughter, suddenly Luna of House Blackwood, immediately after the former Alpha's death."

The whispering spread through the hall the way wind moves through dry grass. It was Everywhere at once, and then Elena, loud enough to reach every table in the room. With a hint of mockery in her voice .

"Perhaps she simply learned which Alpha was worth seducing."

The room went dead silent My ears rang in the silence. Eighteen years had taught me to make myself smaller. Keep my head down. Apologize before anyone even finished accusing me.

My wolf wanted none of that.

A snarl pushed up my throat. My jaw tightened until my back teeth hurt, and I had to force myself not to bare them.

I heard her speak for the first time."Don't you dare shrink for them".

I didn't get the chance to decide either way.

Damien crossed the hall with every eye in the room following him, took my hand in front of every Alpha present, and when he spoke, his voice reached every corner of that hall without him raising it once.

"My wife doesn't need to prove why I chose her."

"But Alpha Blackwood..."

"You misunderstand." He looked around slowly, meeting every pair of eyes that had been whispering thirty seconds earlier. "I didn't choose her because I was obligated to."

Then he looked at me, and there was nothing careful left in his face at all.

"I chose her because she's mine."

It should have sounded possessive in the way that used to make my skin crawl. It didn't. It sounded like the exact opposite of everything Kieran had ever offered me, certain instead of convenient, chosen instead of settled for, and my wolf went warm and still in a way I didn't have a name for yet.

"And anyone who insults my Luna," Damien said, turning back to the room, "insults House Blackwood."

The clap that answered him came slow, deliberate, from across the hall.

Every head turned. Alpha Victor Carter rose from his seat, and he wasn't angry. He was smiling, which was worse.

"Beautiful speech." He let the words sit a moment. "But House Blackwood doesn't walk into Carter territory, take my daughter, and expect me to bow to it."

Damien's eyes narrowed. "Your daughter

Victor's gaze found me, cold and final. "She stopped being my daughter the day she disgraced this pack."

My face went numb. I'd braced for a lot of things walking into that hall tonight. Not those words said in front of every Alpha who mattered.

"I challenge your right to claim her as Luna," Victor said, and the hall broke into noise at once, chairs scraping, voices overlapping, somebody near the back already arguing

"A moon duel," Victor said, once the room had settled enough to hear him. "Three nights from now, under the full moon, on neutral ground between our territories. If you win, your claim on her stands unquestioned by any pack in this hall." He paused, and something almost pleasant crossed his face, which was somehow worse than if he'd let the threat show plainly. "If you lose, she comes home. Where she belongs."

Home. As if the word still meant anything coming from the man who'd called me disgraced in front of two hundred witnesses less than a minute ago.

Damien didn't hesitate. He pulled of his jacket and handed it off to Marcus without looking at him, and the room went silent again, faster this time, like everyone understood exactly what that meant before I fully did. A duel accepted in that manner, without a single second of deliberation, was its own kind of statement, and I watched several of the older Alphas exchange looks that told me they'd understood it as one.

My hand closed around his wrist. "Damien."

He looked at me, and for the first time all night I saw something in his eyes that had nothing to do with Alpha authority. But fear of what losing might cost me.

"Name the terms," he said, turning back to my father, flat and absolutely certain, like the fear hadn't touched his voice at all even though I'd just watched it in his eyes.

I stood there with my hand still on his arm, feeling the pulse in his wrist beating fast under my fingers despite how calm his face looked, and something in me that had spent my entire life being the one people get rid of, completely, rearranged itself around a new fact. Somebody was about to put himself in danger to keep me instead.

My wolf didn't say anything about it. She just leaned into the feeling.