Semua Bab Rebirth Of The Broken Luna: A Second Chance at Luna's Heart : Bab 441 - Bab 450

Chapter 441XENOISThe stack of paperwork on my desk had reached a height that made me seriously consider setting it on fire and blaming Jerome's ghost for the arson.Two years of relative peace should have meant less paperwork, not more. Instead, the opposite had proven true—territorial agreements to renegotiate now that Jerome's old holdings had been carved up among the surviving allied packs, trade routes to reopen, a dozen smaller disputes that had been shelved during the war and were now clamoring for my attention like children who'd been told to wait too long and had run out of patience.I signed off on a grazing rights dispute between two border territories, initialed a request for additional training resources from the youth division, and was halfway through a report on the reconstruction of the eastern barracks when my phone buzzed against the desk.Zade."Please tell me you're calling with good news," I said, answering without

Chapter 443XENOIS"Someone has to make sure you eat something besides coffee and stress," she said, smiling. "The boys asked about you at dinner, by the way. Lake wanted to know if you were ever going to come out of your office again or if you'd 'turned into a paperwork monster.'""A paperwork monster," I repeated, laughing. "That's fair, actually. I feel like one.""Riley's science fair project won first place, by the way," Sophia said, and her whole face lit up telling me about it, the particular glow she got whenever she talked about Riley's achievements. "The electromagnet thing. The judges apparently couldn't stop asking him questions, and he answered every single one without missing a beat. You should have seen him up there, Xenois. So confident. So sure of himself.""That's incredible," I said, and meant it, a swell of pride moving through my chest. "We'll have to do something to celebrate. Maybe that place he likes, the one with the

Chapter 445SOPHIAMarcus Webb's mother had built an elaborate model of the pack's memorial garden with her son, the two of them clearly delighted with each other, finishing each other's sentences as they described the little details they'd added. Another pair had done the lake where the pack held summer gatherings, complete with tiny paper boats. Everyone seemed so comfortable, so obviously connected to the child beside them, and I sat there with my hands folded in my lap trying not to feel the specific, hollow ache of comparison.When it was our turn, Ollie and I stood at the front together, our lopsided diorama between us, and I did most of the talking. He answered the two questions the teacher asked him directly with short, correct answers, and then stood there silently while I explained the rest, filling the space he left with words that felt increasingly desperate the longer I talked.I heard the murmuring before we'd even sat back down.It wasn't loud. It wasn't meant for me to

Chapter 447SILVIAThe hallway outside our kitchen had become something of a shrine over the years, though I never would have called it that out loud. Samuel teased me about it sometimes, the way he teased me about most things I cared for too openly—said I was running a small museum instead of a house, said one day we'd need to knock through to the next room just to fit more frames.I told him a grandmother was entitled to her indulgences, and he never argued the point too hard, mostly because half the photographs lining that hallway had been taken by him in the first place.I stood in front of it now, a cup of tea cooling in my hand, doing what I did most mornings before the house properly woke—walking the length of it slowly, looking at each frame the way you might walk through a garden checking on things you'd planted, making sure they were still there, still whole.The photographs started at the far end, closest to the kitchen, with Ollie as a baby. Red-faced and furious in the ve

Chapter 449SILVIA"Why," he said, careful, the way he always got when that particular subject came up, which wasn't often, not anymore, not after so many years."I don't know," I said, and that was true—I genuinely didn't know, couldn't trace the thread that connected the thought to whatever I'd actually been looking at. "Standing here, looking at all these pictures. I just felt it. That same ache. The one I get sometimes, out of nowhere, that I've always attributed to her."Xena. My daughter. Lost so many years ago now, in circumstances I still couldn't think about too directly without my chest tightening, some old grief that had never fully healed, just scarred over thick enough to bear weight most days."I still miss her too," Samuel said quietly, pulling me a little closer against his side. "It doesn't surprise me that it comes up sometimes, unprompted. Grief does that. Sneaks up when you least expect it.""It's strange, though," I said. "It doesn't feel like it usually does, whe