All Chapters of His Contractual Luna: Bought by the Beast: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

The morning light broke through the high arched windows of the subterranean laboratory, casting pale silver rays across the polished concrete floor. Deep beneath the Starfall Dominion Citadel, the air smelled clean—free of the heavy steam and eucalyptus of the geothermal springs, but charged with a quiet, electricity-tinged focus. Agnes stood at her primary workstation, her dark hair bound tightly in a silver clip at the nape of her neck. She wore a tailored black working coat over her clothes, the sleeves rolled up to her elbows. Her eyes were fixed on three separate holographic displays projecting green diagnostic telemetry, financial transfer receipts, and the encrypted interrogation files Torin had extracted from former Chief Tech Marcus. On her right hand, the uncut moonstone of the Starfall Fate-Ring caught the morning light. Her skin still remembered the heat of Rhys's touch from the recovery springs—the press of his broad chest beneath her hands, the heavy, possessive cadence

The fire stairs echoed with the heavy cadence of tactical boots, gunshots, and screaming alarms. Agnes and Rhys charged up the concrete stairwell, clearing three flights in seconds. Smoke hung thick in the air, smelling of scorched copper, ozone, and ozone-laced blood. At the landing of the fourth floor, the reinforced steel double doors were blasted outward off their hinges, warped and smoking from a plasma charge. Torin stood just inside the breach, kneeling behind a overturned medical gurney, his tactical carbine smoking as he laid down suppressive fire into the corridor. Two wounded Starfall guardians were behind him, applying pressure dressings to their Kevlar armor. "Alpha!" Torin shouted over the deafening chatter of kinetic rifles. "They brought a heavy breaching unit! They've pushed past the security checkpoint and locked down the ICU corridor!" Rhys stepped in front of Torin, his obsidian chest plate absorbing a stray volley of kinetic rounds with dull, metallic thuds. Th

The reinforced tactical VTOL cut through the low-hanging fog bank surrounding the northern border of the High Spires. Below them, the gleaming sky-bridges, polished glass towers, and copper-domed rotundas of the city gave way to a dense, jagged expanse of black pine forests and rusted iron ironworks—the Shadowfang Wilds. It was a lawless, unregulated territory spanning hundreds of square miles between the High Spires and the coastal sea-routes. No corporate Assembly laws applied here. No Grand Council enforcers patrolled the perimeter. The Wilds were governed by a brutal, blood-sport economy run by rogue syndicates, illegal relic-black-marketeers, and underground fight rings. Inside the transport's armored belly, the atmosphere was quiet, charged with a heavy, restless anticipation. Maeve sat on a bench near the rear ramp, her dark hair pulled back into a tight braid. She wore a dark, high-collar Starfall combat suit reinforced with lightweight titan-mesh around her joints. Across h

The titan-mesh behind Rhys groaned under the crushing weight of Grakus’s assault. Blood smeared across the canvas as the giant berserker drove a heavy, reinforced knee straight into Rhys’s chest. The impact rattled the cage frame, sending a shudder through the iron posts. Rhys’s teeth clamped down hard against a roar of pain, his arms raised in a double-guard that was rapidly losing structural integrity. His vision was swimming in a sea of static. Deep within his bloodstream, the dormant blue-wolfsbane micro-toxins were spiking, fooling his brain into believing his body was shutting down. The bio-brakes built into his core harness were locking up, reading the poison's artificial biological signature as total internal trauma. "He's done! The champ is going down!" yelled a bookie three rows back, waves of silver shards changing hands in a frenzy across the stands. "Finish him, Grakus! Snap his neck!" the Bloodfang corner roared. Grakus pulled his massive right arm back, his purple-v

The morning after the fight, news of Grakus’s brutal knockout and the miraculous real-time harness override tore through the underground circuits like wildfire. But with fame came a target on Agnes’s back. By noon, Starfall intelligence had already intercepted three separate encrypted hits placed on the "Vance Relic Keeper" by furious Bloodfang syndicate bosses. Inside the high-vaulted living quarters of the Citadel, Rhys made his decision absolute. "You aren't staying behind in the lab, and you aren't hiding in the shadows," Rhys declared, standing by the floor-to-ceiling glass window overlooking the snow-dusted Spires. His broad shoulders blocked out the pale morning sun. "Tonight is the Grand Wolf Assembly’s Annual Winter Gala. You enter on my arm as my official fiancée. Every syndicate head, every corrupt council elder, and every hitman in the city will see that touching you means war with the entire Starfall Dominion." Agnes stood near the plush velvet seating area, running a h