The Wolfless Contract Luna novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: One Year, On Paper

Bram offers a contract: Luna of Blackwater for one year, no bond, no mark. She signs, and Joss brings word that Garrick has sent hunters after her.

The coat smelled like woodsmoke and cold air, and it reached my knees.

I pulled it around me and kept walking, because stopping meant thinking.

"There's a truck at the river road," Bram said. "Heater's on."

"Why are you here?" I asked.

"My patrol walks this border."

"At midnight, on Ashfall's side of it?"

"I came to the line at dusk," he said. "I stayed longer than I meant to."

It was not an answer, and we both knew it.

I was too cold and too tired to push.

The truck sat on the gravel with its engine running and its windows fogged.

He opened the passenger door for me, and I climbed in with snow melting off my bare feet.

He handed me a pair of thick wool socks from the glove box without a word.

They were enormous.

"They're mine," he said, when I looked at them.

"I can tell."

I put them on, and for the first time that night my chest unclenched a little.

He got in on the other side and didn't start driving.

"I'll make this short," he said. "You have nowhere to go tonight, and I have a problem you can solve."

"I'm not interested in solving anyone's problem."

"Hear it first. Then say no."

I leaned my head against the cold window.

"Go on."

"Blackwater's council gave me until the winter moon to name a Luna," Bram said. "If I don't have one, they vote me out of the seat."

"Then name one."

"Every woman who offers comes with a mating bond attached. Her wolf, my wolf, her family, her ambition."

He said it flatly.

"I don't want a bond. I want a wife on paper that the council has to respect."

I turned my head and looked at him.

"And a wolfless Luna carries no bond."

"A wolfless Luna carries no bond," he agreed.

Then he saw my face, and his jaw tightened.

"That's not an insult. I've watched you run Ashfall's affairs for three years. The elders listened to you."

"The elders listened to my husband."

"They looked at you when they were afraid of him."

I had no answer for that.

"What do I get?" I said.

"A year. My name, my pack's protection and a house with a door that locks from the inside."

"And?"

"And whatever you can take from Ashfall that's yours by right. I'll stand behind it."

I thought of my father's wolfskin cloak, hanging on the dais in the pack hall where Garrick had put it on display.

I thought of the small carved box with my mother's ring that Imogen had said she was keeping safe.

"I want my father's things back," I said.

"Done."

"I want a contract, in writing. Not a handshake."

Bram reached across me and opened the glove box again. He pulled out a notebook and a pencil stub.

He wrote for a few minutes in a square, plain hand, then tore the page out and gave it to me.

One year, until the winter moon.

I would be Luna of Blackwater in name and in public, and nothing more.

No mating mark. No bond.

No touching, except where the packs could see, and only as much as the pack needed to believe.

Either of us could end it at the winter moon.

Either of us would say so first, if we took someone else to bed.

I read the last line twice.

"You've thought about this."

"I've thought about it for a month," he said. "Not about you. About whoever she would be."

"That's very romantic."

"It's honest."

I almost smiled.

I realized I was holding the pencil, and that my hand was steady, which surprised me more than anything else that night.

"You'll stand in front of Garrick when he comes," I said.

"I'll stand in front of anyone."

"Even if it costs you a war?"

"Ashfall can't afford a war with me," Bram said. "He knows it. That's one reason I'm not worried about him."

"What's the other reason?"

He looked out the windshield.

"I'll tell you when it's useful."

I signed my name at the bottom, Cora Wexley, the one I had just taken back.

He signed under it.

The pencil felt very light.

"Welcome to Blackwater, Luna," he said, and started the truck.

We had gone maybe a mile when headlights flashed twice on the river road ahead of us, and Bram stopped.

A man stood in the beam with his hands raised, breathing hard.

It was Joss.

He had run the whole way from the hot spring, and he was still wearing his Beta's coat.

Bram rolled down the window.

Joss came to my side instead.

"Luna, I can't stay long. Garrick told the pack you had a breakdown."

I stared at him.

"He says you're unwell, and confined to your rooms, and anyone who sees you outside the house is to bring you back."

"That's a lie."

"He's sent the hunters out," Joss said. "Six of them, with ropes."

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