The Alpha’s Outlaw Luna

Chapter 6 – Ghosts in the Report

Lyra looks like she hasn’t slept in a week, which is rich coming from me.

The lights in the healing wing are dimmed for evening, shadows pooling in the corners between gleaming white walls and brushed steel. Monitors glow soft blue over occupied beds. The air smells like antiseptic, chamomile, and wolf.

“This is the third one,” she says, dropping a file onto the metal table between us. “Same pattern. Same timeframe. Same bullshit diagnosis from Aric’s office.”

I flip the folder open.

Photographs. Medical scans. Aura diagrams. A boy I recognize from training runs—Mason, low‑ranking patrol, good with a joke—lying pale and unconscious, a lace of burned lines trailing over his sternum like a ghost of a circle.

The official report sheet is clipped neatly at the front.

PATIENT: M. THORNE

INCIDENT TYPE: ACUTE MAGICAL EXHAUSTION

LIKELY CAUSE: OVEREXTENDED TRANSFORMATION DURING FIELD EXERCISE

RECOMMENDED ACTION: REST, HYDRATION, MONITORED RETURN TO DUTY

My wolf bares her teeth.

“How many words did you have to delete to make it sound this harmless?” I ask.

Lyra’s mouth twists. Her curls are stuffed into a loose bun, scrubs wrinkled, hands ink‑stained from notes.

“Scroll,” she says.

Beneath the sanitized summary is a second document—her original. The one never meant to leave this floor.

PATIENT PRESENTING WITH:

– SEVERE BOND INSTABILITY

– RITUAL BURN PATTERN (SUBDERMAL)

– RECURRING VISUAL/AUDITORY HALLUCINATIONS OF “HANDLERS”

– LANGUAGE INDICATIVE OF COERCIVE CONTROL: “I OWE THEM,” “I WANT TO BE GOOD,” “THEY KNOW WHAT’S BEST”

“Aric cut all references to rituals,” Lyra says quietly. “Told me I was ‘pathologizing’ perfectly normal loyalty responses.”

My fingers drum against the table.

“How long has this been happening?” I ask.

“Months,” she says. “First ones were subtle. Anxiety spikes. Nightmares. Then the burns started showing up. Under the skin at first. Now?” She taps the photo. “I don’t have to be a seer to know a circle when it bites me in the face.”

I study Mason’s chart. The timeline lines up too neatly with Aric’s “prototypes” and Draven’s latest expansion.

“How many are ours?” I ask. “Moontrace wolves, not outsiders.”

“Five confirmed,” she says. “Three more I’d bet my license on. And that’s just the ones who came to me instead of pretending they’re fine.”

“Side effects within acceptable margins,” I mutter.

Lyra’s jaw tightens. “Acceptable to whom?”

I close the folder and lean back against the counter, feeling the edge dig into my spine.

In the far bed, someone groans in their sleep. Lyra glances over, then returns to me.

“I sent Aric the full versions,” she says. “He sent them back red‑lined. Told me to ‘focus on treatment, not root cause.’”

“And you didn’t come to me first because…?” I let the question hang.

She exhales through her nose. “Because until about five minutes ago, Callum, you sounded a lot like him. Talking about acceptable risks and long‑term gains and how we can’t afford to antagonize Draven when the coast is crawling with rogues.”

Point.

I cross my arms, stare at the city lights through the narrow window. Larkhaven glows orange and gold, oblivious.

“I saw the files,” I say. “The ones Finn dug out of Aric’s servers. I heard what my father said about Mara. About me. About how they planned all of it.”

Lyra goes very still. “All of… what?”

I give her the short, sharp version: the meeting, the schematics, the way they spoke about binding me to Selene like replacing a faulty part. The way they discussed “encouraging” Mara to leave.

By the time I’m done, Lyra’s knuckles are white on the back of the chair.

“Elara was in the room?” she asks, voice flat.

“She didn’t sign off,” I say. It sounds thin even to my ears. “She was outvoted. And she didn’t stop it.”

