All Chapters of THE CHUBBY LUNA THEY REJECTED : Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

Osborne POV The black book stays locked in my desk drawer, untouched since I found it, a weight I carry without letting anyone else see the shape of it yet.I haven't told Aina. Not because I want to keep her small, the way she's accused me of doing before, in words that still sit uncomfortably close to true. But because I don't yet know how much of what's written inside is truth and how much is fear dressed up as prophecy by wolves long dead, men who scratched out names and buried bloodlines for reasons that may have died with them. I won't hand her something that might be lies wrapped around her own name simply because I'm afraid of what happens if I wait too long to speak. She deserves better than half-truths passed off as protection, even if I'm still learning what that actually means in practice.Kade arrives before I've fully settled that reasoning in my own mind, his expression already tight with whatever he's come to deliver."The attacker wasn't working alone," he says, clos

Osborne's POV The word she overheard reaches me before Kade even reports it, carried through whatever thin thread connects me to Varg's constant, watchful presence, a thread I've spent years trying to sever rather than understand.*Moonbinder.*Varg surges at the sound of it echoing back through my own mind, restless and hungry in a way that usually precedes losing control entirely. I brace myself for the fight, the same grinding battle I've waged against him for eleven years, muscle and will pressed against something ancient and unyielding, a war I've fought so long I no longer remember what winning was ever supposed to feel like.Instead, for the first time, I try something different.*Show me,* I tell him.He goes still, surprise radiating through the bond between us, like he hadn't expected me to ever ask rather than resist, like the offer itself catches him as off guard as it catches me. Then, slowly, deliberately, he lets me deeper than he ever has before, past the wall I've sp

Osborne’s POV The Elder's accusing finger is still raised when the hall breaks into two distinct camps, and I feel the split happen almost physically, like a fault line cracking open beneath my own house.Some wolves stare at Aina with something close to reverence, murmurs of miracle and blessing rippling through the crowd nearest the doors. Others, mostly the older ones, mostly the ones who've sat on this council for decades, look at her like she's a blade suddenly revealed beneath a familiar coat.I move to stand between her and the loudest of the accusations, trying to hold the political ground steady even as my own chest tightens with something I recognize too late.Varg is surging.The attack, the fear that flooded through every wolf in this hall moments ago, the raw violence still soaking into the stone near the head table, it's clawed straight past whatever fragile progress I made tonight in the archive, in my own room, with my own wolf finally speaking instead of simply fight

Osborne's POV Kade tells me Aina has a photograph, and something in his tone makes my stomach tighten before he even finishes explaining where it came from, before he's even said whose face might be in it.I find her in the corridor outside Mara's quarters, the image still held carefully in her hands, her face pale in a way that tells me whatever she's looking at has already changed something inside her, some foundation she thought was solid shifting beneath her feet."Where did you get that?" I ask.She doesn't answer right away. Instead she lifts her eyes to mine, something sharp and unflinching behind them, a demand rather than a question even before she speaks it aloud."Did your father know my mother?"The question lands like a blow I didn't see coming, striking somewhere I hadn't braced to defend. I've never once heard Aina's mother's name spoken inside these walls, not by my father, not by any Elder, not by anyone in all the years I've lived here learning this pack's history f

Osborne's POV I found the Beta exactly where my informant said he would be, alone in the record hall, surrounded by ledgers he thought no one else would think to check. The candlelight caught the gray in his hair, and for a moment he looked less like the man who'd stood at my father's side for thirty years and more like someone bracing for a reckoning he'd always known was coming."Osborne." He didn't look up right away, which told me more than any words could have. "This is a strange hour for a visit.""I have questions." I set the document down on the table between us, hard enough that the sound echoed off the stone walls. "About Aina's marriage contract. About why it was arranged the way it was.""I don't know what you mean.""Don't." My voice came out harder than I intended, years of restraint cracking under the weight of everything I'd uncovered tonight. "I've read the correspondence. I know the arrangement wasn't about alliance or territory. It was about her bloodline. I want t