All Chapters of The Unwanted Plus-Size Luna: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

"That's not the question you actually have the right to ask me."Kade blinked, thrown entirely. "Excuse me?""You heard me." Wren stepped closer instead of away, three weeks of swallowed words finally finding a door and shoving through it all at once. "You don't get to stand here demanding honesty about who I might or might not care about. You gave up that right the night you stood in front of the entire pack and rejected me before I'd even finished walking into the circle.""That's not what this is about.""It's exactly what this is about. You just don't want to look at it directly." Her voice had climbed, sharp enough now that a few wolves near the lodge steps had slowed their steps to listen, though she found she no longer cared who heard. "You want to know if I'm using Darius to hurt you. Let me ask you something instead. Does it matter? Would it change what you did that night? Would it undo the dress, the circle, the sound of your own voice saying you rejected me loud enough that

By midmorning the version of last night circulating through camp had already grown teeth it hadn't had at the time. Wren caught fragments of it everywhere she went, a word here, a laugh cut short there, none of it addressed to her directly, all of it clearly about her. She stopped trying to correct any of it somewhere around her third lap past the smokehouse. Correcting a story only fed it.By the time she reached the training grounds, three different versions had reached her secondhand, each one stranger than the last. In one, Darius had drawn blood. In another, the Alpha himself had nearly stepped in to separate a real fight rather than simply the threat of one. The truth, dull and unremarkable by comparison, didn't seem to interest anyone enough to repeat.Nobody stopped her outright to ask, at least. That was new. A week ago she would have been cornered a dozen times over by now, forced to defend herself against a story she hadn't written. Instead people simply watched her pass, q

The weight of him settled over her like something inevitable. Darius's mouth traced the line of her throat, unhurried, and the first brush of his lips was cold, sharp enough to make her breath catch, before the deeper heat banked beneath his skin rose to meet her. She felt it everywhere his body touched hers: the press of his chest against the soft give of her breasts, the solid length of his thigh sliding between hers, the deliberate drag of his palm down the full curve of her hip.He didn't rush. One hand cupped the underside of her breast, thumb stroking slow across the peak until her back arched, the other splayed wide over the soft plane of her stomach, then lower, claiming the heavy warmth of her thigh as if it belonged exactly there. No hesitation. No careful avoidance of the places other people had taught her to apologize for. He touched her the way a man touched something he'd already decided was his, measured, precise, completely certain."Darius..."The name broke out of he

Wren had packed the same bag three times by the time the sun went down, emptying it and starting over each time something new occurred to her, a knife she hadn't sharpened, a waterskin with a crack she'd forgotten to patch. None of it needed doing twice. She did it twice anyway, because sitting still felt worse than busywork, and her hands needed something to hold onto besides the nerves sitting under her ribs.Her mother stopped by once, offering food Wren barely touched, and left again without pushing when the conversation stayed short. That was new too, the not-pushing. Wren was still adjusting to it."Stay careful out there," Maren had said at the door, brief and unpolished, the kind of sentence that would have felt inadequate a month ago and now felt like exactly enough."I will.""I mean it. Come back whole.""I'll try."Maren lingered a moment longer, like she wanted to say something else, then simply squeezed Wren's hand once before turning to go, leaving the rest unsaid.A kn

Wren set her cup down and crossed toward the tree line at a pace that tried hard not to look urgent. By the time she reached the spot where Selene had been standing, the clearing beyond it sat empty, grass undisturbed, no trace of anyone having lingered there at all.She turned in a slow circle, scanning the darker fringe of trees beyond the firelight, straining for any snapped twig or retreating shadow among the underbrush. Nothing moved. Whoever he was, he'd vanished with an ease that unsettled her more than his presence had."Looking for someone?"Selene had appeared at her elbow, cheerful as ever, no hint of the sharp posture Wren had caught only minutes earlier near the trees."There was a man here. Talking to you.""Was there?" Selene glanced around theatrically, as if humoring a child's game. "I don't recall anyone in particular. Half the pack's stopped to say something to me tonight.""This wasn't pack. I didn't know him.""Then he must have wandered off." Selene's smile didn'