Lahat ng Kabanata ng His Luna Returned—So I Left With His Baby”: Kabanata 21 - Kabanata 30

The car rolled to a stop just short of the Frostveil gates.Up close, the house looked bigger than it had in my nightmares. Whiter. Colder. The stone gleamed under a thin veil of mist, every line of the architecture designed to scream *power* at anyone who approached.The High Howl Tribunal’s court seal was still nailed to the center of the wrought-iron gates. Black wax, stamped with their crest, hardened into the metal like it had always been there.Officially, this was no longer Daire Vhaloren’s home.My pulse thudded in my ears. The bracelet burned under my sleeve—a halo turned shackle, heat biting down as if reminding me who I used to be. The baby shifted, slow and uneasy, as if they could smell the memories woven into the stone.“Last chance to tell me to turn around,” Daire said quietly.I stared at the gate. At the place I had walked out of with everything I owned in a handful of suitcases and a folder full of clean exit strategies.“I already told you,” I said. “I’m not here t

Calista didn’t take us straight to the vault. Of course she didn’t. She detoured us through the west wing parlor first—a room I’d only ever seen in glimpses from doorways or cleaning charts. High ceilings. Tall windows. Chairs too delicate to slouch in. Every surface polished within an inch of its life. And full of women. Not just any women. *Ladies.* High-status she-wolves in expensive fabrics, with hair that never met humidity, nails like small, tasteful weapons. They stood in little clusters, murmuring, the air thick with perfume and pack politics. The Luna circle. My stomach did a slow, ugly turn. “Calista,” one of them trilled, stepping forward in a cloud of citrus and money. “You didn’t say we’d have *entertainment.*” Calista smiled, modest and razor-sharp. “I thought it would be… educational,” she said. “For everyone.” Her gaze slid to me, then back to her audience. “Ladies,” she said, voice pitched for the whole room. “You remember Daire.” They did. Their eyes went t

Her breath on my ear crawled down my spine like ice.*Your blood remembers me. That’s why it burns.*I didn’t give her the satisfaction of a flinch. Not on the outside.Inside, my bracelet seared, my bones sang, my stomach twisted.“Ladies,” Calista said sweetly, stepping back into the center of the room, and smiled back in place. “Shall we let the Alpha get on with his… important work? We wouldn’t want to tire his new wife.”They tittered. They watched. They memorized.Daire’s hand closed around mine again, a silent *enough*.“Vault,” he said, voice clipped. “Now.”Calista inclined her head, all graciousness. “This way,” she said, as if she hadn’t just held my biggest vulnerabilities up to the light and passed them around the room like hors d’oeuvres.We left the Luna circle behind, their whispers trailing us down the corridor like gnats.***I held it together until the door to the parlor clicked shut behind us.The moment we were out of sight of Calista and her curated audience, I

The vault felt smaller with his voice in it.Stone. Metal. Shelves of ledgers and secrets. And beyond the door, the man whose pen could turn people into lots.Inquisitor Vaelen Crowe.“Alpha Vhaloren,” he said again, as if tasting the title. “You’ve put me in a difficult position.”Daire stepped closer to the door, shoulders squared, expression set. Kieran moved slightly to his right, half-shadow, half-coiled spring.I stayed where I was, hand still tingling from the relic case, bracelet hot and tight.“What position is that?” Daire asked. His voice was calm. Only the tightness at the corners of his mouth betrayed the strain.“One where I must decide,” Crowe replied, “if I treat you as a disgraced Alpha clinging to old wealth… or as a criminal hiding stolen pack assets.”A whisper of paper on paper drifted through the metal, like he was idly flipping pages while he talked.“Stolen,” Daire repeated. “You stamped your seal on my gate. You didn’t build this house. You didn’t earn its vau

Cold seeped through my soaked clothes long after we scrambled out of the drain.We’d followed Kieran’s barked directions through a tangle of roots and rusted metal, squeezing past a half-collapsed grate to claw our way up into the ravine behind Frostveil From there, it had been a stumbling, half-crouched run along a deer path until we’d reached the back of the estate’s grounds.The “safe shed” was a stone outbuilding that might once have held gardening tools. Now, it held dust, old crates, and three dripping wolves who smelled like mud and adrenaline.Kieran shoved the warped door closed behind us and leaned against it, breathing hard. Daire dropped the relic case onto a crate with more care than I expected, then braced his hands on his knees, head down for a moment.I pressed my back to the rough wall, sucking in air that tasted like damp wood and the faint, old tang of fertilizer.The baby rolled, unsettled. My bracelet throbbed like something alive under my sleeve.“Everyone in one