All Chapters of CHASING HIS DEAD LUNA: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

ARIACassian found me on the floor outside the operating wing. I didn’t bother to pace, I was actually on the floor, my back against the wall and my knees pulled up and the photograph in my hands, and when he came around the corner and saw me he didn’t say anything about it, just lowered himself down beside me with his back against the same wall like sitting on hospital floors at seven in the morning was a perfectly reasonable thing to do.“Both of them went in clean,” he said. “I just checked.”“I know, the nurse told me.” I looked down at the photograph. “I just couldn’t sit in that room anymore.”He didn’t push it, just sat there, and I was grateful for that, the particular gift of someone who knew when silence was the thing that was needed.“How long have you known him?” I said, after a while.“Since we were seven.” Cassian leaned his head back against the wall. “He punched me on the first day of training because I beat him at a foot race and he didn’t like losing. I punched him b

ARIA“There is,” I said, and then I stopped, because the surgeon was looking at me with that careful professional patience and Adrian was looking at me with something else entirely, something that had gone very quiet and very alert all at once, and I understood in that moment that whatever I said next, I had to be logical and careful“The compatibility,” I said carefully, keeping my voice even, keeping my eyes on the surgeon instead of on Adrian because I couldn’t look at him and think at the same time“could have another explanation. Adrian and I have history. We were together years ago.” I paused. “A long time ago.” The suggestion was illogical but I was willing to do anything because I wasn’t ready for the truth to be out yet.The surgeon looked at me for a brief moment, her gaze was full of skepticism “I see.”“Is it possible that a prior relationship between the donor and the child’s mother could produce markers like this without a direct biological connection to the child?”She

ADRIANThe photograph didn't lie. That was the thing I kept circling back to, no matter how many times I told myself photographs could be staged, cropped into meaning that wasn't there, because I recognized that corridor, I recognized the exact angle of her shoulders when she let someone else hold weight for her, and I'd spent weeks learning what her guarded posture looked like. This wasn't guarded. This was open.I picked up the next one. Then the next. Liana didn't say anything else. She didn't need to."Adrian." Aria's voice from the doorway, careful, too careful. "It's not what it looks like.""It never is." I set the photographs down on the blanket, one at a time, in a neat row, like evidence at a trial nobody had asked me to preside over. "Funny how that's always the line." My heart stung with something I didn’t know how to put into words and I hated it."He's my friend.""Your friend." I looked up at her for the first time since she'd walked in, and whatever had been sitting in

ARIAHis eyes closed and the room went up in chaos around him, the doctors were frantic, the nurses were running around and I stayed where I was against the wall with my arms crossed and my jaw tight and said nothing, because there was nothing to say, because the doctor and the nurses were doing what they needed to do and I was just a person standing in the corner who had no medical training and no official reason to be in this room and absolutely no intention of leaving it.Cassian appeared in the doorway at some point, looked at me, looked at Adrian, and didn’t say anything, just positioned himself outside the door like he was keeping something out, which I appreciated more than I could have explained.The monitors settled, the rhythm evened out and the doctor said something to the nurse beside her in a low voice and the urgency in the room dropped by a degree, and I uncrossed my arms and sighed in relief, the doctor turned and looked at me.“He’s stable,” she said. “The bleeding h

ARIAJason had shown up because he was worried, that was the whole of it, he’d texted me twice and gotten no response and decided that Eli being alone in a hospital room while I was somewhere dealing with whatever was happening with Adrian was not something he was comfortable leaving unaddressed, so he’d gone to Eli’s room and sat with him, and when Eli fell back asleep he’d come to find me.That was it. That was the entire story, and I knew it was the entire story, and knowing it didn’t stop the cold that moved through me the moment I looked up and saw Adrian at the end of the corridor.He was in his clothes, which meant someone had brought them to him, which meant he’d gotten out of bed, which meant the man who had been bleeding internally four hours ago had decided that was less important than whatever he’d decided to come and find and Cassian was beside him with the expression of someone who had tried to talk sense into a wall and was now just accompanying the wall to wherever it