My Contractual Luna: Curing The Alpha's Decay

KIERA'S POV

The silence in the Ancestral Sanctuary stretched so thin it hummed.

"What is that look?" Kirt hissed, his pride bruising at my unyielding posture. "Kiera, lower your eyes before your future master."

I did not blink. With deliberate, languid movements, I reached up and adjusted the tangled silver pins in my hair, brushing away the dust of the flagstone as if he were nothing more than a stray dog that had barked out of turn.

My total disregard struck him harder than an insult. To an arrogant Alpha-blood, an Omega’s indifference was the ultimate heresy.

"Are you deaf, bitch?" Kirt roared.

His patience snapped. He lunged, his thick fingers hooking into a claw to seize my collar and force me to the floor.

Because of a past life drenched in his sudden violence, my muscle memory responded before thought could even form. I pivoted on my back heel, shifting my center of gravity by a mere inch. His hand cleaved empty air, the force of his own momentum causing him to stagger off-balance.

A sharp gasp rippled through the spectators. Janice’s theatrical tears vanished, replaced by an ugly twitch of disbelief.

Kirt spun around, his face purple with humiliation. "You dare dodge an heir?"

His humanity slipped. A low, wet snarl rattled from the back of his throat as his eyes bled into a feral, muddy amber. His fingernails elongated, thickening into blackened lupine claws. He lowered his stance and charged straight for my trachea, aiming to rip out my vocal cords.

He expects prey, my inner wolf whispered fiercely. Show him a butcher.

I did not scramble backward. Instead, I stepped directly into his blind spot, slipping beneath his raised claw.

As the sole surviving heiress of the ancient Weeks apothecary line, my hands had dissected the muscular and nervous systems of thousands of werewolves. I didn't need brute strength. I knew where the biological kill-switches were buried.

My left hand flashed out like a viper. My thumb, dusted with the potent, concentrated aconite extract I kept stitched into the lining of my ceremonial cuff for botanical preservation, struck viciously upward—driving straight into the tender, unshielded nerve junction beneath his jawline where the carotid artery split.

Kirt’s charge stalled violently. A strangled, choking gasp ripped from his throat as the localized neurotoxin and physical trauma paralyzed his motor reflexes in a split second. His amber eyes bulged in absolute terror.

Before his dead weight could touch the floor, my right hand seized the heavy ceremonial oak stool resting beside the altar.

"Goddess preserve us!" an Elder shrieked.

Channeling every memory of my grandfather’s dying screams in the fire, I brought the solid oak leg down across the vulnerable hollow behind Kirt's temple with all the leverage in my body.

CRACK.

The heavy wood struck with a sickening, hollow thud.

Kirt's eyes rolled back into his skull. An ordinary human's skull would have caved in completely, but an Alpha-blood's violent regenerative biology fought the trauma—trapping his nervous system in a state of paralyzed, rattling shock. His knees turned to water, and he crashed onto the pristine white marble like a falled tree, a thick line of dark crimson spilling from his hairline.

He wasn't dead—his lupine heart was too stubborn to stop—but his consciousness and his beast were shattered for the night.

Absolute, petrified silence smothered the sanctum. The gathered wolves forgot how to breathe.

My chest heaved, pulling in the hot, metallic scent of fresh blood. The thrill running through my veins was intoxicating. My inner wolf threw her head back and let out a phantom howl of triumphant vengeance.

Instinctively, my gaze flicked toward the high balcony.

Alcide Barnes had not called for the guards. He had risen from his throne, his massive frame leaning over the obsidian parapet. His glacial blue eyes burned with an electrifying, dangerous hunger. He was not disgusted by the violence; he was watching me the way an apex beast watched a newly crowned huntress.

He was allowing me to bleed his brother’s heir.

"Aaaah!" Janice's shrill, glass-shattering scream finally broke the spell. She threw her hands in the air, pointing a quivering finger at me. "You... you murdered him! Guards! She's feral! Kill her!"

I dropped the blood-splattered oak leg. It hit the marble with a dull, hollow clatter.

I turned my head toward her, wiping a speck of Kirt’s hot blood from my cheek with the back of my hand. "Murder?" I said, my voice slicing through the stillness with surgical clarity. "An heir who cannot survive a simple discipline strike from an unarmed Omega has no right to lead a hunt, let alone claim me."

"Blasphemy!" An Elder lunged to his feet from the high council bench, his beard quivering with fury. "Kiera Weeks! Violence at the sacred altar is treason against the Pack! To spill the blood of your betrothed—"

"Betrothed?" I cut him off, my voice echoing off the vaulted stone ceiling with raw authority that made the old wolf flinch. "When he struck me to the floor like vermin, where was your sacred law? When he brought his mistress to stand on the sacred circle of my ancestors, where was your honor?"

The Elder’s mouth flapped open, but no words came out.

Suddenly, a heavy, snarling figure broke through the crowd. Brenda Hodge, Kirt’s mother, charged onto the dais like an enraged sow, her face contorted in vicious hysteria. "You little whore! You broke my son's skull!"

She lunged, her hand curved into a feral claw aimed straight at my eyes.

I didn't even shift my feet. I simply leaned back, letting the gust of her claws brush harmlessly past the bridge of my nose. Before she could recover her balance, I sidestepped her clumsy bulk and strode purposefully toward Janice, who was trembling on the floor beside Kirt’s twitching body.

It was time to tear away their stolen pelts.