All Chapters of Erasing the Luna: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

The name arrived before the man did.Alaric Northwyck.It was spoken in Maddox’s private study shortly after midday, carried on black-sealed parchment and the uneasy mouth of Elder Cassian, who delivered the message as though the paper itself might grow teeth if handled carelessly.Rhea had not meant to be there.Magnus had been summoned to report on the instability of her buried mark, and Maddox had allowed her presence after she refused to have her body discussed in a room without her. She stood near the tall windows overlooking the inner garden, silent but listening, while Magnus spoke in cautious fragments and Maddox heard too much beneath every careful word.Then Cassian entered.The elder’s gaze flicked toward Rhea at once, irritation flashing before he smoothed it behind duty. He did not like seeing her in the Alpha wing. He liked even less that Maddox had not ordered her out.“Alpha,” Cassian said, offe

The night after Rhea’s pain did not settle.Maddox felt it through the wall long before he allowed himself to admit that he was listening. He had returned to his suite after leaving her on the balcony, closed the inner door between their rooms, and stood in the dark with his hands braced against the edge of his desk as if discipline could hold him in place.It had worked for less than an hour.After that, every sound from the room beside his became a command his wolf wanted to obey.The faint creak of floorboards.The soft drag of a blanket.The uneven rhythm of Rhea’s breathing when she tried to move quietly through pain.Maddox remained still through the first few sounds. He told himself Magnus had left a draught. He told himself Darian stood outside her door. He told himself Rhea had asked for air, not comfort, and she had stepped away from him on the balcony because closeness wounded as much as it healed.Then s

Isolde Stormhaven did not send a guard.She sent a maid.That was the first warning.Lysa came to Rhea’s room shortly after the storm had softened into a gray drizzle over the estate. The girl stood just inside the doorway with both hands folded tightly before her apron, looking as if she wished she had been given any other errand.“Lady Isolde requests your presence,” she said.Rhea had been standing near the window, watching rainwater drip from the balcony rail outside Maddox’s private passage. The room still smelled faintly of storm and smoke, and her body remembered too clearly the way Maddox had caught her the day before, how close his mouth had come to hers, how his voice had broken when he said he would not regret touching her.She turned from the window slowly. “Requests?”Lysa swallowed. “She asked that you come to the winter parlor.”The winter parlor.Rhea went s

The Obsidian Pack began to split in ways no council order could fully hide.It did not happen through open rebellion. There were no public declarations in the courtyard, no wolves standing before the Alpha’s dais to demand Rhea’s restoration, and no guards throwing down weapons in her name. The division came quietly, painfully, in the small places where a household revealed what it was afraid to say aloud.A tray appeared outside Rhea’s door before dawn.Darian found it first.Rhea had been awake since the gray light touched the curtains, sitting near the hearth with a blanket over her lap and Maddox’s apology from the night before still moving through her like a fragile, dangerous warmth. The bond had been calmer after he sat with her. He had not touched her. He had not demanded another memory. He had only remained in the chair across from hers while the fire burned low, and when he finally left, the silence had not immediately be

The council chamber doors closed behind Maddox with the sound of a sentence being sealed.Rhea heard it from the Alpha corridor.She stood near the narrow window at the end of the passage, where weak afternoon light fell over black stone and silver wall sconces. Darian waited several steps away, pretending not to watch her too closely. Two other guards stood farther down the hall, their faces unreadable, though their bodies betrayed the tension moving through the wing.Everyone knew why Maddox had been summoned.The council had not called a discussion. They had made a demand.Rhea could feel it through the bond before any word reached her. Pressure tightened in her chest, not her own this time, or not entirely. It came from the room beyond the doors, from Maddox standing inside the old circle of elders while law, bloodline, and fear pressed against him from every side. The buried mark at the base of her neck pulsed in slow, uncomfortable waves, ans