The Alpha’s Outlaw Luna

Chapter 10 – Firebreak

By the time we reach the annex, the whole block stinks of burned magic.

Kael’s SUV slews to a stop half up on the curb. I’m out before the engine finishes coughing, Selene a cold, controlled presence at my shoulder. Sirens wail somewhere behind us; human emergency services, called in under some sanitized code. Too late for the first wave. Maybe not for the second.

The Larkhaven Maritime Compliance building looks like a kicked anthill. Smoke curls out of shattered upstairs windows. Wolves and humans spill into the lot—some limping, some dragging others, some just standing there in shock.

Moontrace security is already on site, yellow vests over black tactical gear. One of them moves to block me on reflex, then pales.

“Alpha—” he starts.

“Where’s Kael?” I cut in.

A gloved hand jerks toward the side entrance. I don’t wait.

Inside, the air is a wall of heat and chemical stink. Emergency lighting strobes the hallway in ugly red. The bond web under my skin hums like a live wire; Crescent’s residue still tickles the edges, but the worst of the pull is gone.

They tried to grab me and missed.

Or hit something else instead.

Kael is at the far end of the corridor, half‑shifted, fur running along his forearms, teeth bared as he shouts orders. Two of his wolves are hauling an unconscious handler out of a side room. Another is spraying foam over a circle on the floor that’s still throwing off sparks, lines of chalk burned into the concrete.

“Contain that,” he snaps. “If it flares again—”

“Kael,” I say.

He spins, eyes blazing gold—then drops back to human at the sight of me, shoulders coming down a fraction.

“Callum.” He looks like hell: soot on his face, singed hair, a small ritual burn tracing his own collarbone where he clearly shoved someone out of a circle. “Great timing.”

“What happened?” Selene asks, stepping up on my other side. No preamble, no soft voice. Just business.

Kael grimaces. “Pilot session went sideways. Circle couldn’t handle the load. One handler down, two clients in bad shape. And something in that pattern tried to hitchhike out through anyone with Crescent ink in their file.”

“And?” I ask.

“And it reached you,” he says. “And—” He hesitates, eyes flicking to the open doorway behind him. “And someone else.”

My heart does a stupid little lurch.

“Mara,” I say.

He doesn’t ask how I know. He just nods once.

“I smelled her as soon as the circle blew,” he says quietly. “Thought I was hallucinating. Then she came out of nowhere, dropped their containment guy with one hit, and started ripping chalk like she invented it.”

Of course she did.

“Where is she now?” Selene demands.

Kael’s mouth tightens. “Inside. With the Calder boy. He’s... not stable."

As if triggered by his words, a wave of raw, panicked magic slams into the hallway from the open room—a ragged surge that makes every hackle I have stand up. Not a clean bond line. A net trying to tear itself apart.

My wolf surges toward it, recognizing the same filthy signature that tried to get its hooks into us upstairs.

Behind it, buried but unmistakable, is Mara’s scent: sweat, ash, fury.

“Hold the perimeter,” I tell Kael. “No one from Crescent sets foot past this door. If Draven’s people show up, stall them. If my father calls, tell him I’m dealing with the mess his partners left on my floor.”

Kael huffs a humorless laugh. “Nice to have you on this side of the blast for once.”

I step past him into the room.

The stench hits first: burned sage, melted plastic, singed hair. The circle on the floor is a wreck—lines fractured, sigils smeared. In the center, the Calder boy kneels, nails dug into the concrete, eyes blown wide and glowing a painful, wrong white‑gold.

Mara is behind him, arms locked around his chest, her mouth at his ear as she snarls words I can’t quite hear over the ringing in my own head.

Her hair is longer than the last time I saw her. New scars track her forearms. She’s barefoot in a spill of salt and broken chalk, trousers torn at the knee, soot streaked along her jaw. Her magic whips around them both in a tight, ugly spiral, trying to hold the boy’s splintering aura together.

She doesn’t look up when I enter. She’s too busy not letting him break.

“Kid,” she grinds out, voice low and edged, “I swear to every moon in the sky, if you drag him down with you I’ll personally haunt your ass for the rest of your short, sorry—”

“Mara,” I say.

Her shoulders jerk.

For a heartbeat, the boy’s wild power wavers, heat rising another notch.

She tightens her grip, doesn’t turn.

“Varyn,” she snaps. “If you’re here to grandstand or ask me why your pretty logo is on their forms, get out. I’m busy trying to stop your partners from turning this kid into a live grenade.”

I step closer, the bond between us crackling like a struck match.

“I’m here,” I say quietly, “to help you disarm it.”