All Chapters of WOLFLESS: The Last Moon Born Wolf: Chapter 1 - Chapter 8

Six years ago, under a blood-red moon, the Alpha King said six words to me in front of his entire pack."I reject you as my mate, Alexandra."The bond didn't fade. It snapped, and I felt the sound of it in my teeth. Most of the pack laughed. I didn't scream. I didn't beg. I walked into the dark and made myself a promise: he would never take another thing from me. Not my tears. Not my name. Not one more second of my life.Yesterday, a black envelope said he wanted all three.My name is Alexandra Carlow. I'm twenty-three, and I am wolfless. I have no wolf. I smell of nothing to anyone, which in a world that runs on scent is the same as being invisible. So I took a job among humans, investigating insurance claims, because humans don't sniff the air when you walk past.My boss said I had a knack. I never told him why.I can hear hearts.Not like a doctor. I just hear them, always, the way other people hear rain. A liar's heart trips over itself. A frightened heart runs. I've heard them si

The night I turned seventeen, the moon was silver when I walked into the clearing.I want that on the record, because afterward the elders swore it had been a Blood Moon from the start. An omen, rare as a king's mercy. They needed it to be an omen. It was easier than the truth.Every wolf in the northern territories had come for the Gathering, the one night a year when the young are brought before the moon to be scented, to wake their wolves, and, if the Goddess is kind, to find their mates.I wore my mother's silver necklace and a white dress I'd sewn myself, badly, because we couldn't afford a tailor. I'd practiced my walk in the kitchen until my little brother Theo, four years old and sitting on the counter, declared I looked like a duck."A very pretty duck," he added.I laughed. I remember that. I remember being happy. I remember my mother's thin hands fixing the back of my dress, and her heart, steady and tender, the one heart in the world I had never needed to listen to for the

A nurse came to wheel Theo down for his scans, chattering about ice cream and cartoons. The door clicked shut behind them.Then Dr. Bruce crossed the room, turned the key in the lock, and drew the curtain over the little window. He did it the way a man closes a coffin. Nothing said next would leave this room."Tell me what's wrong with me.""Nothing is wrong with you." His voice cracked. "That is what frightens me."He lowered the stethoscope. His hands would not stop shaking."Your own heartbeat is perfectly healthy, Miss Carlow. The second belongs to someone else. It's slower, heavier, stronger. It beats in your chest as though it has lived there for years."*Thud. Thud. Thud.*I didn't have to ask whose.He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. "Forty years a physician, Miss Carlow. Ten thousand hearts. I have never heard one that was listening back.""A rejection kills a mate bond," he said slowly. "It leaves a wound. Scars. Sometimes madness. What it does not leave is an echo

The blood on the floor was still wet when the second howl rose from the courtyard.I ran.Barefoot, in a borrowed nightgown, down the spiral stair and through corridors lit by guttering torches. A guard stepped into my path and stopped dead when he saw my face. I only knew the howl was coming from the courtyard, and where his heartbeat should have been, there was nothing in my chest but a silence like a held breath.Rowan caught me at the arched doorway, one hand braced across the stone."Luna. Go back.""He's hurt.""He's fine. Go back to your rooms.""Rowan." My voice cracked. "His heart stopped."Something moved across his face, quick and raw. Then, very slowly, he lowered his arm."Stay behind me," he said.I didn't.The courtyard lay silver under the moon. Guards stood in a ragged ring along the walls, weapons drawn, forty hearts racing in forty chests. Not one of them was looking at the intruder.They were looking at the king.He stood in the center of the stones, on four legs,