THE ALPHA'S FORBIDDEN LUNA のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 201 - チャプター 210

POV: Lyra Thorne"I served your mother's table for thirty years, girl. I will not bow to a scullery maid because a rock decided to glow. You may call me stubborn, or you may call me a fool. I will not call you Luna."Corra's voice rang off the whitewashed walls of the council house kitchen, and every cook and kitchen girl in the room went still. She was a tall woman with a pinched face and forearms like a blacksmith's. Her hands were planted on the table. A pot boiled over behind her, and nobody moved to lift it.It was the morning after the bond. I had not slept. I had spent the night on the edge of our bed listening to Kaelan breathe and thinking about a sprig of lavender. When the sun came up, I put on my plainest gray gown, took Mrs. Fenn's arm, and walked to the council house on my own feet.A Luna's first duty, Rhea had told me, was to inspect the linens. It sounded ridiculous. It was also the best excuse I had to walk through the one house where the Lantern might be sleeping."

POV: Lyra Thorne"Do not scream, Luna. Please do not scream. If they find me, I am dead, and so is my brother, and I have already lost everyone else I ever loved."The voice came out of the dark so softly that for a moment I thought it was the wind. I stood in the herb garden with the moon hanging like a coin over the wall. Frost had turned every leaf to silver. Ilsa's shawl lay in a heap by the lavender bushes, and the earth around it was churned and ragged.Behind me, Kaelan was already running. I could hear his boots on the gravel and feel his fear in my own bones. Selene came after him, with Briar half a step behind, holding a lamp."She is alive," I said aloud, for them. "I can hear her.""Where?" Selene demanded.I turned in a slow circle. The sound seemed to come from the ground itself. The garden wall had a low archway on the far side, half hidden under a dead rose bush, and a stone stair beyond it led down into the earth."The old ice house," Briar whispered. "They stopped us

POV: Lyra Thorne"My brother is alive? Please, Luna, say it again. Say it slowly, because I do not trust my own ears, and I could not bear to be wrong."Ilsa sat on the edge of a narrow bed in the Alpha wing, wrapped in two blankets, her scarred hand pressed over her mouth. Morning light poured through the high window and made her look even thinner. She had not eaten the porridge Mrs. Fenn left on the table. She had only watched the door."He is alive," I said. "He is in the kitchen. He is eating his third bun, and Mrs. Fenn is pretending not to cry.""Wen." She said it like a prayer. "Wen, Wen."The door creaked, and a skinny boy of fifteen stood there with soot on his cheeks and a half eaten bun in his fist. He looked at his sister. She looked at him. Then Ilsa made a sound like a kettle breaking, and the two of them collided in the middle of the room.I turned away to give them a moment. My own eyes were stinging. Through the bond, Kaelan's warmth pressed against mine, quiet and st

POV: Lyra Thorne"Burn the flour bin, burn the apron, burn her whole kitchen. A scullery maid does not sit beside the Alpha. A witch with glowing eyes does not sit beside anyone."The words were written on the door of my private pantry in thick black paint. They had dripped in long, ugly streaks down the wood. I stood in the cold gray dawn with a loaf of bread under my arm and stared at them. Behind me, Mrs. Fenn made a small, strangled noise."I will have it scrubbed before breakfast," she said."Leave it.""Luna!""Leave it. I want to look at it for a moment."The paint was still wet. Whoever wrote it had been in a hurry, or in a temper. The letters leaned the way a person's do when his hand is shaking. Nothing was hidden. Nothing was clever. It was only the thing that a hundred wolves were whispering behind a hundred closed doors.It had been four days since the seal woke. In that time I had learned what a pack does with something it cannot explain. Some wolves bowed too low. Some

POV: Lyra Thorne"Luna Thorne, as the injured party and the heir of the Keepers, you hold the right to pronounce sentence. Will you set it down before the pack, or will you ask the council to speak for you?"Wynne's voice rang through the Moot Hall. Every bench was filled. Every eye was on me. I sat in the eighth chair, small and plain, on the dais beside Kaelan's black oak throne, and I felt as though I were sitting at the bottom of a deep, deep well.Below the dais, flanked by two guards, stood Damon Ashwood.He wore a plain gray tunic. His wrists were bound with rope, not iron, because Kaelan had asked and the council had permitted it. His hair was white now. His shoulders sagged. He looked at the floor, and for a moment I did not recognize him.I had planned this speech for a week. I had written three versions. I had burned two. I had walked the hall at midnight, practicing in front of the empty benches. None of it came when I opened my mouth."I will speak for myself, Elder," I s