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Seventy one
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2026-08-14 22:16:35
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The Bastard Luna: His Unwanted Mate 73
Damian's POVBret came in on a Wednesday without knocking, which he did only when the information required speed.I set my pen down.He put a single sheet on the desk.I read it."When?" I said."The first approach was ten days ago," he said. "We only confirmed the pattern yesterday when the third Alpha reported being contacted." He sat down without being invited. "They've approached five packs. Our intelligence has confirmed three. The language in each case is similar — not accusatory, framed as a question of council procedure, but the implication is consistent."The implication being: if the Alpha of the Wolfe Pack had a biological child with another party prior to and separate from any formal bonding arrangement, what did pack law say about succession? Specifically, about the rights of that child relative to the Alpha's formal partnerships?On its own, an abstract procedural question.Aimed at every Alpha in Damian's immediate political network, with the timing of Renn's acknowledg
The Bastard Luna: His Unwanted Mate 72
Selene's POVThe mediation office was in a neutral territory thirty miles from the pack, which meant it was thirty miles from everything I had spent twenty-three years being, and this had taken approximately two weeks to feel like an advantage rather than an exposure.My supervisor's name was Orin. He was a wolf in his forties with the particular quality of patience that came not from temperament but from having spent fifteen years watching people at their worst try to reach agreements and learning that most problems resolved faster if you let the room breathe. He had reviewed my background — beta family, Alpha's former fiancée, tribunal-adjacent — and offered me the position anyway."You know how power rooms work," he said at the interview. "That's useful here.""Most of what I know is how to perform in power rooms," I said. "Not how to actually run them.""That's honest." He looked at me for a moment. "Also useful."I had been there three weeks.The work was not what I had imagined.
The Bastard Luna: His Unwanted Mate Seventy one
Elara's POVThe flat was different without Caden. Quieter in a way I hadn't expected, because Caden wasn't loud. He moved through spaces efficiently, spoke when he had something to say, left when there was nothing further to do. He had not been a loud presence. But his absence had a specific shape to it, the way all absences had shapes once you noticed them.I noticed it most in the mornings. The kitchen without his maps on the table. The second coffee cup that didn't appear. Renn looking at his usual chair with the pragmatic assessment of someone updating a mental inventory and then moving on, because Renn processed change faster than most adults I knew and did not appear to see the point in mourning the temporary.I was slower about it. I had not known I would be.Thursday came.Damian arrived at seven with the bakery bag and the two pastries — one for Petra, which was now so established that she had stopped acknowledging it and just added it to the category of things that happened
The Bastard Luna: His Unwanted Mate Seventy
Elara's POV"Three weeks," he said. "Maybe four. The two surviving members of Corrin's group want to meet you formally — I need to go ahead and prepare the introduction. Make sure they understand the terms." He had his coffee and his maps, the usual Sunday arrangement. "I'll be reachable by phone.""I know," I said.He looked at me."What?" I said."Nothing." He looked at his coffee. "I've been trying to find a way to tell you for two weeks.""I noticed." I had noticed. He'd been doing the thing he did when something was sitting on him — methodical in a way that was slightly too deliberate, the efficiency of someone keeping themselves occupied. "It's three weeks, Caden. I'm not going to fall apart.""I know you're not.""Then why have you been finding it difficult to say?"He was quiet for a moment. Renn ate his breakfast with the focused attention of someone who had decided not to involve himself in conversations that didn't concern him, which was a level of social awareness I found
The Bastard Luna: His Unwanted Mate Sixty nine
Lena's POVThe office smelled like coffee and paper and something that took me three days to identify as the specific quality of a workplace where people actually wanted to be there.I had worked in two places before this. A kitchen in the omega block, which smelled of institutional cleaning products and resentment in equal measure. And a summer stint in a human café when I was seventeen, which smelled of burnt milk and other people's conversations and had been fine but not interesting.This was interesting.Petra gave me the desk by the window on my first day without making a point of it, which meant she had thought about it beforehand. She showed me the filing system — physical and digital, cross-referenced in a way that was meticulous enough to indicate someone with a very specific type of mind had designed it — and then she said: "Elara will explain the compliance division when she gets in at nine. Until then, read the standing contracts in the third folder."She pointed at a fold
The Bastard Luna: His Unwanted Mate Sixty eight
Damian's POVI had researched the restaurant for four days.This was not something I was going to tell anyone. But the children's menu question was more complicated than it sounded — Renn ate with the specific opinions of someone who had not yet developed the social grace of pretending to like things he didn't, and the last thing I wanted was to have chosen somewhere with nothing he'd touch and spend the evening managing the consequences.So I had looked at eight restaurants. Read the menus. Asked Bret, who had looked at me for a moment before answering with the specific diplomatic neutrality of a man choosing not to comment on what he was being asked.The third one had a children's menu that was actually designed for children rather than being a regular menu with the prices lowered, which was apparently a meaningful distinction.She texted at six-fifteen: Renn has thoughts about his shoes. We're leaving in ten minutes.I waited outside.They came around the corner together — Elara wi
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