Semua Bab THE DORMANT LUNA Book 1: Bab 11 - Bab 17

NEAHI watched him like a hawk for the rest of the day. Every glance at my phone. Every shift in his expression. Every time his jaw tightened when he thought nobody was looking.Liam Ashford was hiding something. I could feel it the same way I could feel a storm rolling in before the clouds appeared. Something in the air between us had changed after my mother's call and it wasn't just the grief or the shock or the impossible reality that the woman I buried was breathing somewhere on the other end of a phone line.It was him. The way he looked at my phone that morning. The way he said "no" when I asked about messages. The micro-expression I caught — that fraction of a second where his jaw flexed before the lie slid out smooth as glass.I didn't confront him. Not yet. I had no proof and accusing a wounded Alpha of lying without evidence was a good way to start a fight I couldn't finish. So I did what I did best. I pulled back. I put the wall up. Brick by brick, inch by inch, I rebuilt e

NEAHLiam moved like something out of a nightmare.Not mine. Theirs.He crossed the studio in three strides and ripped the wolf off me with one hand. One hand. Like peeling a sticker off paper. The wolf hit the far wall so hard the plaster cratered around his body. He slid to the floor and didn't get up.Liam wasn't done. He turned to the first wolf, the one Theo had pinned against the overturned filing cabinet, and grabbed him by the throat. Lifted him off the ground. The wolf's feet dangled and his hands clawed at Liam's wrist but it was like watching someone try to bend steel."Who sent you?" Liam's voice was barely recognizable. Low and guttural and vibrating with Alpha authority that made the walls hum. Even Theo took a step back. Not out of fear. Out of respect for something primal.The wolf choked. Gagged. His eyes bulged."Liam." I was on my feet, breathing hard, blood running down my arm from where the window glass had caught me. "He can't answer if he can't breathe."He held

LIAMThe basement smelled like blood and silver and fear. Good. Fear meant the prisoner understood his situation. Men who understood their situation were men who talked.I took the stairs slowly. Not because of the wound on my back, though it still burned with every step. Slowly because I needed time to lock down the storm inside me before I faced whatever Marcus had sent my way.Fifty three wolves. My wolves. Locked in cells at Shadow Peak because I wasn't there to protect them. Because my wolf dragged me three territories south to find a girl who didn't want me while my Beta gutted my pack from the inside.Kain growled at that thought. Low and defensive. He didn't regret finding Neah. He would never regret finding Neah. But the guilt of what it cost was a blade lodged between my ribs that twisted every time I breathed.Shane led me to the storage room they had converted into a holding cell. The captured wolf was restrained in a steel chair. Wrists bound with silver-laced cuffs that

NEAH She crossed the bridge first. I couldn't move. My legs had turned to concrete and my chest was caving in and every emotion I had ever felt was trying to exist in my body at the same time. Elena Carter walked toward me with tears streaming down her face and her arms reaching out like the last three years were a minor inconvenience. Like she could just show up and hug it away. Like grief was something you could undo with an embrace. She reached me. Her arms wrapped around my shoulders. She smelled different. Not the vanilla and cinnamon I remembered. Something sharper now. Leaner. Like the woman wearing the scent. I let her hold me for five seconds. I counted them. Five seconds of my mother's arms around me. Five seconds of breathing in a ghost who turned out to be flesh and bone. Five seconds of the little girl inside me who had been screaming for three years finally going quiet.