All Chapters of THE CONTRACTED LUNA SECRET TRIPLETS : Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

He didn't put her down for six floors.Ryder carried her from the conference hall to the private elevator, through the executive lobby, and into the secured residential corridor without once seeming to consider the option of not carrying her. His arms were iron beneath her. His jaw was set. She could feel the tension running through his whole body like a live wire — not panic, nothing as loose as that, but a controlled fury that needed somewhere to go and was currently being rerouted into making sure she was vertical."I can walk," she said."I know.""Ryder.""Let me have this."She let him have it.He set her down in the bedroom and stood in front of her with his hands on her shoulders — not gripping, just present — and looked at her face with the scrutiny of a man doing inventory."The babies moved?" he asked."Yes. They're fine." She covered one of his hands with hers. "I felt them."Something unlocked in his face at that. His shoulders dropped a half inch."Good," he said. "Good.

It started with the pull.Ava had felt it before — in the hotel at the summit, in the limo, in the chair at the dining room table when his hands had moved along her ribs and her body had answered before her mind could intervene. But this was different. Deeper. Not the sharp spike of heat but something older, bone-level, the kind of pull that didn't negotiate.The bond.Four months of suppression and stress and survival had kept it quiet. One afternoon of his hands at her feet, her palm over his at her belly, three small heartbeats moving together beneath their joined touch — and the bond had apparently decided it had waited long enough.She was brushing her teeth when she caught herself in the mirror and noticed it: the faint luminescence along her jawline, gold rising just beneath her skin like light through paper.She pressed her hand against her face.It didn't go away.She heard him in the bedroom — the quiet sounds of the routine they'd fallen into, shoes set by the door, lamp on

The pack hospital smelled like antiseptic and warm linen.Ryder had insisted on a private wing. The corridor was empty when they arrived — just Dr. Vance, a young nurse whose heartbeat spiked slightly when Ryder walked past, and the soft hum of medical equipment. Ava changed into the hospital gown and sat on the edge of the examination table and breathed.Ryder stood in the corner with his arms crossed."You can come closer," she said.He uncrossed his arms and came to stand at her shoulder.Dr. Vance moved through the preliminary checks without commentary, the efficient calm of a doctor who had attended enough pack pregnancies that nothing surprised him. Blood pressure. Temperature. A brief external assessment of the bump that had finally, undeniably announced itself in the last two weeks.Then the ultrasound.Cold gel. The smooth movement of the probe. The first rush of sound — rapid, steady, layered — three heartbeats filtering through the monitor's speakers like rain on different

The council chamber was on the third floor — a long room with a stone table, twelve chairs, and no windows.Ava had never been inside it.She stood in the doorway now in a fitted black dress, the golden mark visible at her collarbone, her hair down. Six generals and four alliance representatives looked up from their seats with the collective expression of people who had not been told to expect her.Ryder was already at the head of the table.He looked at her. Then at the empty chair to his right."Sit," he said.She sat.Nobody spoke against it. Whatever they thought, they read the room — the Alpha's posture, the mark on her neck, the way his eyes moved to her first before addressing the table — and they kept it to themselves.Marcus dimmed the lights and brought up the tactical map.Red markers spread across the screen like a rash — Evergreen Pack's hidden bases, seven of them, identified through the intel Marcus had extracted from the traitor general and confirmed through three days

The nursery was on the residential level, two rooms down from the master bedroom. Ryder had cleared it in a day — the previous furniture out, fresh paint on the walls by that evening, a warm cream that caught the afternoon light in a way the rest of the penthouse's stark tones didn't. He hadn't told her he was doing it. She'd come out of the bathroom one morning to find three flat-pack crib boxes stacked in the corridor and him standing over them with the assembly instructions in one hand and the expression of a man confronting an adversary he hadn't trained for. "You don't have to—" she started. "I want to," he said. He looked up. "But I may need help with step four." She helped with step four. They spent the afternoon on the nursery floor with hex keys and wooden panels and a small mountain of bolts sorted into three piles by size. The cribs were white with clean lines — she'd sent him the picture from her phone three days ago without expecting anything to come of it, and h