All Chapters of Second Chance for the Discarded Luna : Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

Ashra's point of view"He's dead."My courier delivered the words flatly, kneeling in the shadow of the safehouse I'd kept hidden three days' ride from Blackthorn's border. I didn't look up from the map spread across the table."I'm aware," I said. "I watched the execution myself, from a considerably safer distance than you'd have managed.""Then why send me to confirm it?""Because confirmation and observation aren't the same thing," I said. "I need to know exactly how the pack responded. Grief. Fury. Relief. The particular flavor of their reaction tells me how quickly Marcus rebuilds trust with his own council."The courier hesitated. "Alpha Marcus led the execution personally. No hesitation. The council stood behind him fully."I set down my pen. That wasn't the answer I'd hoped for."He's stronger than expected," I said, mostly to myself."Do we still have anyone inside?""No." The word came out clipped. Two years of careful positioning, gone in a single ritual circle turned the w

"That's not possible." The words left me before I'd fully processed what Doran had just read aloud. "Corin wouldn't.""The evidence says otherwise," Doran said, not unkindly, though his tone carried no room for argument either. "Partially burned correspondence, found in the safehouse of the woman orchestrating attacks against both kingdoms. It names Ashwood as a contact inside our own merchant houses.""There could be another explanation," Rhys said carefully, watching my face. "A relative. A rival house borrowing the name deliberately to cast suspicion on an innocent man.""Or he's exactly what the paper says he is," Kellan cut in, arms crossed, something hard in his expression. "Elena, you've trusted this man for weeks. Trust doesn't make someone incapable of betrayal. If anything, it makes betrayal easier."I flinched at that, thinking of Damon, of Lyra, of every carefully constructed lie that had nearly destroyed Blackthorn from the inside. Kellan wasn't wrong to raise the possibi

"Lock down every gate." Doran's voice cracked across the courtyard like a whip. "No one enters, no one leaves, until we've swept every corridor.""How did she get inside?" Rhys demanded, already moving toward the palace steps, his earlier exhaustion burned away by pure adrenaline."We don't know yet," the scout said, struggling to keep pace. "A servant spotted an unfamiliar woman near the eastern wing. Matched the description you gave after the safehouse.""The eastern wing." My stomach dropped. "That's near my chambers.""Elena, stay behind me," Rhys said, already drawing his blade."Absolutely not." I fell into step beside him instead, ignoring the sharp look he threw my way. "If she's here for me, hiding somewhere else doesn't make me safer. It just means I don't see her coming."We reached the eastern corridor at a dead run, guards already stationed at intervals, tension coiling thick in the torchlit air. My father emerged from a side passage, flanked by two of his personal guard,

"Two days isn't enough time to properly fortify an escort," Doran said, pacing the length of the council chamber while my father listened with grim, focused attention. "Not for a convoy this size, carrying this much value.""Then we need to know exactly what we're defending against," my father said. "Elena, you've spent more time inside this conspiracy's evidence than anyone else in this room. What does the timeline shift tell you?"I stood at the head of the table, the salvaged correspondence spread before me, and forced myself to think through the pattern rather than simply react to the mounting dread. "She knows we're onto her," I said. "The safehouse raid, the failed frame against Corin, cornering me and Rhys in the palace itself. Every plan she's built has been unraveling faster than expected. Moving up the convoy's departure isn't strength. It's desperation.""Desperate people are considerably more dangerous," Rhys said from his position near the door, arms crossed. "Not less."

"You're not riding out there," my father said, before I'd even fully voiced the request forming behind my teeth. "Elena, I understand the instinct. I won't allow it.""Then let me do something," I said, pacing the length of his study while Kellan and Corin stood near the door, equally helpless. "I can't simply sit here while Rhys and Doran ride into an ambush we practically handed to her.""You can wait," my father said, gentler now, though no less firm. "And trust the warriors we've trained for exactly this kind of danger to do their work."I hated how reasonable that sounded, and hated even more how little it actually helped the fear churning through my chest. Rhys had left with Doran's reinforcement party less than an hour ago, riding hard toward the pass with whatever speed their horses could manage, though Doran's own grim assessment still echoed through my mind. Not fast enough.I found the old, faded thread of the mind-link tucked in the back of my consciousness, the one I'd us