The Wolfless Contract Luna novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Hot Spring
Cora walks to the spring in black lace and finds her husband kissing his brother's widow. She rejects him before his warriors and walks out into the snow, where the rival Alpha is waiting.
The first thing I saw at the hot spring was my husband's hand sliding up the back of his dead brother's wife.
Garrick had Imogen pressed against the rocks, and his mouth was hungry on hers.
Steam rolled off the water between us.
I stood on the path with my robe half open and couldn't make my feet move.
Two warriors stood guard at the bend, and both of them stared at the ground.
They had known. Every man on that path had known before I did.
It had started with a knock on my door an hour earlier.
Garrick's Beta stood in the hall with his eyes on my slippers.
"Luna Cora. The Alpha asks for you at the hot spring in Sunset Forest."
"Now?" I said. "It's nearly midnight."
"He's waiting."
My heart did something stupid and hopeful.
Three years of marriage, and for the last one he had barely touched me.
This could be the night he fixed it.
Imogen had come by to brush my hair loose over my shoulders.
She told me Garrick had been talking about a surprise all week.
"Wear the black set," she said, smiling. "He loves that one."
So I wore it, and I stood at the mirror in the lace and told myself my eyes were bright with excitement.
Not desperation. Excitement.
I pulled on the silk robe and followed Joss through the snow.
He never once looked back at me.
Now I understood why.
"Garrick," I said.
It came out small, and nobody heard it over the water.
"Garrick."
He lifted his head, and Imogen's lipstick was smeared across his chin.
He did not let her go.
That was the part I kept returning to afterward: he saw me, and his hand stayed on her.
"Cora." His voice was flat. "You weren't supposed to be here until I sent for you."
"You did send for me."
"Joss was supposed to wait."
Behind me, Joss made a noise in his throat.
Nobody had told the Beta the truth either, and I saw it in the way his shoulders caved.
Imogen turned in the circle of Garrick's arm and pressed her fingers to her mouth.
Her eyes were wet, and they looked sorry.
"Cora, please don't be angry," she said. "We never meant for you to find out like this."
"Like this," I said. "How else were you going to tell me?"
Nobody answered.
The old bond in my chest ached, dull and far away, as it had since the day Garrick took his brother's seat.
I used to think that ache was grief.
Now I thought it was just what being left felt like.
I had signed my father's pack over to him at our wedding, because I loved him.
Every full moon, before the run, he took my wrist in his hand and held it.
Every full moon, afterward, I needed a chair, and he ran faster than any wolf in the pack.
I was wolfless, everyone said so, and I had believed my job was to hold things steady while he did the real work.
I slid my wedding ring off.
It came away easily, because it had gotten loose this year and I hadn't noticed when.
"Garrick Thornwell," I said, loud enough for the warriors at the bend to lift their heads.
"I reject you as my mate and my Alpha."
"I take back my name, my bond and my place in your house."
The words hung in the steam.
I dropped the ring into the spring, and it sank without a sound.
Garrick let out a short breath, almost a laugh.
"You can't reject me, Cora. A rejection needs a wolf behind it."
He let go of Imogen at last and stepped to the edge of the pool.
"You don't have one. You never did."
"Then it won't hurt you," I said.
"It won't do anything. And I won't witness it."
His gold-brown eyes were steady and sure.
"As Alpha of this pack, I refuse your words, and without an Alpha's witness they don't stand."
"Go back to the house and put some clothes on," he said. "We'll talk about how this works from now on."
He thought I would go.
Three years of me going back to the house, and he thought I would do it again.
"No," I said.
I tied my robe closed and turned my back on the three of them.
"Cora!"
I walked past Joss, who whispered, "Luna, I'm sorry."
I walked past the warriors, who would not meet my eyes.
My bare feet burned in the snow, and I didn't stop.
So I walked out, in lace and silk and no shoes, and I did not look behind me.
Garrick shouted my name once more, and then I was too far away to hear him.
Somewhere past the tree line, the snow stopped crunching under only my steps.
Someone else was walking beside me in the dark, and I hadn't heard him come.
He was a tall man in a long dark coat, with an old scar along his jaw and grey eyes fixed on the trees ahead.
He held out a second coat, heavy wool, and he did not look at what I was wearing.
"Luna Cora of Ashfall," he said. "Bram Haldane, Alpha of Blackwater."
I took the coat.
"You're free," he said. "I've been waiting a long time for that."
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