All Chapters of The Alpha’s Shadow Luna: Chapter 181 - Chapter 190

TempestI cataloged Keanu the way I cataloged threats, and he would not fit anywhere.He never pushed. Not once, not after the market, not after I handed him the cruelest terms I could construct and watched him take them with a single quiet nod. He learned which tea I drank, the bitter mountain blend nobody ever stocks, and somehow it was always there, in the kitchen, on the tray, waiting.The first morning I tasted it, I had to set the cup down and stand very still in the middle of the room. I knew the blend. Bitterroot and mountain sage and something underneath that nobody pairs anymore. My father’s recipe, or near enough that my chest couldn’t tell the difference. The castle called it mountain tea. I drank my childhood out of that cup every morning and never said a word, and he didn’t know what he had done, which somehow made it worse. Kindness you can refuse. Kindness that climbs after the hiding child and takes her hand … there is no wall for that. I might have come out of there

 KeanuThe first time we came together, in a forest under stars, she had taught me everything. She guided my hands, set the pace, led me through a country I had never seen, and I had followed her trembling and grateful.That was then.I kissed her before she could take the word back, and it wasn’t gentle. Her mouth opened under mine and I took it, tasting the last of her argument and swallowing it, and when she strained up against my grip I tightened my fingers around her wrists and held her exactly where she was. She made a sound into my mouth that I felt in my spine.“Keanu.”“I’ve got you.” I dragged my mouth down the line of her jaw to her throat, and I bit, not hard, just enough to make her gas

LeahI found Tempest in her garden the next morning and decided it was time.I brought two cups of tea, handed her one without asking, and settled onto the stone border of the bed she was working like I had every right to be there. She eyed me sideways, wary as always, but she took the tea.“I’m going to tell you a story,” I said. “You don’t have to say anything. You just have to weed and listen.”Her hands kept moving in the soil. I took that as permission.“When I met Darien, I ran.” I watched her fingers pause, barely, and continue. “Not physically but mentally. I put up a barrier … over and over. I felt the pull the first time he looked at me and ignored it. Because I didn’t wa

KeanuNew refugees arrived today.Another handful of families from the far south, wagons and bundles and tired pups, the slow trickle that had been arriving all season as the rogue attacks pushed people north. Leah met them in the courtyard the way she met everyone, learning names, finding rooms, and the castle flowed around the newcomers with the ease of a place that had done this many times.Tempest and I were crossing back from her garden. I was carrying her baskets, which was a war I had won so thoroughly that she now simply handed them over with a look that dared me to be smug about it, and she was walking beside me with her hands free and her guard half down.Then, she stopped walking.Mid-step, in the middle of the courtyard, her whole body going still the way it did on the mountain when the wind shifted.I followed her stare.A woman stood among the new arrivals with her back to us. Older. Dark hair going gray, wound up the way some southern women wore it, a shawl over square

KeanuShe lowered herself down onto my jacket among the ferns and drew me over her, and when I touched her mark, the fresh gold on the side of her throat, she made a sound I had never heard from her.So I did it again.The bond lit like a struck match. I felt her pleasure crash into mine and double back, her gasp arriving in my chest before it left her mouth, and her eyes flew open and locked on mine because she felt it too, all of it, the ache I had carried for months pouring straight into her.“You feel it,” I said.“Keanu …” Her fingers found the silver-violet mark on my neck and pressed, and my whole body jerked. “Oh. Oh, I’m so sorry … I wish—”