All Chapters of Wolfless Luna Rebirth: The Alpha King's Lethal Queen : Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

~Lyra's POV~I went to the library alone.Papa was in a meeting with his senior warriors and wouldn't surface for at least two hours. Mama was with the pack healer doing her weekly rounds. The house was quiet in the particular way it gets mid-morning, everyone where they were supposed to be, nothing demanding anyone's attention.I slipped into the private library through the side door and locked it behind me.The restricted section wasn't locked the way most people would assume. There was no visible latch, no separate room. It was just a shelf at the back, behind the genealogy records, where the spines had no titles. You had to know which one to pull. I found it the first time by accident three weeks ago. Today I went straight to it.The Shadow Hunter record was exactly where I'd left it. Thin, handwritten, the pages gone brown at the edges. I carried it to the reading table and opened it carefully.The author was an Ashwood Alpha, three generations back, based on the script style. No

~Lyra's POV~I found Jade in the east sitting room just after lunch.She was reading something on her phone, legs tucked under her, entirely at ease in the way she always was. She looked up when I came in and smiled like she'd been waiting for me, which she probably had been, in the way that someone waits when they're also watching."I need your help with something," I said. "Old family correspondence. Papa's been asking me to sort through the pre-council archive boxes for months and I keep putting it off. It's tedious work and I'd rather have company."She made a face. "How old are we talking?""Fifteen, twenty years. Mostly formal letters, pack records, that kind of thing."She looked like she was going to decline. I could see it forming. So I added, quietly, "I'd just like the company, Jade. It's been a strange few weeks."That landed. She uncurled from the chair. "Okay. Show me where."-------We sat at the long table in the correspondence room with two archive boxes between us, s

~Lyra's POV~The second day of Xavier's diplomatic stay was quiet in the way that days are quiet when everyone is waiting for something to move.Papa was in meetings with his senior council, running updated threat assessments after the cleared trees and the carved seal. Dane had the border warriors doing double rotations without announcing why. Mama was managing the household with the particular focused calm of a woman who understood exactly how serious things were and had decided that functioning normally was the most useful thing she could do.Xavier was somewhere in the estate, finishing trade documentation with Papa's scribe.I was in the east garden at dusk with a cup of tea going cold in my hands, sitting on the low wall that bordered the herb beds, watching the sky shift from orange to grey. I wasn't doing anything useful. I'd earned one hour of not doing anything useful.I heard him coming before he appeared. His footsteps were becoming familiar to me in the way that people's

~Lyra's POV~Xavier knocked on my door at six in the morning.I was already awake. I'd been awake since five, sitting at my desk with my notes spread out, running the broker's timeline forward and backward trying to find the edges of it. When I heard the knock I was unsurprised. His footsteps had that particular quality of someone moving with purpose, not urgency.I opened the door.He had a folded report in his hand and his expression was the flat, controlled one that meant the news was confirmed and not good."My team worked through the night," he said quietly. "They have him."I stepped back and let him in.--------He spread three pages on my desk. I stood beside him and read.The trade representative who had arrived yesterday afternoon with credentials from a minor eastern pack called Duskwall was not from Duskwall. The Duskwall pack had no record of sending a representative anywhere this season. The credentials were well-made forgeries, good enough to pass a standard gate check,

~Xavier's POV~The alarm didn't sound.That was the first thing that told me it was real. A genuine attack doesn't announce itself. It just arrives.I was in the east corridor at half past midnight, doing a final check of the positions, when my lead warrior touched my arm once and tilted his head toward the healer's wing service entrance. I looked. The door was open two inches. It had been closed on the last rotation twenty minutes ago."Four," he said under his breath. "Coming in from the drainage access."I'd half-expected the drainage access. It was the one gap in the estate's physical layout that Jade's map would have flagged as useful, a service channel that ran under the south wall and opened into the wing's lower corridor, designed for maintenance, not guarded because nobody had considered it a vulnerability until now.Someone had."Hold the door positions," I said quietly. "Nobody moves until they're inside."We let them come in.-------There were four of them, as reported. A