All Chapters of THE ALPHA'S FORBIDDEN LUNA: Chapter 221 - Chapter 230

POV: Lyra Thorne“Take off that hood, girl, and kneel. Servants do not cover their faces at the Gravemoor border.” The guard’s laugh was thick with wine. “Down, I said. Or do you need my boot to remind you?”My cheeks burned. Dust stuck to my eyelashes, and the afternoon sun beat on the back of my neck. We stood in a long line of wagons at the stone gate of Alpha Brannock’s territory. Dozens of people watched. Briar sat very straight on the wagon seat beside me, dressed as a wool merchant’s wife, and I felt her fury through the boards.“Kneel,” the guard said again.Nine years ago, my knees would have been on the ground before he finished the word. I remembered the sting of it, the cold floor, the way my heart used to shrink to the size of a pea. I drew a long breath. Then I dropped my eyes, curled my shoulders inward, and slid off the wagon onto my knees in the road.“Forgive me, sir,” I whispered. My voice came out thin and frightened. “I was only afraid of the dust.”“Hah.” He nudg

POV: Lyra Thorne“My cousin Lyra died in a barn, nine years ago. So whoever you are, take your hands off my anvil, or I will break them.” The hammer in his fist did not shake.Rookhaven lay in a bowl of gray hills, a cluster of slate roofs and smoking chimneys above a fast, cold river. The smithy stood at the end of the lane, a low, black building roaring with heat. Inside, the air tasted of coal and hot iron. Sparks danced on the floor. A man stood at the forge with his back to me, tall and broad shouldered, his sleeves rolled to the elbows.“Aldric?” I whispered.He turned. He was twenty six now, with a scar through one eyebrow and coal smudged across his jaw. My cousin had been a gangly seventeen year old when I last saw him, all elbows and teasing. This stranger had my grandfather’s chin. The shock of it hit me in the knees. He moved the way my father had moved, slow and sure, with an easy strength that made the whole forge seem smaller around him.“I do not know you.” His voice w

POV: Lyra Thorne“You knew.” My voice shook so hard I could barely get the words out. “You knew they might be alive, and you let me cry at those graves for nine years.”We were in the back room of Aldric’s smithy. A single lamp sat on the table between us, and the shadows wavered on the walls. Rhea stood against the door, small and gray, her hands twisting in her shawl. Aldric leaned in the corner with his arms crossed. Briar and Dane waited outside.“I did not know,” Rhea said. “I hoped. There is a difference.”“Is there?”“There is a terrible one.” Her eyes were red. “Let me tell you, Lyra. All of it. Then you can send me away.”I nodded once. I could not trust my voice.“I was Marianne’s apprentice for sixteen years,” she began. “Her second Keeper. When I was young, she taught me the Roll, the rites, the laws. We were closer than sisters. A week before the fire, we quarreled. She wanted me to take the Keeper’s Roll out of the hall and hide it. I thought she was being foolish. I tol

POV: Kaelan Ashwood“The lead disc is gone, Alpha. The evidence room was locked, the door was whole, and somebody walked in and out with a key only seven people in this hall hold.”Marcus’s voice cracked in the dim corridor. It was past midnight. The torches burned low in their brackets, and every shadow looked like a man waiting.“Seven keys,” I said.“The seven elders. Nobody else. The Alpha holds a spare, but you were with me all day.”“Which means one of them lent it.” I rubbed my eyes. A second hawk had come that afternoon, from Dane this time, a quick scrawl about a tunnel and a river and a violet list. My gut had not unclenched since. “Or one of them walked in himself.”“What do you want to do?”“Bait.”A grim smile touched his mouth. “I had hoped you would say that.”“And if it is Wynne herself?” Marcus asked quietly.“Then I will be very sad,” I said. “But I will watch.”We worked until dawn. Marcus’s tin copy of the disc, painted gray, went into the locked cabinet. The door

POV: Lyra Thorne“The lavender lady says you are a liar, Lyra Thorne, and that you left me to burn.” The boy’s voice cracked on my name. He was fifteen, thin as a rake, and his hands shook around a pitchfork.Harrowgate smelled of horse and rain. We had ridden three days south through rolling fields, then swapped our fine cloaks for filthy ones and slipped into the walled town of Alpha Strand, a known friend of Titus Crane. By evening, Dane had found the stable at the end of the lane. And at the back of it, shoveling hay with his shoulders hunched, was a boy who had Thorne gray eyes.“Tam,” I breathed.He flinched. The pitchfork lowered an inch. “How do you know my name?”“Because I held you the day you were born.” I took one slow step, then another, my palms open. Behind me, Briar kept watch at the door, and Rhea and Aldric hovered in the shadows. “You were red and angry and loud as a goose. You grabbed my finger and would not let go.”“That is a story.” His lip curled, though his ey