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Home / Werewolf / Luna's Reckoning / Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

All Chapters of Luna's Reckoning : Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

90 Chapters

Chapter 71

Aria's POVNobody slept that night.I could feel it through the compound the way I was beginning to feel everything since the clearing, a low hum of unease moving through the wolves around me like a current running just under the surface of still water. Guards who should have rotated off duty were still at their posts. Conversations that started at normal volume kept dropping into whispers. Every person who passed me in the corridors had the same tight expression, the one that meant they were trying to look calm while their wolf was telling them something was wrong.My wolf was telling me the same thing.Marcus had called a quiet meeting after I spoke with my father. Just the four of us. Him, me, Elena and Garrett. He had told Garrett about Creek's manufactured evidence and Garrett had sat very still through the whole explanation with his jaw tight and his hands flat on the table, not angry exactly, more like a man absorbing something that confirmed a suspicion he had already been car

Chapter 72

Aria's POVThe drugged guard was still breathing steadily when Mira arrived to treat him and that was the only thing in the room that made any sense because everything else had stopped making sense the moment I saw that empty chair.Cross had been in our compound for weeks. He had eaten our food and answered our questions and sat across from Marcus with his hands folded and his frightened eyes and told us everything we wanted to hear about Creek's operation. He had been so cooperative that nobody had thought to question why. Nobody except the part of me that had been quietly watching him and waiting for something I could not name.Now he was gone and a guard was unconscious on the floor and Voss was dying in the next building and I was standing in an empty room feeling the particular cold fury of someone who has been fooled by something they should have seen coming.Elena appeared in the doorway behind me. "Marcus is mobilizing the perimeter wolves.""He will not find Cross that way,

Chapter 73

Aria's POVThe mate bond does not lie.That was the thing about it that six years of wishing it away had never changed. It did not care about my feelings or my preferences or the fact that the man on the other end of it had spent the better part of a decade making my life a living nightmare. It was older than any of that. Older than either of us. A biological fact woven into my blood that reported his presence the way a compass reported north, without opinion, without mercy, without any consideration for what I actually wanted.And right now it was telling me Kael Nightshade was close enough that I could have found him blindfolded.I stopped walking.Elena stopped beside me immediately. She read my face the way she always read my face, quickly and completely, and her hand went to the weapon at her hip before she said a single word."What is it," she said."Kael," I said.The word landed between us like something dropped from a height.Cross stopped walking too and looked between us w

Chapter 74

Aria's POVNobody moved for a long moment.The compound had gone so quiet I could hear the wind moving through the pine trees beyond the eastern wall and my own heartbeat which was steadier than it had any right to be given what had just happened.I had broken the mate bond.I was still processing what that meant. Not intellectually, I understood the words, but in my body, in the place where the bond had lived for six years like a low persistent ache I had learned to work around the way you learned to work around an old injury. That place was quiet now. Not empty in a painful way. Just clean. Like a window that had been covered for years suddenly uncovered and letting in light that had always been there waiting.Kael straightened up from the gate post slowly. He rolled his shoulders back and locked everything behind his green eyes the way he always locked things away and by the time he was fully upright he looked like himself again. Controlled. Cold. Unreadable.But I had seen the ha

Chapter 75

Aria's POVKael's smile stayed on his face for exactly as long as he wanted it there and then he put it away like a tool he had finished using and looked at Marcus with the particular patience of a man who had decided he was comfortable and intended to remain so until things moved in his favor.Victoria arrived within the hour.She walked into the secure room and looked at Kael the way you looked at something you had been expecting to deal with for a long time and were not surprised to finally find in front of you. She sat beside Marcus without speaking and placed her own document case on the table and opened it and began reading through the preliminary terms Marcus had outlined without acknowledging Kael's presence beyond that first look.Kael watched her do all of this with complete stillness.I sat across from him and watched him watch her and thought about what it meant that he had specifically requested Victoria be present before he agreed to anything. He trusted Marcus's word bu

