All Chapters of CHASING HIS DEAD LUNA: Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

ARIAHe told me everything Liana had said and I sat across from him and listened and when he finished I was quiet for a moment, just turning it over, looking at it from all angles. .“You believe her,” I said.“I think it doesn’t matter whether I believe her or not,” he said. “I listened to what she said and she wasn’t wrong.”“Thirty days,” I said.“Thirty days,” he said. “Maybe less.” I looked at him across the desk and thought about thirty days and what they meant, and I felt something move through me that was too big to name, something that had relief in it and terror in it and something warmer than both of those things underneath.“Adrian,” I said.“I know,” he said.“What do you know?” I said.He stood up from behind the desk and came around it and leaned against the front of it, close, looking down at me, and his eyes were doing the thing they did now when it was just us, when nobody else was in the room and he’d stopped managing everything.“I know that thirty days is nothing

ARIAAdrian left for the office before Eli even woke up, and he kissed me at the door like he didn't want to stop, his hand at the back of my neck, his mouth slow and warm, and when he finally pulled back he just looked at me for a second like he was memorizing something."Twenty-nine days," he said against my mouth."Go to work," I said, and he laughed, low, and left, and I stood there in the hallway for a second longer than I needed to, feeling the whole day stretch out in front of me with that kiss still sitting on my lips.The day moved slowly after that. Eli had started school, and I had a stack of things to get through for the house, and somewhere in the middle of it I ran into Adrian in the upstairs hall, just for a minute, both of us moving in opposite directions, and he didn't say anything, just caught my wrist and pulled me into the small room off the landing that used to be a study nobody used, and shut the door."You have a meeting in ten minutes," I said."I know." His h

ARIAHe showed up at my door in jeans, which was the first thing that threw me, because in six years I had never once seen Adrian Blackwood in jeans, and he stood there grinning like he knew exactly what my face was doing."What?" he said."You own jeans.""I own a lot of things you've never seen." He held up a bag from a bakery down the street, still warm judging by the smell coming off it. "I brought breakfast. Eli's with Cassian for the day. It's just us.""Just us doing what?""I'm taking you out." He said it simply, like it was the most obvious thing in the world, and something in my chest went soft and confused at the same time. "I've known you six years, Aria. I've never once taken you anywhere. Today I'm fixing that."I stood there a second too long, trying to find the version of myself that knew how to answer something like that, and eventually I just grabbed my jacket, because some things didn't need a clever answer, they just needed you to go.We started at the market near

ADRIANCassian was already waiting outside my office when I got in Monday morning, a folder tucked under his arm, his face doing the neutral thing it only did when whatever he was about to hand me was worse than he wanted to say out loud."You should sit down for this," he said."I don't want to sit down. I want to know what he filed." He handed me the folder anyway, and I stood there in the middle of my own office and read it standing up, the way I read everything that mattered, because sitting down for bad news had always felt like giving it permission to settle in.It took less than a page to understand exactly how far my father was willing to go.A formal petition for a Fitness Review. My conduct as Alpha, questioned on the grounds of what the document called a pattern of behavior inconsistent with the responsibilities of leadership, specifically naming an ongoing relationship with a member of household staff while legally married to Liana Ashcroft.Below that, a second request, f

ADRIANI heard Eli scream my name and the world stopped making sense. One second I was walking toward the valet stand, laughing at something the kid had said, turning back to look at them the way I’d been doing all evening, just checking, just that reflex I’d developed without noticing, and the next second there was a van I didn’t recognize and two men moving with the efficiency of people who had done this before, and Aria was already screaming, already fighting, and Eli was already off the ground.I ran. I’ve never run like that in my life. Not on a training field, not in any situation where running had ever mattered before, nothing came close, because nothing before had ever been this, this specific horror of watching the two most important people in your world being taken while you were standing twenty meters away laughing at a joke you can’t even remember.I covered the distance in seconds and it wasn’t fast enough. The man holding Aria was already at the van, and she was fighting