All Chapters of The Alpha's Runaway Luna : Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

Grady P.O.V.Sable’s letter sits in Elder Max’s ash-ring like a snake. The wax smells of nettle and poison. The house hums, listening, but not afraid.“Tonight we take the foundry,” Hazel says, sleeves shoved to her elbows, the mark bright at her throat. “Tomorrow, at moon-low, we will decide the bridge on our terms.”“Copy,” River answers, already mapping entries in his head. He taps the mezzanine on Max’s vellum with a knuckle. “Web’s hanging here. We cut high first.”“Becky,” I say. “Harbormere and Crane Street.”“I’m already inside their ‘clean water’ slush,” she says, voice feral. “By dawn I’ll own their mezzanine lights.”“Joel, Olive, perimeter, evac, and med. Kaia and Adrian, you finish taking the seams out of east and south bridges, then swing to our rear door.” Adrian’s eyes cut to Kaia, Echo rumbles approval over the link, a low steady sound. “Echo wants the rail,” he says, mouth tipping. “We’ll leave it cleaner than we found it.”“Elder Max with me,” Hazel adds, calmly. “W

Hazel P.O.V.Work called, it always does. We didn’t make a parade of our throats, we simply made a day.Kaia took A-Team to salt the last seams while Adrian and Echo ran the rails because rails made Echo happy and Kaia was a menace with chalk. I watched them go from the porch, Kaia tossing iron ash like she was sugaring a pie, Adrian vaulting the rail and landing light, the sound wave on his neck catching sun.‘Be careful,’ I told her across the link.‘Always,’ she sent back, and then they were gone. Becky turned Harbormere’s mezzanine lights on and off from our kitchen just because she could. “Crane Street has a bad habit of putting all its eggs in one VLAN,” she told Max, who pretended to be offended by the word VLAN and secretly wrote it down for later.Joel stacked net launchers in the SUV like a man who intended to bring everyone home and Olive labeled med kits in looping script and tucked hard candy into every bag. “For hands that stop shaking when they have sugar,” she said

Hazel P.O.V.Sable spun a bead on its string and released it. It hit the ash ring and sizzled like a bad idea dunked in vinegar. She regarded the fizz with curiosity. “Show me your yes,” she said, to me, to the house, to anyone.Grady’s hand found my wrist and I let the touch climb until it became an anchor, not claim. “Always,” he said again, softer.I sang again, two notes this time. Not enough to be pretty, only enough to be true. The keystone’s hum rose and met them and our tattoos warmed under Elder Max’s bright ring. The ledger page in Sable’s hand curled at the corner like a leaf thinking about fire.“Payment,” she said, more to the river than to me.“You take from mine, you get both of us,” I told the river. “He anchors, I say yes. We say stop and we leave. My house knows the difference.”“Your house?” Sable murmured, amused. “Oh, Hollowborn. When did the walls adopt you?”“When I asked them to,” I said, and let Ebony bare her teeth in my voice for one syllable.River’s net

River P.O.V.Hazel asks me to check out the daycare, while she has the foundry under control, to make sure Sable will not be able to enter ever again and that Lily is okay. I do so with pleasure, making sure that my little terror, as Becky calls her, is safe. I will not ever admit this out loud, but Lily is my little favourite unicorn child, and no one plucks a hair on her pretty little head as long as her uncle Storm in any way near her. I roll my eyes internally at the nickname she’s given me. Uncle Storm. I love the name as much as I fucking love her, and that says a lot. Will I ever admit it out loud? Not while I am alive and breathing. Daycare doors are supposed to be boring, that’s the whole point. These ones used to smile when you looked away. Not anymore.“Handle’s clean,” I tell Becky, crouched. The ugly chalk ring is bright and the latch is iron-salted. Hinges are shut and “No foxfire. No whisper.”“Copy,” she says in my ear, cheerful. “I bribed the building’s brain with a

Becky P.O.V.The house is singing in a key I call “we’re winning, don’t jinx it.”I park myself at the long table with three laptops, a roll of gaffer tape, a box of exhibit stickers, and Elder Max, who has brought a fountain pen with a nib sharp enough to do surgery. He sets down a neat stack of blank writs like a man laying out knives, knowing he is going to cut someone tonight.“War,” I announce, and tape my hair up because it holds better. “But make it paperwork.”“Paper is a blade,” Elder Max says, dry as a ledger. “Most people forget until they’re bleeding.”Miss Pat sets tea between us with the kind of clink that means this is a sacrament. “No spilling,” she warns me, which is fair as I once baptized a subpoena with coffee and we had to pretend it was on purpose.Our tattoos have a new hobby, warming when something true lands. Mine hums like a storm about to break as River’s spiral brushed my cheek in the kitchen ten minutes ago when he kissed me hello and handed me the daycar