All Chapters of Second Chance for the Discarded Luna : Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

Marcus's point of viewThe messenger arrived at midday, dust-covered and clearly having ridden hard, and I knew before he'd even fully dismounted that whatever news he carried wasn't going to be the kind I wanted delivered in front of the full council. I received him privately instead, in my study, and watched his expression carefully as he caught his breath enough to speak."Alpha," he said, bowing briefly, "word has reached the border villages. Ravenspire held a formal court presentation three days ago." He hesitated, clearly uncertain how I'd receive what came next. "They presented Princess Elena. Your former Luna, Alpha. She's the Alpha King's daughter."I'd already known this, technically, in the same distant way a man knows a storm is coming before it actually breaks over his head. Kellan's warriors had said as much the night they took her, princess of Ravenspire, and you will open this gate. I'd told myself, in the weeks since, that it might have been posturing, some exaggerati

Rhys found me exactly when he said he would, waiting near the trade office gate as the last of the day's light softened into evening gold, and something about the simple reliability of it, him actually being where he said he'd be, settled a warmth in my chest I hadn't expected a small thing like punctuality to provide."You're still here," he said, echoing his own words from our first meeting, a small smile tugging at his mouth."You did ask me to wait," I reminded him."I did." He fell into step beside me as we started along the path leading away from the office, toward the quieter gardens near the eastern wall where fewer courtiers tended to wander in the evenings. "I half expected you'd change your mind. Given everything.""Given what, exactly?""Given that you're a princess who spent three years married to another pack's Alpha, returned home carrying whatever complicated history that leaves behind, and I'm simply a warrior who happened to notice you across a crowded delegation." H

Three weeks passed in a way that felt, for the first time since Blackthorn's gates closed behind me, almost gentle.Rhys found reasons to visit the trade office more often than his duties strictly required, and I found myself, more than once, finishing my work early simply to have more daylight left for whatever walk or quiet conversation the evening might offer. Petra had stopped bothering to hide her knowing looks whenever he appeared in the doorway. Even Corin, usually too focused on ledgers to notice much beyond his own office, had taken to a small, approving nod whenever Rhys came to collect me at the end of a workday.It should have felt simple. For three weeks, it mostly did."You're distracted again," Rhys observed one evening, as we walked the same quiet path near the eastern gardens that had become something of a habit between us. "You get a particular look, when something's weighing on you that you haven't decided whether to share."I glanced at him, unsurprised anymore by

The smell of smoke reached me before the shouting did.I was three lines into a shipping manifest when Petra's head snapped up from her desk, nostrils flaring, and the color drained from her face fast enough that I set down my pen before she'd even spoken a word."Fire," she said. "The archive room."The trade office kept its oldest ledgers and correspondence in a narrow stone room at the back of the building, records stretching back decades, including, I realized with a cold lurch, the ongoing negotiations with three border merchant houses that my father's council had spent months quietly finalizing. Records that, if destroyed, would set those negotiations back by seasons, and hand whatever leverage that delay created directly to anyone hoping to see Ravenspire's trade routes weakened.Corin was already moving, shouting for water, for the younger clerks to clear the front room, and I found myself moving too, some old instinct from Blackthorn's fire drills taking over before conscious

Marcus's point of viewFinn brought me the scout's report three days after a patrol found unfamiliar tracks along the western border, boot prints that didn't match any pattern our own warriors wore, circling twice around the same stretch of forest before disappearing entirely near a stream that would have swallowed any scent trail worth following."Foreign make," Finn said, setting the sketched boot pattern on my desk. "Whoever wore these wasn't local, and they weren't careless either. This is someone who knew exactly how to disappear once they'd finished whatever they came here to do.""Finished what, precisely?" I asked, though something cold was already settling in my gut, some instinct I hadn't fully trusted myself to name yet."That's the trouble," Finn said. "Nothing appears to be missing. No supplies taken, no structures damaged, nothing obviously disturbed. Whoever this was, they came for information, not plunder."I thought of the rogue attacks that had pulled me away to war