Lahat ng Kabanata ng Second chance luna: Kabanata 31 - Kabanata 40

Zinnia’s POVThe news about the Frost Pack stayed with me like a stone in my shoe.I went to work the next morning the same as always. I washed dishes at the café. I nodded when the other women talked. I stocked shelves at the general store and counted change for Mr. Hale. From the outside nothing looked different. Inside, my thoughts kept turning back to the short message Joseph had read out loud.Draven was hurt.The pack was splitting.Maelis was gone.I told myself none of it was my problem anymore. I had left. I had taken my son and run. The life I had lived in that pack house was finished. Yet the thoughts would not stay quiet.That afternoon a light rain started while I walked back to the boarding house. The streets turned dark and shiny. I pulled my jacket tighter and kept my head down.I was halfway there when it hit me.A sudden pull behind my ribs. Sharp and cold and familiar. It was the old mate bond the one that had been blocked and broken and silent for weeks. For one sh

Zinnia’s POVWe had been walking for less than an hour when I stopped.Rain still fell in a light curtain. The low hills rose ahead of us. Christiana looked back at once.“What is it?”I stared at the wet ground. Joseph’s footprints were already filling with water. The decision he had made sat in my chest like a stone I could not swallow.“I cannot do this,” I said.Christiana’s face tightened. “Zinnia”“He is out there alone because of us. Because of me. I already let one man treat my life like it was nothing. I will not let another man throw his away so I can walk free.”June looked up at me, confused and scared. “Mama, Joseph said he would catch up.”“I know what he said.” I crouched and put my hands on his shoulders. “But I cannot leave him to face those hunters by himself. We have to go back.”Christiana stepped closer. “If we go back we risk the clean escape he is buying us. Ciro’s people will have both trails.”“Then we make a new plan,” I said. “I am not asking permission. I a

Zinnia’s POVWe found the new town by accident.It sat in a wide valley farther north than the last one, surrounded by low green hills and farms. The houses were simple. The main street had a grocery, a hardware store, a small clinic that looked understaffed, and a boarding house with a faded sign. No strong wolf scents hung in the air. It felt quiet enough to risk a stop.Joseph checked the edges of the town for two full days before he agreed we could stay. We took two rooms at the boarding house under our false names. Elena and Theo Ward. Joseph used a different last name and said he was a cousin helping us after a family loss. People accepted the story without many questions.The first week was only about rest and supplies. June started to smile more again. Joseph’s wounds closed completely. I found work cleaning at the boarding house in the mornings and helping at the grocery in the afternoons. Ordinary work. Safe work.It was the old man at the end of the hall who changed things.

Zinnia’s POVThe change started slowly.Joseph began taking work that kept him away longer. First it was a carpentry job in the next town that needed him three days a week. Then it became four. He still came back. He still checked the valley for strange scents. He still sat with June in the evenings and helped him sound out harder words in his schoolbook. But the spaces between his visits grew.I told myself it was practical. Staying too visible in one place was a risk. Spreading his time made us harder to track as a group. The reasons were logical. The way my chest felt when he left was not.June noticed. One evening while I helped him with simple addition he looked up and asked, “Is Joseph mad at us?”“No,” I said. “He is working. That is all.”June did not look fully convinced, but he went back to his numbers.When Joseph did come, the air between us felt tighter than before. The careful distance we had kept for months grew harder to hold. I found myself watching the way he moved w

Zinnia’s POVThe message came on a gray afternoon when nothing else seemed wrong.I was folding June’s school clothes when Joseph stepped into the room with a folded piece of paper in his hand. His face was closed the way it got when the news was not simple. I set the clothes down and waited.“From the same contact as before,” he said. “It took time to reach us.”He handed me the paper. The handwriting was tight and careful.I read it once. Then again.Draven had won the formal challenge against Baelor. The fight had been brutal and public. Baelor was defeated and driven out, but not killed. Draven remained Alpha by the old laws. Yet the victory had cost him more than anyone expected. His wounds were slow to heal. His wolf had become unstable unpredictable in council, restless at the borders, sometimes failing to answer when called. Half the pack still whispered that Baelor should have won. Families continued to leave. The Frost Pack was not healed by the challenge. It was only quiete