All Chapters of Second Chance for the Discarded Luna : Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

Marcus was waiting in the same small garden where I'd found peace so many times these past months, standing near the roses I'd replanted with my own hands, his bad arm still bound tight against his chest."You wanted to see me," I said, settling onto the bench a careful distance away."I did." He turned from the roses, something quieter in his expression than the careful formality he'd worn through most of his visit. "I leave in three days. I wanted to say what I have to say properly, without a council table between us.""All right.""I'm not going to ask you to come back to Blackthorn," he said. "I want that clear before anything else. I know what I threw away, and I know it isn't mine to reclaim simply because grief taught me its value too late.""Thank you for saying that plainly," I said. "It matters more than you probably realize.""There's something else." He hesitated, working something over before he continued. "Camille asked me to pass along a message. She wanted you to know

Verity wore pale green to the meeting, practical rather than fine, and I noticed the choice immediately for what it was. Not a woman dressing to be chosen. A woman dressing to choose.We met Marcus in the small sitting room off the library rather than a formal chamber, my father's suggestion, meant to keep the conversation from feeling like the opening move of a negotiation rather than what it actually was. I sat to one side with Rhys, present at Verity's own request, though I'd promised to say nothing unless asked directly."Lady Verity." Marcus rose as she entered, inclining his head with proper courtesy, though I caught the slight, careful way his eyes moved over the room first, clearly bracing for whatever version of this conversation he expected."Alpha Marcus." She took the seat across from him without waiting to be invited, something I suspected she'd decided on deliberately, and folded her hands in her lap. "I understand my name has been circulating in correspondence I never c

"Send riders," my father said, already moving toward the door before Doran had finished his report. "Every road east of here, now, before he puts more ground between himself and whatever punishment he's earned.""We tried," Doran said grimly. "My man held back far enough not to be seen, which meant he couldn't close the distance once Weston and the woman split apart. By the time reinforcements reached the crossing, both were gone.""Gone where?" I asked."Impossible to say," Doran admitted. "Two different directions, deliberately, I'd wager. If they planned to be followed, they planned for exactly this outcome."My father pressed both hands flat against his desk, jaw tight with a fury I rarely saw from him in full. "Twenty years," he said. "Twenty years Weston sat at my council table, and I never once suspected he'd sell this kingdom's secrets for whatever price Thornveil offered.""We don't know yet what he's sold," Rhys said carefully. "Or how long he's been selling it.""Then we fi

"Oswin," I said.The name landed strange in my own mouth, too ordinary for the weight suddenly attached to it. He was the quiet clerk who kept the office's record archive, a thin, stooped man who'd been there longer than Corin himself, who rarely spoke beyond what the ledgers required and who I'd never once thought to look at twice."The archivist," Rhys said slowly, understanding dawning alongside the dread. "He'd have access to every document that passed through that office. Every piece of correspondence we gathered. He'd know exactly what we knew, and exactly when we knew it.""He's been there since before I arrived," I said. "Corin mentioned once that his own father hired Oswin, decades ago. No one would have reason to suspect him. He's practically furniture.""Which is precisely why he'd make a perfect asset," my father said grimly. "Invisible by design. No one questions a man who's simply always been there.""We can't simply arrest him," Doran said, arriving in time to catch the

"He left five days ago," Kellan said, already unrolling the map across the table, his voice clipped with urgency. "If he kept a normal pace, he should be nearing the Thornwood crossing by now. Two days from Blackthorn's own gates.""Then we have no time to waste debating," I said. "Send riders. Now.""I'm sending riders," my father said, already scrawling orders, "but a rider alone won't stop an ambush large enough to kill an Alpha on the road, Elena. We need warriors, and warriors take time to muster properly.""Then muster them while the riders go ahead to warn him," Rhys said. "A warning gives him time to double his own guard, change his route, anything. It's better than nothing."Doran was already moving toward the door, barking orders to the warriors gathering in the courtyard below, and within a quarter hour six riders thundered out through the main gate, pushing their horses hard toward the eastern road."I want to go with the second party," I said."No." My father didn't even