All Chapters of Erasing the Luna: Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

Alaric Northwyck arrived at the Obsidian pack house beneath a clear winter sky with six wolves, two carriages, and enough restraint to make the council more nervous than an army would have.Rhea watched from the upper entrance hall as the gates opened. The Northwyck riders carried modest black-and-silver banners and wore ceremonial weapons rather than battle gear. Alaric had not come prepared for conquest. He had come prepared to be welcomed, watched, and remembered.Maddox stood beside Rhea at the top of the entrance steps, his body rigid beneath a formal black coat. Isolde waited on his other side, while the council elders arranged themselves behind them according to rank. Servants and guards gathered along the walls under the excuse of duty.Everyone wanted to see the Alpha who had questioned whether Rhea was safe inside her own pack.Alaric dismounted without haste. He wore charcoal gray, with a silver mountain clasp at his throat. His dark hair had b

Rhea made the decision before sunset and went to Maddox before anyone could turn it into a rumor.She found him in the private study, standing over a table covered with council notices, guard reports, and Alaric Northwyck’s sanctuary offer. The document lay open beneath his hand. He had studied it so often that she doubted he still saw the words.His wolf’s agitation filled the room, restrained but unmistakable. The bond beneath Rhea’s skin answered with a nervous ache.“I am sleeping in the Luna corridor tonight,” she said.Maddox lifted his head. For several seconds, he remained silent. His fingers pressed into the table, and silver briefly edged his eyes before he forced the wolf back.“The corridor does not have a proper bedroom.”“There is a resting alcove beside the old receiving room. Lysa has already aired it.”“You arranged this before speaking to me.”&

The Obsidian Pack did not divide through a formal declaration. The separation revealed itself in doorways, dining halls, training yards, and the silences that fell whenever Rhea entered a room.Some pack members came to the old Luna corridor before sunrise. They brought bread, herbs, petitions, and gifts too personal to be mistaken for duty. An elderly seamstress delivered a dark blue shawl Rhea had once admired. A patrol widow left three silver buttons from her husband’s ceremonial coat because Rhea had helped her family find work after his death.Their devotion unsettled Rhea almost as deeply as their rejection had.They looked at her as though surviving the erasure had made her sacred, but she had never fought to become a symbol carved from suffering. She wanted the freedom to listen, decide, make mistakes, and remain worthy of trust.Other pack members avoided her corridor entirely. Servants who had recently begun addressing her as my lady

Alaric Northwyck described the spar as a gesture of goodwill between neighboring territories.Nobody believed him.By midday, nearly half the Obsidian Pack had gathered around the eastern training ring. Pack members filled the stone benches and stood several rows deep along the outer rail. Servants found reasons to cross the courtyard, while guards lingered beyond their assigned posts. Even several elders attended, wearing expressions of stern disapproval while making certain they missed nothing.Alphas did not spar without purpose, especially when one had offered sanctuary to the other’s wife.Rhea stood beneath the covered gallery beside Scarlett. She would have preferred to remain in her corridor, but her absence would have created another story for the pack to repeat. People would claim Maddox fought because she had hidden from the tension between the men, or that Alaric had challenged him in defense of a woman too frightened to witness the resu

Alaric did not soften the truth for Rhea, and that was the first reason she trusted him enough to listen.Evening had chilled the sun court. The water channels crossing the pale floor reflected a sky fading from gray to deep blue. Two Northwyck guards waited beyond the western arch, while Darian stood at the eastern entrance, distant enough to give Rhea privacy and close enough to protect her.Rhea sat across from Alaric at the same stone table where he had first offered her sanctuary.“What happens if I accept?” she asked.Alaric folded the border report in front of him and set it aside. “You leave Obsidian territory under Northwyck protection.”Hearing him state it made the road beyond the border feel real.“How soon?”“As soon as the sanctuary declaration is witnessed and sealed. If you remain here afterward, the Obsidian council could argue that you are not genuinely endangered by its auth