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Home / Werewolf / THE DORMANT LUNA Book 1 / Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

All Chapters of THE DORMANT LUNA Book 1: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

137 Chapters

CHAPTER 11

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

CHAPTER 12

NEAHTheo drove. I sat in the passenger seat with my knife on my lap and my jaw clenched so tight my teeth ached. The sun wasn't fully up yet. The town was empty. Street lights casting orange pools on wet asphalt. Everything looked the same as it always did but nothing felt the same. Nothing would ever feel the same again.The studio sat at the end of Main Street between a coffee shop and a florist. Small brick building. Green door. The sign above it read "Foundations: Self Defense & Wellness" in my mother's handwriting. She designed that sign herself. Painted it on a Saturday afternoon while I sat on the counter eating grapes and telling her the F was crooked.The F was still crooked. I never fixed it. Couldn't bring myself to.Theo killed the engine and scanned the street. Empty. Quiet. He nodded once and we got out.I unlocked the front door with the key I'd carried on my keychain since I was sixteen. The studio smelled like floor mats and lemon cleaner and something underneath bot

CHAPTER 13

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

chapter 14

NEAHI hid the box under a loose floorboard in my room. The same floorboard I used to hide candy bars from Caleb when we were fifteen because the boy could smell chocolate through concrete. The irony of hiding my mother's secrets in the same spot wasn't lost on me.The vial stayed in the box. The documents stayed in the box. But the USB drive came with me.Theo and I set up in the small office off the main hallway. The pack's secure computer was old but functional. Theo handled the technical side while I sat beside him and tried to keep my hands from shaking.Most of the files on the drive were encrypted. Layer after layer of security that would take days or weeks to crack without the right software. But one folder was accessible. Unlocked. Like someone wanted it to be found.Theo opened it. A single document. A spreadsheet.Twelve names listed in a column. Next to each name was a date, a blood type, a location, and a status.Most of the statuses read the same thing. Terminated.Dead.

CHAPTER 15

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

CHAPTER 16

NEAH I packed the box first. Then the knife. Then a change of clothes because my current shirt still had someone else's blood on it and I wasn't meeting my supposedly dead mother looking like I lost a bar fight. The plan was simple. Theo drives. I ride. We get to Silverpine Bridge by noon. We get answers. We come home. Liam was not part of the plan. "I'm coming with you." He said it from the kitchen doorway while I was shoving granola bars into my bag. Arms crossed. Jaw set. That immovable expression that I was starting to realize was less about authority and more about stubbornness dressed up in Alpha clothing. "No." "Whoever ambushed you at the studio will try again. They know you have the box. They'll be watching the roads." "Which is why Theo is coming." "Theo is

CHAPTER 17

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.

CHAPTER 18

NEAHI opened the file on the bridge with the river moving beneath my feet and my mother's voice still hanging in the air like smoke from a fire I couldn't see.The first page was a cover sheet. Official looking. Clinical. A logo at the top that I didn't recognize. Two words beneath it: Bloodline Project. And below that, a subtitle that made my stomach turn.Human-Wolf Genetic Integration Program. Subject Registry and Progress Reports.I turned the page.Elena Carter. Subject Six. Recruited at age twenty two. Voluntary participant. Gene therapy administered over a sixteen month period. Goal: activation of dormant lupine markers in human DNA through targeted retroviral insertion.My mother. Subject Six. A volunteer who walked into a lab and let them rewrite her genetics because someone told her it was safe.The file detailed everything. The injections. The monitoring. The side effects she experienced. Headaches, heightened senses that came and went, unexplained fevers. All documented i

CHAPTER 19

NEAH Nobody spoke for the rest of the drive. Theo kept his eyes on the road. Liam kept his presence in the back seat quiet and contained. And I sat in the passenger seat dismantling my own heart piece by piece so that when Caleb arrived I could smile and mean it. Caleb found his mate. I told him this would happen. I said the words to his face less than a week ago. When you find your mate she's going to be the one standing next to you. Not me. I said it like I meant it. I said it like I was ready. I lied. I wasn't ready. Not even close. Because knowing something will happen and feeling it happen are two completely different kinds of pain. One is a forecast. The other is the storm. I was happy for him. I needed that to be true. I repeated it to myself like a mantra while the trees blurred past the window. I'm happy for him. I'm ha

CHAPTER 20

NEAH I heard him before I saw him. Heavy boots on the porch. The front door flying open hard enough to hit the wall. That specific energy that Caleb carried everywhere he went, warm and loud and impossible to ignore. "NEAH!" My name echoed through the packhouse like a bell. I was halfway down the stairs when he appeared in the foyer. His eyes found me and his whole face broke open. Joy. Pure, unfiltered, stupid joy. The kind you can't fake. He crossed the distance in three strides and swept me up. My feet left the ground. His arms crushed the air out of my lungs and his face buried in my hair and for one second, one perfect second, everything was okay. He was here. He was safe. He smelled like pine and that sweet unnamed something. My brother. My twin. My person. "I missed you," he said into my hair. "I'm sorry about the phones. We couldn't g

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