Lahat ng Kabanata ng Luna's Reckoning : Kabanata 31 - Kabanata 40

Marcus POV The empty space where that envelope had been sitting hit me harder than I expected.I stood at the table and stared at it. Everything else untouched. Elena's documentation still stacked neatly. The poison analysis still sealed. Cross's written statement still in place.Only Mira's records. Gone.Six years of injuries. Six years of dates and photographs and careful handwritten notes that no amount of testimony could fully replace. The most personal evidence we had. Taken cleanly and deliberately while we were all running toward the southern fence chasing wolves who were never the real threat.Aria was standing in the doorway looking at the empty table with an expression I was learning to recognize. Not panic. Not despair. That particular stillness that meant she was already thinking three steps ahead of the situation."He knew exactly what he was coming for," she said quietly."Yes," I said."Which means someone told him," she said. "Someone who had been inside this room.

Marcus POVVictoria's words settled over the room like cold water.Her guard Renn had gone missing two months ago. Right around the time someone started carefully building a plan to destroy everything from the inside.I stood in her room and let that sink in properly.Two months ago nobody outside a very small circle even knew this trial was coming. Aria had not yet invoked the Right of Truth. Sienna was still alive. The regional council had not been assembled.Which meant whoever recruited Renn had started planning this before any of it became public."You had no indication he was compromised?" I said."None," Victoria said. "He was professional. Reliable. Four years without a single concern." She pressed her fingers together. "The family emergency story was convincing enough that I never questioned it.""Did you try to contact him after he left?" I said."Twice," she said. "No response either time. I assumed he was dealing with something serious and would return when he could." She

Aria's POV Marcus said no three times before he finally said yes.The conditions were non negotiable. Four guards positioned around the meeting point in the eastern forest. A recording device on my person. Dara within twenty feet at all times. If anything felt wrong I used the word "enough" loudly and everyone moved in immediately.I agreed to all of it.Walking into that forest felt different from the last time I had run through trees in the dark with wolves hunting me. That night I had been terrified and bleeding and running purely on the desperate energy of someone who had nothing left to lose.This morning I was calm.Dara walked three steps behind me. The forest was quiet around us. Morning light coming through the pine branches in long pale strips. Birds somewhere above us. The smell of cold earth and wet leaves.We found Renn sitting on a fallen log in a small clearing about half a mile from the compound boundary.He was exactly as Garrett had described. Medium height, lean, w

Aria's POV I spent the rest of the morning in the main building going over everything with Marcus.Renn's full debrief took two hours. He sat across from Marcus and Victoria and repeated everything he had told me in the forest, word for word, while two official witnesses documented everything and the recording device captured all of it.Marcus listened without interrupting. Victoria wrote continuously. Her pen never stopped moving.When Renn finished Marcus sat back in his chair and looked at the ceiling for a moment. That thing he did when he needed stillness to think.Then he looked at me."Your father built a three person intelligence operation from inside Kael's pack without anyone detecting it," he said."Yes," I said."While simultaneously preparing to testify against Kael at trial," he said."Yes," I said."And none of us knew," he said."None of us knew," I said.Victoria looked up from her notes. "It actually explains several things that did not make sense before. Informatio

Aria's POV Victoria listened without moving for forty five minutes.That was the thing about Victoria Blackthorn that I had come to understand over these weeks. She never reacted in the moment. She absorbed everything first. Filed it away. Turned it over carefully in that sharp precise mind of hers before she let anything show on her face.But when Celeste finished talking and slid the notebook across the table toward her, something broke through.Not dramatically. Not loudly.Just a single long breath that Victoria let out through her nose while she looked down at my mother's handwriting on those yellowed pages."I sat across from Thomas Creek at regional summits for eight years," she said quietly. "Eight years of watching him talk about justice and fairness and the importance of ethical leadership."Nobody said anything."I recommended him for this council," she said."You could not have known," Marcus said."No," she said. "But I recommended him." She closed the notebook carefully