The Alpha’s Outlaw Luna

Chapter 8 – Target Locked

Lyra doesn’t waste time.

By the time Jax and I circle the docks twice, my phone is full of files—screenshots of internal memos, clipped health reports, a list of Moontrace staff who’ve signed off on “external compliance partnerships.”

One name jumps out.

“Kael Thorne,” I read. “Head of Port Security Liaison. That your Kael?”

“Unfortunately,” Lyra says in my ear. “He handles joint ops with Draven and third‑party contractors. If someone stamped Moontrace’s crest on those forms, Kael either signed it… or was kept conveniently busy while someone used his login.”

“So he’s either complicit or a patsy.”

“Pretty much. I’d like it to be the second, for everyone’s sake.”

I rub my temple. “Tell me you can get me a copy of his schedule.”

“That would be illegal,” she says. “And done. Check your screen.”

A new file pings in. Kael’s day broken down in fifteen‑minute blocks. Meetings, inspections, patrol briefings.

And there, highlighted in yellow: LARKHAVEN MARITIME COMPLIANCE – FACILITY WALKTHROUGH, 18:30.

I glance at the dashboard clock. 18:12.

“Of course,” I murmur. “Jax, swing back. We’ve got company inbound.”

“Moontrace?” he asks.

“Yeah. Their favorite attack dog.”

He whistles low. “Reunion tour keeps getting better.”

We park one block over this time, behind a stack of shipping containers. From here, we can see the Compliance building’s side entrance and most of the lot. I kill the lights and crack my door just enough for scent.

Port wind. Diesel. Human anxiety.

And then—Moontrace.

Kael arrives on foot, cutting across from the main gate with two wolves at his back. He’s broader than I remember, shoulders carrying more weight, but his stride is the same—loose, ready, scanning without looking like he’s scanning.

My wolf surges at the sight of him. Old muscle memory: training fields, shared jokes, his hand tugging me out of the line of fire.

“Easy,” I mutter.

Jax leans forward. “That him?”

“Yeah.”

Kael pauses outside the side door, talking quietly with a human in a navy blazer. I zoom my phone camera, catching the glint of a Crescent pin on the blazer’s lapel.

“Lyra,” I say. “Your boy is about to walk into a Crescent handshake.”

“Can you get closer?” she asks, voice tight.

“Not without getting made.”

As if he hears me, Kael lifts his head slightly, nostrils flaring. He turns—not toward our hiding spot, but toward the street, scanning the air. His gaze brushes our row of containers and slides past.

For now.

The human unlocks the door. Kael and his wolves step inside.

Jax swears under his breath. “So what’s the play? We watch him bless their little torture room?”

“I want proof,” I say. “Photos. Names. Conversation snippets. Something I can shove under Moontrace’s nose and Crescent’s lawyers’ teeth.”

Jax opens his mouth to argue—and that’s when the building shudders.

A dull, muffled thump punches through the air, followed by a flare of magic that hits my skin like static. One of the upper windows flashes with brief, dirty orange light.

“s**t,” I breathe. “That’s a circle blowing.”

Screams follow—human and wolf, tangled.

The side door bursts open. Smoke rolls out, acrid and wrong. One of Kael’s wolves staggers into the lot, half‑shifted, eyes wild, burned sigils crawling up his neck like glowing vines.

He locks eyes with me across the distance and howls.

Every hair on my arms stands up. The magic riding that howl is wrong—hooked, reaching.

“Mara.” Lyra’s voice is sharp in my ear. “Talk to me. What’s happening?”

Another shape slams into the doorway—a handler, face blackened, shouting something about “containment failure” and “lock the clients down.”

Behind him, in the smoke, I glimpse the kid from earlier.

Calder.

He’s on his knees inside a chalk circle that’s cracking under his hands, light bleeding through the fractures. The bond tug radiating off him is wild, desperate—and it hits a thread in my own chest that should not respond.

For a heartbeat, something yanks at me. At my wolf.

At the half‑bond I refused to name.

The world tilts.

“Mara?” Jax grabs my arm. “You feel that? What the hell is—”

The magic hook digs in, dragging.

Not toward the building.

Not toward the kid.

East.

Past the port. Past the city.

Straight toward the tower where Callum Varyn is standing, whether he knows it or not, at the other end of whatever invisible leash Crescent buried in both of us.

And in that pull, just for an instant, I feel him answer.

The bond between us flares—

—and snaps everything to white.