Lyra’s laugh is humorless. “There’s a lot of that going around.”

We stand in silence for a few heartbeats, the machines in the ward beeping a slow, steady rhythm.

“You think these kids are seeing the same handlers Mara’s stray described?” Lyra asks at last.

I blink. “What stray?”

She winces. “I was going to tell you. A small coastal pack up north sent me a consult request this morning. Boy with ritual burns, dock recruiter, mentioned Larkhaven, Varyn, ‘stabilization’ before he passed out. Their healer stabilized him, blocked most of the active pattern. The images he kept babbling—circles, candles, industrial seal on the paperwork—match what I’ve seen here.”

My fingers curl into fists.

“So we have external bootlegs and internal ‘prototypes’ burning our own wolves,” I say. “And Aric is rewriting your notes to protect a company that thinks collars are a growth market.”

“More or less,” she says.

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” I demand.

“You were very busy being the perfect heir,” she snaps back. “Forgive me for not trusting the man who told me, to my face, that ‘a few rough edges’ were worth the alliance.”

The words hit like a slap because they’re true.

I scrub a hand over my face. “You’re right.”

She blinks. “What?”

“You’re right,” I repeat. “I’ve been helping them look away. Arguing around the edges instead of cutting straight through the rot.” I meet her gaze. “That stops now. But I need everything. Not just what Aric left in the files.”

Lyra studies me for a long moment, weighing. Then she nods once and pulls a plain, unmarked tablet from under the counter.

“This is my copy,” she says. “Unedited. Every case that smelled wrong. Every time someone’s aura looked more like a leash than a bond.”

She hesitates before letting go.

“You know what happens if Ronan or Aric find out I kept this,” she says.

“If they find out,” I say, “it’ll be because we put it in front of the Council of Alphas and every allied healer in the region. Not because they caught you ‘hoarding data.’”

A corner of her mouth lifts. “Listen to you. Almost sounds like an Alpha.”

“I’m practicing.”

I take the tablet. It feels heavier than it looks.

“What do you need from me?” she asks.

“Test everything you can on Mason and the others,” I say. “Find out if there’s a way to safely unwind these half‑assed circles before they collapse. And if any of your patients mention dock recruiters, motel rooms, or ‘compliance programs,’ I want names. Logos. Addresses.”

“And if it all traces back here?” she asks softly. “To this tower. To this pack.”

“Then Moontrace gets to decide what it wants to be,” I say. “A company that fixes its own crimes. Or another Crescent waiting to fall.”

Lyra snorts. “Ronan will love that.”

“He doesn’t have to. He just has to get out of the way.”

She looks at me, really looks, like she’s meeting someone she almost remembers.

“What about Mara?” she asks. “You going to tell her you finally pulled your head out of your ass?”

The question lands between my ribs.

I picture a van on a dark highway, burned sigils under my crest on a stranger’s skin, Mara’s profile caught in grainy footage as she hauls another broken wolf out of the line of fire.

“She left because she had to,” I say. “Because we left her no honest way to stay. I don’t get to ask her to come back into this until I have something better than apologies and good intentions.”

Lyra’s gaze softens. “You might not get to ask her anything at all.”

“I know.”

We stand there, two wolves in a too‑bright room, listening to machines and distant traffic.

“Send me copies of any external consults,” I say at last. “Pack names, locations, everything. And Lyra—keep your reports honest, even if Aric keeps shredding them. We’ll need your words when this goes wider.”

“I was planning on it,” she says. “Someone in this tower has to keep a medical record instead of a PR brief.”

I manage a rough smile and head for the door.

In the hallway, I pause by the narrow window, staring down at the city. Somewhere beyond the high‑rises and cranes, the docks stretch into dark water. Past them, highways and motels and kids like Liam, thinking a branded circle is the answer to everything that scares them about themselves.

My father calls it modernization.

Aric calls it compliance.

I press my palm to the glass until my reflection blurs.

“It’s coercion,” I say under my breath. Naming it, finally, out loud. “And it ends here. One way or another.”