All Chapters of The Luna He Never Deserved: Chapter 11 - Chapter 19

She came down the steps quickly, then made herself stop about four feet away from me with her hands clasped in front of her.“You must be Aurelia.”“Yes.”“I’m Helena. Evander’s wife.”My eyes went to my brother.He looked back at me, and then understanding crossed his face.“Evander,” he said quietly. “That’s my name.”Six months ago, he had sat in my living room for two hours and proved that he was my brother. Somehow, I had left that conversation knowing what he was to me but not what to call him.Helena looked from Evander to me.“I planned what I was going to say.” She gave a small, helpless laugh. “I can’t remember any of it now.”Her eyes dropped to the hospital bracelet and then rose to my cheek. They paused there, but she asked no questions.She opened her arms without stepping closer.People had been putting their hands on me all day without waiting for permission. Helena stayed where she was and left the distance between us for me to cross.I went to her.Her arms closed aro

Darius's POVIsaac stopped inside the doorway with the phone still in his hand.“Call her again.”I said it without turning from the window.“Alpha.” He remained where he was. “I told her about the insomnia. She heard me. What am I supposed to say a second time?”“Ask when she intends to return. And whether she’ll replace the sachets.”“She isn’t returning.” Isaac’s voice remained careful. “She told me she’s no longer your Luna, and she doesn’t want anyone from this pack calling her again.”I turned and looked at him.Isaac held my gaze for a moment before lowering his head. Then he left with the phone and closed the door behind him.You could have called her yourself.I put my palm against the window frame.She’s your mate, and you’re sending another man to speak to her as though she’s a supplier who failed to make a delivery.“Enough.”Then go and bring her home.I gave no answer. My wolf fell silent, but that was worse because it left me alone with the question I had been avoiding s

I didn’t answer her.Vivienne took another step and looked me over from collar to shoes, the way her mother always did. My coat still held the creases from the suitcase.“Shouldn’t you be at the packhouse?” She spoke loudly enough for the girl on the stool to hear. “It’s Thursday. The border families come to see the Luna on Thursdays, or did you leave somebody else to deal with them?”Every Thursday, the wives of wolves stationed along the boundary came with delayed allowances, requests for medicine and problems nobody else had bothered to answer. For five years, the Vane family had treated that work like something that simply happened, just like the accounts, the funerals and the running of their household.Then they wanted to remind me of my place, and suddenly everything I possessed became a privilege Darius had lent me.I turned slightly, keeping my injured side away from her, and rested my hand against the back of the chair.“Aurelia. I asked you a question.”“You did.”Her mouth

Darius's POVThe form in front of me needed my signature beneath a heading I didn't recognise.Quarterly welfare disbursement — Luna's office. Below it were columns of names and figures, with Aurelia's signature on the line above mine.I put it on the pile and took the next one.Mrs Delaney had brought the lot in at nine, set the tray on my desk and left without saying who normally dealt with them. Since then I'd got through four. Two of those I'd had to read twice because I reached the end and couldn't have told anyone what was in them.The border rota I could do in my sleep. Training schedules, patrol pairings, the ridge repairs — I'd been handling those since I was twenty-two. This was something else. There were medicine requests, a dispute about a fence between two families I'd never heard of and somebody's son wanting a transfer to the eastern patrol for reasons that took up a page and a half.I got halfway down the page before I was thinking about her again.She'd walked out of

Aurelia's POVThe woman at the front desk found my name on her list, turned the page around so I could check the spelling and pointed to the line beside it.“Trainee intake. Probation.” She reached beneath the counter and handed me a blue lanyard. “Take this one. Green is agency, and if you wear one of those, somebody will have you counting stock for a week before anyone notices.”I signed Aurelia Vane while her eyes moved down the form, passing over the shift-status line with no more interest than they had shown my address.“Any allergies?”I looked up before answering. “No.”“Emergency contact?”I called out the number to her, and she wrote it down before moving on to the next section.That was all.There was no pause over the word beside my shift status, no second look at me and no careful change in tone before somebody found a reason why everything I had said and done suddenly mattered less.She simply treated me like a trainee filling out paperwork, and by the time I stepped away