The unloved Luna's one-night mistake 의 모든 챕터: 챕터 71 - 챕터 80

The rider waited at the edge of the torchlight with a white banner across his saddle and his hands held open where everyone could see them.He was young, and he was terrified, and he had the look of a man who had been told that delivering this message might be the last thing he ever did. Kael and I walked out to meet him with Rowan and Talia a pace behind, and the whole pack watched from the ridge in a silence so deep I could hear the torches hiss."Speak," Kael said.The rider swallowed. "My master sends his respects to the Alpha." He recited the words as if he had memorized them by heart. "He says the dead have been counted, and the count does not favor either side. He says that more blood tonight is a waste, and that he is a patient man, but not a wasteful one.""Get to the point.""He challenges you." The rider's voice cracked. "By the old law. Alpha against Alpha, one fight, to the death or to yield. If you win, his army withdraws and trouble you no more. If he wins..." He drew a

The news traveled faster than I could.By the time I had been bandaged, scolded, and fed a bowl of broth I did not remember asking for, the whole valley knew. Draven's army was gone. The last banner had crossed the far ridge at sunrise, and the scouts had followed it for three hours to be certain. It had not turned. It had not paused. It had simply kept going, a long black column shrinking into the hills, until there was nothing left to see.The war was over, and we had won.I kept waiting to feel it. I sat on a bench outside the infirmary with a blanket around my shoulders and watched the pack move through the yard, and I kept waiting for the joy to arrive. Instead there was only a vast, humming quiet, like the silence in a house after a long illness has finally broken."You look like you've forgotten how to be happy," Talia said, dropping onto the bench beside me. Her arm was still in its sling, and she had a smear of someone else's blood across her cheek that nobody had had the hea

The evening was so quiet that I could hear the grass move.We had climbed to the northern ridge, the same ridge where the border stones stood, where only weeks before I had looked down on a black tide and thought the world was ending. Now the valley lay below us, green and gold and utterly still. The training yard was empty. The smoke rose from the chimneys in thin, straight lines. Somewhere far off, a child was laughing, and the sound carried up the slope as clear as a bell.Kael had insisted on walking the whole way. I had insisted on holding his arm. We had compromised, which meant he complained and I did not let go."Here," he said, and lowered himself onto a flat stone at the edge of the ridge with a grunt he tried to hide. "This one."I sat beside him. He put an arm around my shoulders, and I leaned into the warmth of him, and for a while neither of us spoke.The sun was going down.I had watched a thousand sunsets in my life and never once seen one.In Killian's house, the wind

The morning after the feast, the house was so quiet that I thought for a moment I had gone deaf.Then I remembered. Ruth had kept the children overnight and was no doubt giving them a breakfast of a thousand pancakes while she lectured them on the importance of letting their parents sleep. The pack was recovering from its own celebration. Even the birds seemed to be sleeping in.I lay still with my head on Kael's shoulder and listened to the rare, unfamiliar silence."We could stay here all day," he murmured."We could.""Nobody would blame us.""Nobody would dare." I smiled against his skin. "Ruth would come looking for us by noon.""Ruth would come looking for us in an hour, with a ladle." He sighed contentedly. "Let me have this."So we stayed, tangled in the warm tumble of quilts while the light climbed slowly up the wall. At some point, he reached for the small table beside the bed and drew out a book I had not seen in months. Its cover was plain brown leather, soft with handling

"I want to follow you around for a day," Lyra said.It was two weeks after the garden. We were sitting on the porch step with a pot of tea between us, watching the evening settle over the yard. She said it so casually that I almost missed the weight underneath it."Follow me where?""Everywhere. All of it." She shrugged, with elaborate indifference. "I've watched you fight. I've watched you stand in front of crowds. But I don't think I've ever really seen what you do.""Mostly paperwork," I warned her."Good." Her chin lifted. "I want to see the paperwork."I looked at my daughter's face, so composed and so carefully unhopeful, and I understood that this was not a whim. It was her way of saying that she had found something she needed to know."Dawn," I said. "Bring a coat. And don't complain about the hour.""I never complain.""You complained about the stairs last Tuesday.""That was a legitimate grievance," said Lyra, and smiled into her tea.She was waiting at the door before the s