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All Chapters of Thalia’s Unbecoming: From Killer To Cancer Luna: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

127 Chapters

31

THALIA'S POVThe air in the tower shifted the moment Constance stepped back inside. She had been gone for the better part of the month, and her absence had left a hollow space in the room that I hadn't realized I was filling with cold, creeping tension. When the heavy iron door finally groaned open, she didn't look like the woman who had left. She looked like a ghost who had been running through the undercurrents of the compound, carrying the weight of a dozen different secrets. She set the tray down with a shuddering exhale, her fingers trembling so violently against the wood that the metal cups rattled."The council session has reached the kitchens," Constance murmured, her eyes darting toward the hallway to ensure the guards remained at their post. "The word is moving faster than the wind tonight. It’s an inspection, Thalia. A formal request. Fourteen days."I remained by the window, my gaze fixed on the sharp, unforgiving silhouette of the mountains against the bruised purple of

32

THALIA's PovThe morning light crept into the east tower like a thief, but it brought no comfort, only the cold, sharp reality that the walls were shrinking around me. I did not wake up to the sun, I woke up because the air in the room felt heavy and stagnant, as if the very stone were holding its breath, and then the iron door groaned open and Constance stepped inside with her hands empty and her face drained of all color.She usually brought my breakfast tray, but today she had clearly forgotten it in her rush, and that was the first sign that the world outside had finally fractured. She looked like she had been sprinting through the dark corridors of the compound, her hair was coming loose from its pins and she was breathing in shallow, ragged gasps that echoed against the high ceiling."He called a formal address," Constance said, her voice shaking so badly that it sounded like glass breaking on the floor. She did not even try to close the door behind her, she just stood there s

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WRITER's povThe Great Hall felt like a tomb carved out of dark mountain rock, the air thick with the smell of old pine needles and the sharp, metallic tang of nervous sweat.Rael walked toward the raised platform at the front of the room, his boots making a steady, heavy sound against the stone floor that seemed to echo in the rafters above. He did not need to be a seer to know exactly what was coming, he could read the atmosphere in the way the elders held their shoulders, he could feel the shift in the room's pressure that always signaled the start of a storm.He stood on the dais and let his gaze drift across the three hundred wolves packed into the hall, mapping the faces as he went, separating the loyalists who stood with their arms crossed over their chests from the opportunists who kept their heads bowed and their eyes darting toward the side of the hall where Gerard stood waiting.Gerard was a man who moved like a snake in high grass, his movements fluid and precise, his robe

34

RAELThe day clung to me like a layer of cold, suffocating ash. Every moment of the open council session was burned into my memory—the way Gerard stood there with his robes pristine, the way the word "regency" rolled off his tongue like a death sentence.It was said aloud in a room packed with pack observers, and the look on Gerard’s face when he sat down afterward was the look of a man who had spent thirty years in the dark and could finally see the light of his victory.I walked through the tower door carrying the weight of that look, carrying the silence of the hall and the terrifying fragility of my own throne. I was still wearing the day, the tension tight in my shoulders, the fury of my wolf pacing behind my ribs like an animal trapped in a cage of my own making.Thalia looked at me from across the room, her eyes tracking the rigid line of my posture. "Take the coat off," she said, her voice dropping into the quiet space."I am fine," I replied, my voice rough, thick with the ja

35

THALIA'S POVElodie arrived alone—the first difference from every previous visit. No Nara, no assistant, no formal archive trappings—just Elodie with a small cloth bag, her walking stick, and the unhurried, measured pace of a woman who had decided that this particular conversation was going to happen in private, or it was not going to happen at all.The guard admitted her without a word, and as the heavy tower door groaned shut, the silence in the room seemed to stretch, thickening with a sudden, oppressive gravity. Elodie didn't offer a greeting. She simply walked to the center of the room and stood there, looking at me for a long, searching moment.It wasn't the analytical, clinical gaze she had used during the examinations—it wasn't reading or measuring or searching for discrepancies in my bloodwork. It was something closer to a reckoning."Sit down," she said. It wasn't a request.I sat on the edge of the bed, feeling the floorboards beneath my feet. Elodie took the chair by the t

