Luna of the Lost Alpha のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 41 - チャプター 48

Darren found her that evening on the roof of the pack house, the same place she'd found him weeks earlier, before either of them had said aloud what had been growing quietly between them. She sat with her knees drawn up against her chest, staring out at the stars in a way that told him, immediately, she already knew what he'd come to say."You spoke to your father," she said, without turning."He told me everything." Darren settled beside her, careful to leave space between them, uncertain, for the first time in weeks, whether he had the right to close it. "That you agreed. Before I even knew there was anything to agree to."Kaira's jaw tightened, old defenses rising instinctively despite everything they'd built together. "I meant to tell you myself.""Why didn't you?"The question hung between them, simple and devastating, and Kaira found herself unable to answer it with the same composed deflection she usually reached for in moments like this."Because I was afraid," she admitted fi

The pack granted its newly bonded Alpha and Luna a week of respite before the demands of leadership fully claimed them, a tradition older than River Shine's written records, and Darren found himself grateful for it in ways he hadn't expected. He had spent so many years bracing against every quiet moment, waiting for his own darkness to shatter whatever peace he managed to build, that the simple, uninterrupted pleasure of days spent entirely beside Kaira felt almost foreign to him — a gift he wasn't yet certain he knew how to fully accept.They spent the first few days simply rediscovering each other, away from the weight of duty and war and the careful public composure both had maintained for years. Kaira taught him the names of wildflowers along the riverbank she used to visit as a child, the same river they'd once walked beside together before everything between them had gone wrong. Darren, in turn, showed her the hidden alcove in the northern woods where he used to escape as a boy

The hand that rose toward Kaira's face was not gentle. She saw it coming in the split second before it closed around her throat, and years of training took over where fear threatened to freeze her entirely. She dropped low, slipping beneath his grip and driving her shoulder into his ribs, the impact jarring through her whole body as though she'd struck a stone wall. Darren staggered back a single step. Then he smiled. "Good," the darkness said, his voice layered with something cold and hollow. "You're not going to be boring about this." "Darren, stop!" Kaira scrambled to her feet, putting the heavy oak table between them, her breath coming in shallow, controlled bursts. "This isn't you!" "You keep saying that." He circled slowly, and every movement was wrong, too fluid, too patient, like a predator savoring the moment before the strike. "He has spent twenty years believing he is the villain of his own story, Kaira. I'm only giving him what he has always feared he deserved." He lu

Darren ran until his lungs burned and his legs shook, and then he kept running, because stopping meant thinking, and thinking meant remembering that he could not remember.The forest blurred past in the pale grey light, wet branches whipping his face, roots catching at his boots. He had shifted somewhere near the northern river, unable to bear the shape of his own hands, and now the ground fell away beneath four paws, faster and lower, the cold air tearing through his fur. It did not help. Nothing about the wolf's body could outrun what lived inside it.*You are wasting your breath,* the entity murmured, patient and amused. *There is nowhere you can go that I will not follow.*He did not answer. He did not have the strength to.By the time the sun cleared the mountains, River Shine's borders lay far behind him, and the last familiar scent had thinned to nothing. Darren staggered to a stop beside a shallow stream, shifted back, and dropped to his knees in the mud, his whole body shakin