The Alpha's Secret Luna novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Signed Without Reading
Corbin signs the bond severance unread the moment Camille walks in, and Cassandra starts counting down thirty days.
Corbin signed away our mating bond without reading a word of it, and Camille was standing at his elbow when he did.
I had carried a stack of gene reports up to the forty-first floor myself that morning.
Under the last page, with only the signature line showing, I had slipped our bond severance papers.
"The Elders want these back today," I told him. "Just sign the bottom of the last page."
Corbin, the pack's Alpha, picked up the black pen from his desk.
The silver Alpha ring on his hand gave off its usual faint glow, since I was standing close.
We had never once talked about it.
He turned back the corner of the first page.
Then heels clicked down the hall, and Camille Dray walked in wearing a soft pink suit and a smile for the whole room.
Her perfume reached me first. It was hyacinth, thick and sweet, and my throat tightened.
"There you are," Corbin said.
His face changed. In four years it had never once changed that way for me.
He dropped the corner of the page and signed the last line without looking down.
Then he pushed the whole stack back across the desk and went to her.
"I told you to wait in the car," he said, and his voice was low and warm.
"I missed you," Camille said.
Her husband had moved out three weeks ago. Since then Corbin had put the Alpha's own guard and four armored SUVs on her apartment, day and night.
Camille picked up the top few reports and held them against her chest.
"Cassandra, you carried all of this up yourself? You're so good to him. Let me take some."
"I've got it," I said.
"Then let me at least buy you a coffee on the way down." She squeezed my hand. "I mean it. Anything you need, I'm here. We're pack."
She said it kindly, and I almost thanked her.
"She runs the new drug team," Corbin told her. "Paperwork comes with the lab. It's her job."
He did not look at me when he said it.
He put his hand on the small of her back and walked her to the door. "Come on. I booked the rooftop place you like. No business today."
I stood there with the signed page under my arm.
I looked at his empty chair and at the stack of reports on it.
He had never asked who kept his wolf calm in the Rockies. Camille had taken that credit with my empty vial in her hand.
Down in the private garage, four black SUVs idled in a row for Camille.
That escort had been my father's. He used it to keep me safe when I was a girl.
I walked into the women's restroom and locked the door.
The mirror showed me a pale face over a stiff gray lab uniform.
No one in the pack knew I was his fated mate, chosen by the Moon Goddess herself.
His mating mark sat hidden under my collar, and it was still burning from the signature.
I reached behind my neck and unclasped the wolf-fang pendant.
Corbin had hung it there four years ago and promised me forever.
I held it over the wastebasket.
So I decided to leave him, and I let it fall.
That night Corbin came home to the penthouse smelling of whiskey and her perfume.
He crossed the room toward me, and his hand went to the back of my neck, as it always did.
Then it stopped.
He stared at my bare collarbone. "Where's your necklace?"
"I forgot to put it on," I said, and I kept my eyes down.
A flash of irritation crossed his face. He didn't push.
He took a slim gift box from his coat pocket and dropped it on the coffee table. "Saw it on the way back."
He went straight to the shower.
Inside the box was a small bottle of hyacinth car fragrance.
The sweetness rose out of it and my chest locked.
In four years he had never learned that one breath of hyacinth could close my throat.
I did not cry, and I did not say a word to him about it.
I carried the bottle to the kitchen and dropped it into the trash, where it broke.
The shower ran on behind the bathroom door.
I stood in the dark and held my aching ribs.
The Moon Goddess's law had started its clock the moment he signed.
Twenty-nine days left, and then I would be gone.
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