All Chapters of CHASING HIS DEAD LUNA: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

ARIA’“You keep looking at me,” Adrian said, not turning his head.“I’m not” but I could already feel the color beginning to spread to my cheeks. My denial did not sound convincing enough, even to me.“You are.” A ghost of something tugged at his mouth. “It’s rude, Aria.”I looked away immediately embarrassed that I had been caught in the first place “I’m nervous.”“About the surgery?”“About all of it.” I twisted my fingers together. “What if something goes wrong. What if your body reacts badly.”“Nothing’s going wrong.” His voice was quiet but certain. “I’ve done worse things to this body and walked away fine.”“That’s not comforting.”“I wasn’t trying to comfort you.”I almost laughed, the sound surprising me before I could stop it, and when I glanced over he was almost smiling too.“Can I ask you something?” I said.“You’re going to anyway.”“Why are you doing this?” I turned to face him. “You hate me. You locked my son away to punish me. So why are you about to give him part of y

ARIAAdrian was out of the car before it fully stopped, and I was right behind him, my legs moving before my brain caught up, gravel crunching under my shoes as we crossed the lot toward the side door."Stay behind me," he said."No." He didn't argue. There wasn't time for it.Cassian and two others went ahead of us, fast and quiet, and the side door was already open a few inches, like someone had left it that way on purpose, like we were meant to walk straight through it."Adrian." I grabbed his sleeve before he pushed it open. "If she's armed—""She's not going to hurt him. That was never the plan." He looked at me, and for one second the anger from the car was gone and something steadier took its place. "She needs him alive to have any leverage at all. Stay close to me."Inside it was dark except for one corner, a cluster of lights turned on, and under those lights I saw the bed. A hospital bed, set up in the middle of a warehouse, monitors humming beside it, and my son lying in th

ARIAI’d been sitting outside Eli’s room for twenty minutes, my back against the wall, my knees pulled up, staring at nothing, when I heard the commotion at the end of the hallway.Voices first, then the particular tension that moved through Adrian’s guards when something unexpected arrived, that shift in posture and energy that meant someone had shown up who wasn’t supposed to be here. Then I heard Jason’s voice.“I’m not on the list because nobody put me on it, and I’m not leaving because that boy in there is important to me, so you can either move or we can have a longer conversation about this, your choice” I was on my feet before I’d decided to stand.I came around the corner to find Jason facing down two of Adrian’s guards with his hands in his pockets and the particular calm of someone who had spent enough time being an Alpha to know that showing aggression was less effective than simply refusing to move, and the guards were doing that thing where they were very clearly unsure

ADRIANShe looked at Liana once, and that was enough for me to get a hand on her arm and pull her into the family room before either of us said where we were going.There was a coffee maker in the corner with a stack of paper cups nobody had touched, and a television bolted high on the wall running silent news captions, and Aria stood in the middle of it all with her arms crossed so tight her knuckles had gone pale."I talked to Dr Reyes last night." She wasn't looking at me. "While you were out cold in that chair.""Okay.""She thought I already knew everything. I asked her about what to expect afterward, and she just kept talking." She finally looked up. "None of it matched what you told me."I knew exactly where this was going the second she said her name."Aria—""You said it was routine." Her voice snagged on the word like it physically caught in her throat. "You said after the procedure, you were going to be sore for a few days, that's it, that's what you told me.""I remember w

ARIAThe corridor went entirely airless, the sound of the elevator doors sliding shut behind me muffled and distant, my eyes locked onto the small, worn square of paper in Eli’s small hands before traveling up to Jason’s face, which was entirely still, devoid of the usual easy charm he wore like armor, his shoulders squared in a way that told me he knew exactly what kind of bomb he had just dropped into the center of my life.Eli’s fingers were smudging the edge of the photograph, the old image of Adrian and me from a lifetime ago when we still knew how to smile, my mind raced to understand how Jason had even found that picture, let alone decided that a hospital corridor on the morning of my son's surgery was the appropriate place to strip away the one secret that had kept us alive for six long years."Eli," I managed to say, though my voice sounded thin and cold, completely unrecognizable to my own ears as I forced my feet to move forward"sweetheart, give that to me, you shouldn't