All Chapters of The discarded Luna rises: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

Chapter 31BreathThe car went down nose first.It fell like a stone, and the river came in with it. Water poured through the shattered rear window in a solid, roaring rope. It sheeted through the cracks around the doors, hissing, hammering, filling the cabin from the floor up with a cold so violent that my body didn't understand it. It was at my ankles. My knees. My waist.Within seconds it was chest-deep and rising.The headlights, still burning, turned the water outside a murky green. The only air left was a thin silver pocket pressed against the roof, shrinking with every heartbeat.I kicked at the passenger door.Both boots, full force, again and again. It was sealed shut by the weight of the river on the other side, a giant's palm laid flat against the metal. Nothing.I had no wolf. No enhanced strength. Nothing in my body that could break a door against a hundred tons of water. I was only a woman, small and breakable, with a case clutched to her chest and her own pulse screamin

Chapter 33Ten StepsThe riverbank was cold and black.Cold the way a grave is cold. It lay on my skin in a wet, heavy sheet, and every step through the shallows dragged at me. My coat hung off my shoulders like a sack of stones. Wool and leather, soaked through, pulling at the strap across my chest. My boots filled and emptied with every stride, squelching in the mud, sucking at my ankles as if the river wanted me back.The case was still locked against my ribs.I felt its corner dig into my sternum with every shuddering breath. Steel, freezing. Inside it, a row of glass, a syringe, my father's whole future held in a space no bigger than a loaf of bread.Papa.My mind had already left the riverbank, racing ahead toward the hospital, toward the white corridor and the machines that beeped his heartbeat into the dark. The monitors. The numbers I had memorized. The hours he had left, which I had counted on the drive until the counting became a prayer. Every minute we spent shivering in t

Chapter 35Still StandingThe service corridor was harshly lit and cold.White light poured down from the ceiling in flat, merciless panels. It bleached the walls. It bleached the floor. It turned every surface into something that hummed, something that smelled of bleach and metal and old fear. My boots left wet prints on the tile, one after another, a trail of river following me through the final security door.I was still damp.My hair hung in cold ropes against my neck. The wool of my coat had stiffened in the car heater's breath, and it scratched my collarbone with every step. And against my chest, pressed so hard into my sternum that I could feel the pattern of the clasps through my ribs, was the case.Three figures were already waiting.Two doctors in blue scrubs. A senior nurse with a clipboard hugged to her chest like a shield. Their faces were drawn tight with urgency, the kind that has been holding its breath too long, and when I came around the corner they all turned at onc

Chapter 37Thirty SecondsThe underground meeting room was colder than usual.The cold had a smell now. Wet stone. Old smoke. Something metallic, like a coin held too long on the tongue. The single monitor on the far wall was dark, finally, and the loop that had run on it for days was gone, but its blue ghost still seemed to linger on the black table, on the empty glass, on the pale faces of the three men standing along the wall with their hands folded in front of them.Roland stood at the head of the table.He had not sat down. His cane was gripped in both fists, planted hard against the floor, and the knuckles had gone bone-white around the silver head. A report lay open on the polished wood in front of him. One page. Four lines. He had read it more than once.Vera was alive.The antidote had been administered. Corwin lay in critical but stabilising care."She survived."Roland's voice was low. Venomous. It slid across the room like cold oil."The dose reached him. Twenty-four hours

Chapter 39Cracked GlassThe sitting room had not been warm in days.The fire had burned down to a bed of gray ash, and no one had come to feed it. Lamplight pooled in a single yellow circle over the writing desk and left the rest of the room in shadow. Papers lay across the desk in drifts. Maps. Phone logs. A photograph of Vera, torn from a gala brochure, pinned flat beneath a heavy glass paperweight like a specimen. Red circles marked the maps, hospitals and clinics ringed again and again, the ink pressed so hard in places that it had torn the paper.Somewhere deep in the house a clock ticked, slow and dry, counting minutes nobody wanted. The windows were shut, the curtains drawn, and the air had the stale, close taste of a room where too many words had been swallowed.Ines stood in the doorway and watched her husband not see her.He had his back to her. His phone was pressed to his ear, and his free hand dragged through his hair, again and again, until it stood up in rough dark spi