Chapter 76

Aria's POVThe walk to Voss's room was the longest walk I had taken in a long time.Not because it was far. The building was small and the corridor was short and under normal circumstances it took less than a minute to cover the distance between the secure room and the healer's quarters where Voss had been lying since he arrived. But my legs felt different than usual, heavier, like my body understood that whatever was waiting at the end of this walk was going to change the shape of things permanently and was taking its time getting there.Marcus walked beside me. My father was ahead of us, his shoulders carrying the particular tension of someone who had delivered an impossible message and was now uncertain what came next. Elena had stayed with Kael in the secure room which was the right call and I was grateful she had made it without being asked because I could not have made it myself in that moment.My wolf was very quiet inside my chest.Not the settled quiet of after the clearing w

Chapter 77

Aria's POVGarrett found me in the corridor outside Voss's room with my back against the wall and my eyes closed and my wolf doing something under my skin that felt less like restlessness and more like warning."Marcus just crossed the eastern boundary," he said. "Eight wolves with him. Moving fast.""Good," I said."Aria." His voice had something in it that made me open my eyes. "Creek sent a communication to the council building twenty minutes ago. Before Marcus left. We intercepted it." He held out a folded paper. "It was addressed to Rowan."I took it and read it.Four words.Leave. Now. They know.I looked up at Garrett. "When did this go out.""Twenty minutes ago," he said. "Marcus has been riding for fifteen."I did the calculation in my head and felt my wolf surge hard against my ribs.Creek had warned Rowan before Marcus even left the compound. Which meant Creek had known about Voss's revelation almost as fast as it happened. Which meant someone in this building, in this com

Chapter 78

Aria's POVI left Penn in Garrett's custody and walked back through the compound alone.The night air was cold and sharp and I breathed it in slowly trying to use it the way Mira had once taught me to use it, as something grounding, something that reminded your body it was still present and functional even when your mind was somewhere else entirely. The trees beyond the compound wall stood black against a sky that had more stars than clouds and everything looked exactly the way it always looked at this hour and none of it felt normal.Rowan was gone.Creek had warned him twenty minutes before Marcus even left and Rowan had moved immediately without hesitation which meant he had a plan already prepared. A man who had been carrying a twenty three year old secret did not wait to be told twice. He had probably had an exit ready for years, some route and some location and some new identity waiting patiently in the background for the day he finally needed it, because that was the kind of ma

Chapter 79

Aria's POVElena was already stirring by the time I got to her.I dropped to my knees beside her and put my hand on her face and she made a sound low in her throat that was half groan and half the particular noise she made when something had genuinely caught her off guard and she was furious about it. Even half conscious Elena was angry about being caught off guard. That was so completely her that something in my chest loosened slightly."Hey," I said. "Stay still.""Kael," she said. Her eyes were not fully open yet but her hands were already moving, pushing against the floor, trying to get herself upright."Gone," I said. "Do not move yet.""I am going to kill him," she said with complete calm."Get in line," I said.I helped her sit up against the wall and checked her eyes and her pulse the way Mira had taught me over years of being the one who needed checking. Her pupils were even. Her pulse was strong. Whatever Kael had used on her had been precise and temporary which was its own

Chapter 80

Aria's POV"Creek is behind them," I said again because Elena's expression told me she needed to hear it twice before it fully landed.She was on her feet in one movement, whatever Kael had used on her burning off with the speed that only wolf physiology could manage, and her hand went to her weapon before she was fully upright."How far," she said."Northern tree line," I said. "The two wolves ahead of him stopped moving. They are not scouts." I moved toward the door. "It is a formal entry signal."Elena was already past me calling for Garrett with the particular controlled urgency that meant everyone who heard it understood immediately that this was not a drill.The compound shifted in seconds. Every wolf moving from passive rotation into active readiness. Positions taken. Senses open. The casual rhythm of the night watch replaced by something sharp and purposeful that traveled through the pack like a current through water.Garrett met us in the main corridor with four wolves behind

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