All Chapters of In Search of Liberation: Luna In name Only: Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

Patrick didn’t speak at first.He just stood there, in the centre of the living room, arms stiff at his sides, jaw hard enough to crack teeth. Michelle closed the front door behind her and walked past him like he was furniture. Not a threat. Not a force. Not an Alpha.Her silence was the insult.And he felt it.“Where have you been?” he asked, voice low.Michelle didn’t turn back. She walked toward the hallway. Calm. Measured. Controlled.The calm of a person who no longer cared if they lived or died.Patrick moved to block her path, chest tense. His wolf paced behind his ribs, suspicious, panicked. The man he had assigned to watch her had stepped away, and she had slipped out. That alone told him something had shifted.Had she gone to Jason? Had she funded him? Had she bought his challenge?His eyes scanned her face, searching. Desperate.She just stared back.There was no guilt. No fear. No concern.Only detachment.And that scared him more than any confession would have

Patrick found her in the sitting room, sitting on the arm of the sofa, posture relaxed, back straight, eyes somewhere beyond the window. The stainless-steel bracelet glinted dully on her wrist. He didn’t know the difference. He thought it was still silver. He thought she was still weakened.She wasn’t.He hovered by the doorway a moment before stepping in. His voice was small, careful, the kind of tone a man uses when he finally realises he’s standing on the edge of a cliff, and the ground behind him is gone.“Michelle,” he said.She didn’t look at him. Didn’t blink. Didn’t breathe fast. She was calm now, and that terrified him more than any shout ever had.He swallowed and moved closer, hands open, palms facing her like he was coaxing a wild animal. In truth, he was the one trembling.“I… I want to talk,” he said.Silence.He took another step. No reaction.“Michelle, please. I’m not here to fight. I’m not here to… hurt anything. I want to make things right.”Her gaze shifted, slo

Bernard did not ask Jason if he planned to stay the night.He simply told him.“You’ll stay here,” he said, walking him through the Council lodge. “My home is secure. No one from Range can get close. And your uncle has eyes everywhere, he will try to reach you. Here, he won’t succeed.”Jason didn’t argue.He was exhausted, not the tiredness of body, but the heaviness of a man who’d been pulling his past behind him like a stone slab for years. Finally, the dragging had stopped. But the weight was still attached.The Alpha Council lodge was quiet. Too quiet.The walls were clean stone, the halls wide, the lights dimmed to dusk-coloured warmth. Wolves passed by wearing neutral expressions, the kind of neutrality that came from decades of politics and legacy and tradition. No curiosity. No awe. No whispering.Here, everyone was someone.Jason was assigned a room with a heavy wooden bed, clean sheets, a fireplace already lit, and a uniform folded on the chair: simple black trousers and

The Moonclaw Packland sprawled across the valley like a memory resurrected, dark pines, cold mountain wind, stone houses built from the same quarry Jason’s father once commanded. Jason walked through the main gate with Bernard at his side, and the entire pack stopped.Talking stopped. Movement stopped. Breathing seemed to pause.Because he didn’t resemble his father.He was his father.Same height. Same shoulders. Same severe jawline. Same wolf in the eyes, the kind that watched, calculated, waited.Whispers spread like fire jumping dry grass:“Rowan?” “No… that can’t, ” “It’s his son.” “Jason.” “The heir.” “He’s alive.” “Gods, look at him.” “He looks just like Alpha Rowan, ”Jason didn’t bow, didn’t acknowledge, didn’t show recognition of the pack that watched him now with a hunger that lived between awe and guilt.He didn’t owe them anything. They didn’t save him. They didn’t protect him. They didn’t even look for him.But they remembered.And remembering was enough

The arena had never seemed so full. Torches lined the circular ring, smoke drifting up into a sky that had the hard, indifferent light of a day that remembers everything. Wolves sat on the stone terraces in packed rows, Moonclaw on one side, Range on the other, neutral packs filling the gaps and the Council at the high dais. The air was acid with anticipation and a thousand small private calculations.Michelle stood at the front row of Range’s side, shoulders straight, chin lifted. Her hair was tied back tight; there was no softness left in her face, only the alert geometry of someone who had decided not to flinch.There was joy in what she watched, a small, dangerous glow that made her mouth edge upward, and underneath it a raw coil of worry. That Jason had come this far, that he’d risked everything… it made her proud and frightened at the same time. She did not want him hurt. She did not want blood on his name. But she wanted the chains off her neck more.Patrick paced behind her li