Semua Bab The Ex-Luna's Return: No Longer His Doormat: Bab 31 - Bab 40

~ 32 ~~ Mia ~When Aron’s car pulled up to the delegation manor, the rain was coming down in thick, blinding sheets, rattling against the roof like gunfire. I thanked her, hurried under the wide portico, and pushed through the doors into the warmth of the front hall.Sitting in the parlor around the central hearth were my mother, Ryker, and Hailey. There were three large leather travel trunks neatly aligned, luggage tags already strapped in place.Hailey had told me that after learning I had firmly resolved to return to Red Moon Pack once my six-month term ended, Mama and Ryker had finally set their anxieties aside. They knew my boundaries. They knew I wasn't running back into Darian’s arms or letting East Lake swallow me whole. Even though our private residence had been secured through confidential channels, their continued presence in this territory was an unnecessary risk. Every additional day the Red Moon Luna and Ryker lingered near East Lake’s borders invited discovery."Mama?

~ 34 ~~ Mia ~A warm beam of golden sunlight fell across my eyelids, coaxing me awake."Liliana, wake up, sweetheart," Mama’s voice whispered gently, her fingers lightly smoothing the stray hair from my forehead.I blinked against the sudden brightness, disoriented. The ferocious, rattling downpour from the night before had completely vanished. Outside the arched bedroom windows, the sky was a clear, the morning light dancing over the drenched pine needles and the glistening surface of the lake.I sat up, stretching, a faint laugh escaping my throat. "It seems the Moon Goddess took Hailey’s joke to heart. She cleared the skies just in time for your departure.""She knows better than to keep me away from Red Moon’s council for too long," Mama smiled, though her eyes held a soft, lingering reluctance.The sudden break in the weather was startling. East Lake’s autumn monsoon was notorious for lasting weeks, drowning the territory in relentless gray gloom. To have the clouds part so abru

~ 36 ~~ Mia ~The closer I got to the dean's office, the faster my heart hammered against my ribs.With every step down the carpeted administrative corridor, Olga grew louder, pacing frantically, clawing at my chest in a wild, disorienting frenzy. She was keening — a low, melodic, ancient howl that vibrated straight through my marrow.Every rational instinct screamed at me to retreat, to run straight to the manor and call Ryker. But my limbs refused to obey. My feet carried me forward as if drawn by a physical, invisible cable tightening with every inch I crossed.I reached the tall doors of the executive suite. I took a steadying breath, forced my shoulders back, and pushed the door open.The vast room was empty of administrators. Dean Franklin wasn't at his desk. Ms. Smith was nowhere to be seen.Standing in the center of the sunlit room, his coat discarded, his dark eyes locked onto the doorway with terrifying intensity, was Darian.The heavy door clicked shut behind me.In that e

~ 38 ~~ Mia ~Behind me, the corridor dissolved into pure chaos of Nick’s ragged sobbing, and Darian’s furious, possessive roars.Inside me, Olga thrashed in absolute agony against my mental walls. The suffocating weight of eight years of buried trauma hit me all at once. The floor tilted upward, and the last thing I felt was Ryker’s arm catching my waist before everything went black....When my eyes fluttered open, I was staring at a stark white ceiling.The scent of rubbing alcohol and the beep of a heart monitor filled the air. For a terrifying second, it felt uncannily like the morning I first woke up in the Red Moon central surgical wing years ago.A wave of dizzying fear washed over me. What if none of it was real? What if I had never found my biological family, never made friends, and never built a new life? What if the past five years had been nothing more than a dying dream while I waited alone in a cold clinic for the tumor in my head to finish me off?"Liliana!"The heavy

~ 40 ~ ~ Darian ~The door at the end of the administrative corridor clicked shut, sealing Mia behind a wall of foreign royal guards, and my breath tore out of my throat in ragged, violent gasps.My chest was on fire. The golden tether of the mate bond whipped through my veins like live wire, screaming with an intensity that rattled my bones.For ten years, I had believed the Moon Goddess had cursed me to walk this earth without a fated mate. I had believed my father had shackled me to an unwanted, wolfless orphan out of pure spite, using my birthright as a weapon to force a hollow union. And now, the universe had delivered the most agonizing, cruel punchline in history.Mia was my mate.She had been sleeping in my bed for eight years. She had poured my tea, washed my shirts, and looked at me with those quiet, pleading eyes, carrying the divine spark of the Goddess the entire time — and I had spent nearly a decade treating her like a burden.Fury and bewilderment warred in my mind. Ho