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THALIA's POCAfter Elodie left, the room felt impossibly large and quiet. I sat alone at the small wooden table, the letter heavy in my hands. I didn't open it. I wasn't ready to break the seal yet. Instead, I just held it, letting the weight of it ground me. I thought about my mother.I thought about a woman who had spent nine years of her life in absolute secrecy, doing everything in her power to keep me hidden from a world she knew would eventually come knocking.Then, I thought about those final months she spent dying—how she hadn't spent them in despair, but in planning. She had been writing letters, pulling strings, and weaving connections across the globe, all to ensure that the very thing she had been protecting would find its way home the moment she was no longer there to guard it.My mind wandered back to the gold contacts I had worn every single day since I was four years old. I could still see her face, so patient and so sad, explaining over and over again that the contact

37

RAEL's POVThe whole air in my study was bitter at five in the morning, the kind of biting cold that seemed to seep straight into your marrow, but I barely felt it. I sat at my desk, watching the fire in the hearth finally surrender to a handful of grey, dying embers that pulsed weakly in the dark.On the wood in front of me lay the report from Talos—a stack of crisp white pages that felt like a death warrant for the last remnants of my peace of mind. I read the words again, tracing the ink as if I could physically map the betrayal written there. I was reconstructing the shape of the last few weeks, pulling the timeline apart and stitching it back together now that I held all the missing pieces.It was staggering to realize the sheer scale of the preparation I had been blind to. Elodie had known Thalia was coming. She hadn't been guessing; she had been waiting. Thalia’s mother, Evelyn, had written to Elodie twelve years ago from the human world while she lay on her deathbed, begging h

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CHAPTER 38THALIA's POVThe letter lay on my lap, its parchment worn soft under my fingertips from the dozen times I had read it. It was my mother’s voice, captured in ink, reaching across the chasm of twenty-two years to finally speak to me.The first time I read it, I had been the strategist. I had torn through the sentences with surgical speed, dissecting the facts, the warnings, and the timeline, my mind cataloging the intelligence with the cold detachment of an archivist. The second time, I slowed, allowing the rhythm of her prose to seep into my blood.But the third time—the time that mattered—I was sitting cross-legged on the bed with my back pressed against the cold stone of the tower wall, the fire in the hearth throwing long, flickering orange shadows that danced like ghosts around the room.It was in that third reading that the true, crushing weight of it landed. My mother had known. From the moment I was birthed into the world, from the void-dark depth of my eyes, from the

39

THALIA's povThe morning air in the tower was thin and cold, biting at the edges of my skin even through the heavy fabric of my robe. I had been awake for hours, watching the grey dawn bleed over the horizon, my mind trapped in a loop of calculations that offered no resolution.I was standing by the tall, narrow window, staring out at the jagged, unforgiving peaks of the Great North, when I heard the distinct, deliberate sound of footsteps on the stone stairs. They weren't the heavy, rhythmic tread of a guard, nor the hurried, frantic stride of a servant. They were quiet, measured—Constance.She arrived long before the morning tray. She appeared at the door before the first rotation of the guard, a timing so precise it felt like a tactical maneuver. When she entered, she didn't offer a greeting.She walked directly to the table, her expression tight and burdened, the look of someone who had carried a dangerous secret through the dark and was finally desperate to set it down. She sat i

40

CHAPTER 40THALIAWhen Rael came in that evening, the air in the tower felt heavy, thick with the weight of the day’s revelations. I was sitting at the table, the transcription Constance had left sitting face-down on the wood. I wasn't reading it anymore. I was just sitting there, both hands flat on the rough surface of the table, looking at the fire. It was dying down, the orange flames flickering and casting long, dancing shadows across the stone walls.He crossed to the table in a few long, silent strides. He looked at me, his gaze sharp and searching, and I met his eyes with a stillness that seemed to unsettle him. He didn't ask what was wrong. He didn't have to. He could see the change in my posture, the way the frantic, buzzing anxiety that had plagued me for weeks had finally, completely vanished."Imogen's sister was at the club the night Conan died," I said. My voice didn't shake. It was perfectly level.Rael went perfectly still. The tension in his shoulders was a palpable, d

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