Todos os capítulos de The unloved Luna's one-night mistake : Capítulo 11 - Capítulo 20

The silence stretches long enough that I become acutely aware of my own heartbeat, loud and unsteady in my ears, and of the particular quality of light falling across his desk from the window behind him, gold and late-afternoon, catching the sharp planes of a face I never expected to see again outside of memory."You're my new administrator?" His voice comes out lower than I remember, rougher, though whether that's genuine surprise or simply the particular strain of a man working very hard to sound composed, I can't yet tell."You're Alpha Kael?" The question leaves me before I can stop it, absurd in its redundancy — of course he is, Marcus called him that not sixty seconds ago, the nameplate on his desk confirms it in brushed steel letters I can read clearly from here — but some part of my mind is still catching up to the reality standing in front of me, still trying to reconcile the stranger from a dim bar with the man who apparently commands one of the most powerful territories in

Kael finds me on the back porch of my new cottage just after sunset, Lyra already asleep inside, the pack grounds settling into the particular hush of early evening that I've come, in just over a week, to find unexpectedly comforting.I hear him before I see him — the quiet, deliberate footsteps of a man who could move silently if he wanted to and has chosen, out of some old courtesy, not to startle me.I turn from where I'm sitting on the porch steps, a mug of tea cooling forgotten in my hands, and find him standing at the edge of the small yard, hands in his pockets, watching me with an expression I can't immediately read in the fading light."This is a surprise," I say, setting my mug down beside me, some instinct telling me this isn't a casual visit, isn't a matter of scheduling or pack business that could wait until Monday's briefing."I know it's after hours." He doesn't move closer, keeping a careful distance between us even now, standing several feet back from the edge of the

The cottage is small, but it's mine — or as close to mine as anything has been in longer than I can remember, and that distinction alone makes the cramped kitchen and the slightly uneven floorboards in the hallway feel like luxury rather than inconvenience.Two bedrooms, exactly as Marcus promised on interview day. A small living room with a window that catches the morning light in a way I've already grown fond of, watching dust motes drift lazily through gold every morning while I make Lyra's breakfast. A tiny yard out back, fenced well enough that I don't panic every time she wanders toward its edges, close enough to the pack's childcare center that I can walk her there in under ten minutes each morning before my own shift starts.It isn't Ironclaw Manor. It isn't marble floors or household staff or the particular hollow grandeur of a house built to impress rather than to comfort.It's better, I'm discovering, in every way that actually matters."Mama, look!" Lyra comes barreling in

Lyra wakes crying for the third night in a row, and by the time I reach her room, my own heart is pounding hard enough that it takes several long seconds standing in her doorway to remember how to breathe evenly."Daddy," she sobs, sitting up in bed with her small hands pressed against her eyes, her whole body shaking with the particular, inconsolable grief only very young children seem able to access so completely, unguarded by any of the composure adults learn to build around their own devastations. "I want Daddy."I cross the room and gather her into my arms, rocking her gently the way I have every night this week, murmuring the same soft reassurances I've offered so many times now that I've started to worry they're losing whatever comfort they once carried."I know, baby. I know you miss him.""Why doesn't he come?" Her voice, muffled against my shoulder, carries a particular kind of confused hurt that lands somewhere deep and complicated in my chest, guilt and grief and protectiv

The first time I hear my daughter laughed the way she used to, I don't recognize the sound.It comes across the meadow behind the pack center on a gold-and-green Saturday morning, high and wild and breathless, and my body turns toward it before my mind catches up. I'm standing at the edge of the grass with a paper cup of Talia's terrible coffee, half listening to two of the other mothers argue cheerfully about whose child bit whom last week, and then that sound cuts straight through the noise and I go absolutely still.I've heard Lyra giggle since we arrived at Shadowclaw. Polite little giggles, careful ones, the laughter of a child checking whether it's safe to be happy. This is not that. This is the laugh she had when she was one and a half and Killian's hound got loose in the garden at Ironclaw and chased her in circles, the full-body kind, the kind that folds a child in half.I find her across the meadow, and the coffee cup goes soft and forgotten in my hand.She is flat on her ba