All Chapters of The Alpha’s Shadow Luna: Chapter 161 - Chapter 170

  Leah  A child crying. Down the first-floor hallway. Deeper in the building.  I didn’t think. I went.  The hallway was filling with smoke, the lights flickering overhead, and the heat was real now, radiating through the ceiling from whatever was burning above. I dropped low, pulling my shirt over my mouth, following the sound of the crying through the gray haze.  Third door on the left. A family a

LeahI slept for almost two days after the fire.Not the natural sleep of a body healing. The other kind. The parasite-deep unconsciousness that swallowed me whole and held me under, surfacing only in fragments. Darien’s voice. The cool press of a damp cloth on my forehead. Maren’s hands checking my pulse. The smell of smoke that clung to Darien’s skin even after he’d washed it away because he washed quickly so that he was back by my side.When I finally woke for real, the late afternoon light was gold against the walls and Darien was sitting in the chair beside the bed, watching me. Like I might disappear if he blinked.“There she is,” he said softly. “My sleeping beauty.”“How long?”“Almost two days.” He moved to the edge of the bed and took my hand. “The east wing is rebuilt. Tommy and his mother stopped by yesterday to check on you. He drew you a picture.” He nodded toward the nightstand, where a piece of paper sat propped against the lamp. A crayon drawing of a woman with brown

DarienEvery night we repeated the same ritual. Leah lay back against the pillows. I stretched out beside her, my hand splayed flat over her heart, the mating mark on my neck warming against my skin until it pulsed in time with hers. It’s been three weeks of this, every night, and my body had learned the shape of it.I closed my eyes and found the doorway in my soul.It was easier now. The first nights, I’d had to search for it, fumbling for the opening like a man feeling along a dark wall for a light switch. Now it was simply there, a presence I could reach without looking, and when I pushed against it, it swung open and the cold rush of the shadows poured through me and into her.The landscape of her body unfolded around my awareness. Her essence glowing silver, woven through every cell, that warm familiar light I would have known anywhere. And threaded through it, the witch. The cold, oily darkness that didn’t belong, hiding in her contours, mimicking her shape.There, I told Andro

LeahI woke up feeling like myself.I opened my eyes to morning light and felt the warmth in my limbs, the clarity behind my eyes, the absence of that hollow drag that had become so constant I’d almost stopped noticing it.Darien had done this. Every night, a piece of himself poured into me so I could wake up like this. I turned my head on the pillow and looked at him, still asleep, and the guilt and the love tangled together in my chest until I couldn’t tell them apart.He looked exhausted even in sleep. The shadows under his eyes hadn’t been there a month ago. His face, usually so composed, had gone slack with the kind of tiredness that only came from giving more than you had. He was burning himself down to keep me lit, and I’d made him promise not to give too much. I knew he was keeping the promise as well as a man like him could keep it, which was to say he was probably still giving more than he should.I pressed a kiss to his shoulder, soft enough not to wake him, and slipped out

LeahI was in the garden when I felt it.A shadow swept across the grass and the soldiers on the wall started shouting. I looked up, shielding my eyes against the morning sun, and saw gold cutting through the sky.My heart jumped. Keanu was home.I was already moving, my tea abandoned on the bench, hurrying toward the courtyard as the golden dragon circled down over the village. People spilled out of doorways to watch him. He landed in a rush of wind that flattened the grass, and the scales rippled inward until my brother stood in the middle of the courtyard, windblown and grinning at me.“Miss me?”I threw myself at him and he caught me, spinning me once before setting me down. I held on tighter than I meant to, my face pressed against his chest, listening to the steady thump of his heart. For a while there, I’d been afraid I might never get to do this again.“You’ve lost weight,” I said into his shirt.“And you’re pale as a ghost. We’re a matched set.” He pulled back and held me at