All Chapters of The Luna He Chose Was My Cousin : Chapter 101 - Chapter 105

I did not open the folder that night.I wanted to, badly, the word Family sitting insistent at the edge of my thoughts every time I closed my eyes, but Gideon had asked for one evening of peace before I let another storm in, and after everything he had given me over eight years, I owed him at least that much patience. I locked it in the bottom drawer of my desk instead and told myself I would open it properly once Lyra's birthday had come and gone.The days passed faster than I expected, swallowed up by preparations, and before I knew it, Ashford Estate had filled with music and banners and wolves from every allied territory come to celebrate nine years of the daughter who had once been born into the worst night of my life and had since become the reason I survived every one that followed."Nine whole years," Violet said, watching Lyra spin through the courtyard in a dress she had insisted on picking out herself. "I still remember when she was small enough to fit in one arm.""Do not

The household settled into a strange, waiting kind of quiet over the following two weeks, the ordinary rhythm of pack business continuing even as I felt the shape of Aurelia's secret hovering somewhere just out of reach.Jason lingered a day longer than usual after the bonding ceremony, and I found him one afternoon sitting alone with Darius near the training yard, watching Lyra practice her forms with Noah."You are quiet today," I said, settling onto the bench beside them."I keep thinking about yesterday." Jason did not look away from Lyra, something soft and unguarded in his expression. "Watching you and Kael. I used to imagine that would be me standing there someday, a version of myself I do not fully recognize anymore.""Does it still hurt.""Less than I expected." He finally turned to look at me, and I saw genuine peace there, hard won and entirely real. "Watching you happy, actually happy, after everything I put you through, it turns out that is enough for me now. I do not nee

"Your mother knew," Aurelia said quietly, still holding my hand. "She always knew I was alive."The words landed harder than I expected. "She never told me.""She could not. The bargain that saved my life required her silence as much as my disappearance. But silence was never the same as forgetting." Aurelia rose slowly and crossed to an old wooden chest tucked beneath the window, lifting out a thin bundle of letters tied with faded ribbon. "We wrote to each other for years, in secret, through couriers neither of us fully trusted but both of us needed. Your mother never stopped loving me, Laila. She simply learned to love me quietly, the way she learned to love you loudly enough for both of us."She pressed one final letter into my hands, separate from the rest, my name written across the front in handwriting I recognized instantly, achingly, from every note my mother had ever left pinned to my bedroom door as a child."She wrote this the year before the massacre," Aurelia said softly