All Chapters of THE ALPHA'S FORBIDDEN LUNA: Chapter 241 - Chapter 250

POV: Kaelan Ashwood“Do not breathe, Alpha. That hawk is not carrying a love letter. It is carrying every plan you have made to Titus Crane, and the hand that feeds it is climbing the stairs right now.”Piers whispered it against my ear, and I stopped breathing.The records room smelled of dust, lamp oil, and damp paper. Rain drummed on the roof. I crouched behind a tall shelf of tariff books with Piers on my left and Marcus on my right, my knee aching, my fingers numb. Every lantern was covered with black cloth. Across the floor, seven hawk cages stood in a row like small, sleeping prisons.Dane had ridden into the yard at dusk, gray with mud. He had stood in front of me, twisting his hat, and said it all in a rush. She is alive. She heard the voices too. She tasted your blood, and she is sorry. I had made him say it twice. Then I had gone to the baths and sat in the steam with my face in my hands, because it was the only place no one could see me.She was walking into Titus Crane’s

POV: Kaelan Ashwood“Torches on the east bank, Alpha. Crimson Fang does not light torches unless it wants to be seen. Either they are fools, or they want us to charge.”Marcus’s whisper was barely louder than the river. I lay flat in the wet reeds with mud soaking through my coat, and I watched four small flames wink across the black water.“They are not fools,” I murmured.“No. Which is why I do not like this.”It was the second night since the hawk trap, and a cold fog had crawled up the ford and swallowed everything. I smelled river weed, horse sweat, and old iron. Somewhere in the willows behind me, two hundred Voss riders waited with their hands over their horses’ noses. Rook was beside me, panting like a puppy, trying not to.“Quiet,” I whispered.“I am quiet.”“You are breathing like a bellows.”“I am nervous!”“Be nervous more softly.”Pell had done his part. Two days ago he had sent the false note in his careful hand, and it said the Voss riders would cross at midnight. Our r

POV: Kaelan Ashwood“Sit down, Kaelan. I will give you half of the truth tonight, and you will spend the rest of your life wishing I had given you none of it.”My father said it without lifting his head. He sat on the cot in the farthest cell with his back against the wall and a single candle burning at his feet. The chain on his ankle was bright with wear. He had lost weight in the weeks since the council locked him in. His hair, once black and proud, had gone the color of ash.“I did not come to hear you give orders,” I said.“You came because you are afraid.” He finally looked up. His eyes were mine, gray and tired. “Sit.”I stayed on my feet. The cell smelled of damp stone, tallow, and old straw. Somewhere in the walls, water dripped like a slow clock. Behind me, Marcus stood in the doorway with his hand on his sword and his face carefully empty.“Say it,” I told my father. “Say what you did.”“I sold a map.”The words hung between us. I felt my fists close.“A map of the Keeper’s

POV: Kaelan Ashwood“The Alpha has a Luna who sleeps in Crimson Fang’s house, a father who rots in our cellar, and a river full of dead raiders. Tell me again why this council should wait.”Elder Maren stood at the head of the long oak table with her thin hands flat on the wood. She was a stiff, narrow woman with a voice like a dry stick snapping, and she had hated Lyra from the first day. The council chamber was cold, and it smelled of beeswax and clove incense, the thick sweet smoke the elders burned before every moon session. Sunlight fell in gray bars through the high windows.I sat at the foot of the table with my hands folded and my back straight. Marcus stood behind my chair. Orla sat beside me with her arms crossed, looking as if she would bite the next person to speak.“I swore one moon,” I said evenly. “The moon is not yet half gone.”“You swore to bring your Luna home in that time.”“I swore to bring the truth home. She is bringing it.”“From the house of the man who killed

POV: Kaelan Ashwood“Kaelan, the hawk just landed on your balcony with Lyra’s seal on its leg, and it is bleeding. Someone shot it twice before it crossed the border. Read the message before you do anything stupid.”Orla shook me awake with both hands. Gray light pressed at the window. I had fallen asleep at my desk with my cheek on a map, and my neck felt like a snapped rope. On the balcony, a brown hawk crouched on the rail with one wing hanging wrong. It looked at me with a fierce gold eye and clacked its beak.“Easy,” I said, and held out my wrist. “Easy, brave one.”Orla cleaned the wound and wrapped it while I untied the tube. Inside was a tight roll of thin paper covered in Lyra’s quick, slanted hand. My eyes raced down it, and my heart began to hammer.She wrote about the letter, and the scraped date. She wrote about Wren, and the hand at the gate with a key cut into the ring, and a man in a hood who smelled of cloves and paper. She wrote about the stone and what it had shown