All Chapters of The Alpha’s Shadow Luna: Chapter 201 - Chapter 210

DarienThe council sat at noon, and by the time the doors closed, every person at that table had already done the math and arrived at the same answer, which was that there wasn’t one. This is the group that was agreed upon when Tracey joined back in with her lycans. Two ruling factions under one rule. They were used to having a say and I admit that it was more fair this way.I laid it all out. Cain taught me a long time ago that bad news goes on the table all at once, in the open, because the moment you start deciding what people can bear is the moment they stop trusting your numbers.So the map went down in the middle of the council table, the same map from my study, carried down that morning because I had stopped pretending it lived anywhere else. We looked over all the units. Every group we have sent out and their placements.“That’s the kingdom,” I said. “That’s all of it.”Nobody spoke. The steward looked at the map the way a man looks at a bill.“Moonridge has been under sustain

KeanuThe cars from Moonridge came in a little after midday, and I was at the gate before the king and queen, because I was already out checking the walls.The escort came out first, the four wolves Anton could least afford to send, and they moved like men who had been awake for a week and driving for days. One of them with an arm wrapped from wrist to elbow. Then the elders emerged, slow and careful, holding onto the door frames. Then the pups.There were a lot of pups. That was the first thing. A mess of them spilling out of the back seats, everyone under sixteen, sleep-creased and silent, having learned recently that noise can be dangerous. A girl of about six climbed out clutching a stuffed rabbit missing one ear. A boy in the last car didn’t climb out at all, because he was asleep against the window with his mouth open, and he didn’t wake when the door opened beside him.Leah went to the elders first. I watched her do it, and I understood it because the elders would know her and

LeahDarien carried a sleeping boy through our gate yesterday, and I had not been able to put the picture down since.It was the collar. That was the ridiculous part. Not the way he lifted the child out of the car like the boy weighed nothing. It wasn’t the way the boy’s head fell into the curve of his neck and stayed there. And it wasn’t even the way my mate walked through his own gate slower than I have ever seen him walk anywhere so that he wouldn’t jostle a stranger’s son awake. It was the drool on his collar. A dark wet patch on the king of the lycan kingdom, and he didn’t wipe it, and he didn’t notice it, and he went on giving orders with a child asleep on him like it was the most natural thing ever.It came unexpectedly. The pain instantly hit my chest. My mate … he was a natural. He would be a wonderful father. What if I couldn’t give him children?I didn’t want to think about it. I tried to ignore it, but I was drowning now. Seeing the way he was with children and knowing I m

LeahThe northern units came through the gates a little after dawn.I watched it from the study window with cold coffee in my hands. Hundreds of wolves and lycans standing in loose ranks around. The northern commanders went straight to the wall to take over a watch they had driven three days to reach. Somebody was handing out food. Somebody else was arguing about whose turn it was to drive.Tomorrow they would be on the road south, and my mate would be in front of them.I went down to the armory to find him, which was a mistake, because a man in a war room is a man you can talk to. A man packing is a man who has already left a little.He was checking a strap he had checked. I stood in the doorway and watched him do it and let myself look, because I am not a saint and he looked … very good. I have such a handsome mate.“Say it,” he said, without turning around.“I haven’t said anything.”“You’ve been standing there for a while not saying it.”I came in and sat on the edge of the bench

DarienAnton missed his call on the third night.The first two had come in at the hour he promised, near enough to the minute that I had started setting my watch by it. The first night he was bored and said so. The second night he put Shane on for a moment, and he politely confirmed everything was quiet, and I pretended not to hear the resentment in his voice as he spoke to me. I understood it, though. I’d be sour too if I lost Leah. Still … knowing he was sour meant he still wanted Leah, and I felt my beast stir just thinking about it. Anton came back and asked whether the north road was as bad as he remembered and told me it got worse past the second ridge.It did get worse past the second ridge. We were past it by the third evening, the column strung out along a road that had been built by people who did not own vehicles, with Ashfell a day ahead of us and smoke in the sky over it that we had been able to see since noon.I sat on the hood of the lead car at the top of a rise with t