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Twelve

Autor: Rose_pen
last update Fecha de publicación: 2026-07-09 19:13:32
Elara's POV

I studied him for three long seconds. My heartbeat was steady. The fear was there, underneath, but it was the productive kind — the kind that sharpened rather than paralyzed, that ran the calculations fast and kept the face still.

"Then why are you here?" I said.

He met my eyes, and in his I saw something unexpected — urgency, yes, and relief, and underneath both of them something that looked remarkably like guilt.

"Because someone hired me to find the Ashford heir," he said
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  • The Bastard Luna: His Unwanted Mate   Thirty eight

    Elara's POVThe haircut had been Petra's idea.Not drastic — just enough. Three inches off, the front pieces cut to frame my face differently, the whole shape changed from what it had been at nineteen. I had looked at myself in Petra's bathroom mirror afterward and not quite recognized the woman looking back, which was precisely the point.I wore a charcoal suit I had bought for this meeting specifically. My name for the meeting was Ms. A. Voss — a middle name, technically accurate, technically untraceable to anyone who wasn't looking hard enough.I had left Renn with Dr. Maeve, who had developed a habit of calling him her favorite patient and never charged me for the extra hours. I had kissed his forehead and he had grabbed my finger and looked at me with the expression that said he found my anxiety unnecessary.I had agreed with him and gotten into the car.---The Wolfe Pack's commercial development office was in a converted building on the territory's human-facing border — neutral

  • The Bastard Luna: His Unwanted Mate   Thirty seven

    Selene's POVMy mother was waiting in the sitting room when I arrived Friday night.She had poured two glasses of wine, which she never did before a conversation she considered manageable. I noted that immediately.She looked at me when I walked in and something in her face did a thing I had never seen it do before.It flinched.My mother's face did not flinch. In thirty years of living inside it I had never seen it flinch. I stood in the doorway for a moment and revised every assumption I had brought through the door with me."Sit down," she said.I sat. Picked up the wine. Waited.She stood at the window with her back to me. That was another thing she didn't do — my mother faced rooms. She did not give people her back unless she didn't want them reading her expression."How much do you know?" she said."That the bond is active. That Elara is alive and operating somewhere nearby. That Damian has been tracking her." I paused. "That you've known where she was for some time and haven't

  • The Bastard Luna: His Unwanted Mate   Thirty six

    Selene's POVI waited until he was in the middle of dinner.That was important. A man at a desk could redirect. A man halfway through a meal, with wine poured and the evening settled around him, had fewer exits. I had learned this from watching my mother work, though I had never told her that.I set my fork down. Let my hands tremble slightly — just slightly, enough to be seen."Damian."He looked up.I let my eyes fill. Not overflow — not yet. Just the glassiness, the caught breath, the expression of a woman who had been holding something heavy for a very long time and had finally run out of the strength to hold it."Is there something you need to tell me?" I said.He went still in the way he went still — the absolute composure of a man closing every door at once. "What do you mean?""Don't." My voice broke on the word. Beautifully. I had a gift for beautiful breaks — my mother called it my best quality, which said something about my mother. "Please don't do that. Don't give me the A

  • The Bastard Luna: His Unwanted Mate   Thirty five

    Elara's POVIt happened on an ordinary Sunday morning.Caden was at the kitchen table with coffee and a map he'd been annotating for the past hour. I was on the floor with Renn, who was four months old and had recently discovered that rolling sideways was possible and intended to do it repeatedly until the concept was fully mastered.He rolled. Made his declaration sound and looked at me.I said, "Yes, well done."He looked at Caden.Caden didn't look up from the map. He was mid-sentence, talking through a route detail, his finger tracing a line through the territory markings.Then he stopped.His finger stayed on the map. He didn't move. His whole body had gone the particular still of a wolf whose instincts had registered something before the conscious mind caught up.Slowly, he looked up.Renn was watching him with the calm, level attention he brought to things he found significant. Not smiling. Not making sounds. Just watching with those dark eyes that had been watching everything

  • The Bastard Luna: His Unwanted Mate   Thirty four

    Elara's POV Caden spread the Silverpeak documents across my kitchen table at nine in the evening. Renn was asleep. The flat was quiet. Two mugs of tea sat between us going cold because neither of us had touched them since he arrived. "Start with this one," Caden said, pushing a folder toward me. It was thick. Older paper inside — not ancient, but pre-digital, the kind of documentation assembled before everything moved to screens. Someone had organized it carefully, each page separated by a thin card with a date written in pencil. I opened it. The first page was a surveillance record. Pack intelligence, not Silverpeak — the header identified it as originating from a neutral intelligence broker, the kind of service that sold information to whoever paid. It was dated twenty years ago. Subject: Ren Ashford, female, estimated age 22. Last confirmed location: southern transit territory. Believed to be the final surviving descendant of the Ashford bloodline. Status: unaware of lineage

  • The Bastard Luna: His Unwanted Mate   Thirty three

    Damian's POV I confirmed it on a Wednesday. Not from the photograph — the photograph was insufficient for certainty and I had been rigorous about that distinction. What confirmed it was the voice recording. Marcus, following standard procedure for significant commercial refusals, had recorded the second meeting with written consent from all parties for internal review purposes. He had submitted it with his report and I had not listened to it until three days after it arrived, and then I had listened to it twice and sat in my office for a long time afterward doing nothing. Her voice was different. Controlled in a way it hadn't been at nineteen — deliberate, paced, carrying the particular authority of someone who had learned to use it as a tool. But underneath the control the cadence was the same. The way she built an argument, the slight emphasis that landed on the operative word in each sentence, the quality of the silence she left before a point she wanted the room to absorb. I

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