บททั้งหมดของ HIS FATHER'S LUNA: บทที่ 31 - บทที่ 40

Ethan made it as far as the temple's outer courtyard before his knees nearly gave out.He caught himself against a stone pillar, breathing hard, sweat gathering cold at his temples despite the night air. Marcus had tried to follow him out. Ethan had waved him off with a hand that wasn't quite steady, and Marcus, wisely, hadn't pushed.Alone. He needed to be alone before whatever was clawing beneath his skin finally broke through.You felt her. The voice wasn't his own, not exactly, low and furious, curling up from somewhere beneath conscious thought, somewhere Ethan had spent three weeks trying to keep buried.I didn't ask to feel her. You never do. You just stand there and let me want her anyway.Ethan pressed his forehead against the cold stone, willing the shaking in his hands to stop. His wolf had gone quiet since the wedding, sullen, withdrawn, the way it always did when he made choices his wolf inside him didn't agree with. He'd told himself the silence meant acceptance. He unde

Marcus was still awake when Jasper found him, reviewing border patrol reports by lamplight in the small study off the barracks."Your Majesty." He rose immediately, setting the reports aside. "I wasn't expecting you at this hour.""Close the door." Marcus's brow furrowed slightly, but he did as told, the latch clicking shut with a sound that felt heavier than it should have.Jasper didn't sit. He stood near the cold hearth, arms crossed, the old leather-bound volume from the archive still tucked beneath one arm."What I'm about to tell you does not leave this room," he said. "Not to your men. Not to the Council. Not to my son, not yet. Do you understand me?"Marcus's expression sharpened, all trace of drowsiness gone. "Understood, Your Majesty."Jasper set the book down on the desk between them, opened to the torn page, the ragged edge catching the lamplight."This volume documents anomalies in the royal bloodline. Four generations back, a Queen's mark went dormant for years before w

Emma waited three days before she let herself go back.Three days of telling herself it was foolish, that whatever waited behind that archway belonged to a grief that wasn't hers to disturb. Three days of failing to believe a single word of it, the memory of that faint, answering warmth in her chest returning every time the palace grew quiet enough to hear her own thoughts.She went alone this time, in the grey hour just after dawn when the guards changed posts, and the kitchens hadn't yet filled the corridors with the noise of breakfast preparations. She told Naya she wanted to walk alone. She didn't lie, exactly. She simply didn't mention where.The wild grounds felt different alone, the hush of them pressing closer without Naya's steady presence beside her, every rustle of wind through the dead fruit trees sounding, for one unsteady heartbeat, like something following her. Emma kept walking anyway, past the crumbling stone borders, past the low garden wall, until the ivy-choked arc

Ethan didn't stop walking until the palace walls rose up ahead of him, grey and solid against the lightening sky, and even then he found himself standing motionless at the edge of the formal gardens, his chest still tight with everything he hadn't said.That was cruel.The voice rose low and certain from somewhere beneath his ribs, and Ethan's jaw tightened at the sound of it.She deserved to be asked why she was there.You didn't ask. His wolf's voice carried an edge of contempt Ethan rarely heard from it, sharp enough to make him flinch. You accused. You wounded her on purpose, and you felt satisfied doing it. Don't lie to me. I feel everything you feel.Ethan pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, willing the conversation to stop before it had properly started. It never worked. It hadn't worked in weeks, not since the wedding, not since his own wolf had apparently decided silence was no longer an option it intended to offer him.I have every right to be angry. He thought

Emma was curled in the window seat of her chambers, Isabella's journal open on her lap, though her eyes had long since stopped moving across the page, when Naya entered with a folded letter held carefully in both hands.The afternoon had been quiet. She spent most of it simply sitting with the journal, not reading so much as holding it, running her thumb along the cracked spine while her thoughts wandered somewhere far from Council business and torn pages and men whose names she still wasn't certain she could trust her suspicions about."This arrived for you, Your Majesty. Marked urgent. From a village healer, it looks like, not the palace courier."Emma's chest tightened instantly. She didn't recognize the name on the outer fold, though the village stamp was unmistakable- the small crossroads town she hadn't set foot in since a royal carriage carried her away from it two years ago. Her father hadn't written to her once since the night he'd placed a disownment paper in her hands and t