All Chapters of THE ALPHA'S FORBIDDEN LUNA: Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

Lyra Thorne's POV"Look at her eyes, Kaelan. Look closely." Thane coughed, and blood ran into his gray beard. "Damon told us the fire took every Thorne. Yet here she stands, breathing, and I am the one who gets to die tonight."The north ridge smelled of frost and pine sap and something metallic underneath. Thane lay against a split boulder with a silver dart buried deep in his shoulder, and the skin around it had already turned a sick, shining gray. Marcus stood over him with a blade drawn. Kaelan stood beside me, so close that his heat pressed against my arm, and I hated how much I needed it."Who fired the dart?" Kaelan asked."Someone who does not like loose ends." Thane laughed again, and it turned into a wet cough. "Someone who was standing right behind me a minute ago. Ask your enforcers how a stranger walks past twelve wolves.""He did not walk past us," Marcus said. "Two of my men saw a cloak go uphill. They followed. Nobody has come back."I crouched beside Thane, and the co

Lyra Thorne's POV"You knew," I said to my best friend, and it was the ugliest sentence I had ever spoken. "For years you scrubbed beside me, and you knew."Briar sat on an overturned flour barrel in the back of the kitchen with her knees pulled up and her face red from crying. Behind her, a slab of the stone floor had been shoved aside, and cold air breathed up from a black square hole, carrying the smell of old iron and damp."I did not know," Briar said. "Not really. Lyra, please, let me explain before you look at me like that.""Like what?""Like I am one of them."That stopped me. I had not realized my face was doing anything at all. I drew a slow breath and folded my arms, because otherwise my hands would shake. "Then explain.""My mother was the head cook before she got sick," Briar said. "When I was little, she used to carry a covered tray down the back stairs at night. Only one tray. Always the same weight. She told me it was for the Alpha's dogs." A hollow laugh. "Ashwood do

Lyra Thorne's POV"I told you I never met your mother," Rhea said, kneeling in the dirt of the courtyard with her hands open in front of her. "That was the first lie. I am here to end all of them."Dawn light turned the frost on the flagstones to spilled glass. Rhea looked older than the woman who had taught me how to crush willow bark and read a fever. Her braid had come loose. Her satchel hung open, and a few dried herbs lay scattered around her knees like small dead things. Kaelan stood beside me, silent. Marcus and Selene watched from the steps. Briar had refused to stay in the kitchen, and I was glad."Get up," I said."I would rather stay down. It is where I belong.""I said get up." My voice came out harder than I meant. "I will not talk to someone who is on her knees. I have spent nine years looking at people from below. I am done."Rhea rose slowly, wincing. Tears stood in her eyes, and she did not wipe them. "You have her spine," she said. "I always noticed that. I told myse

Lyra Thorne's POV"I am not asking for your permission," I said to the man I loved, holding my mother's hairpin so tightly that the point cut my palm. "I am telling you where I am going."Kaelan's face had gone the color of old snow. Marcus stood a few paces back, refusing to look at either of us, and the training yard felt suddenly enormous and empty, as though every wolf in the stronghold had drawn a breath and was waiting."Read the note first," Kaelan said hoarsely.I already had. Marcus had pressed it into my hand along with the pin, and every word had crawled across my skin like a spider. Stone Ford, third night, alone. My mother alive and bleeding somewhere in the mountains while the pack I served pretended nothing was wrong. "I read it," I said. "You have had it since dawn.""Yes.""And you told me nothing.""I wanted to find her first. I wanted you to have answers, not another door with a knife behind it." His voice broke at the edges. "I made a mistake. I know that. I am not

Lyra Thorne's POV"Arrest her," Damon Ashwood said, calmly, in front of every wolf I had ever scrubbed a floor for. "The Omega is a traitor, and she has been meeting with our enemies."The Great Hall of Ashwood is built to make people feel small. The ceiling rises three stories above your head, and the beams are the trunks of ancient oaks, and the long benches along each wall hold the whole pack on days like this. I stood in the middle of the stone floor with river mud drying on my knees and my mother's hairpin hidden in my fist. Hundreds of faces stared down at me. I recognized most of them. I had served them soup.None of them had ever looked at me like this."I did not come here to be arrested," I said, and my voice cracked in the huge silence. "I came because I am tired of whispering.""You came because the Enforcer's men found you crawling out of a drain at dawn," Damon said. He sat in the Alpha's chair, the one Kaelan had refused to sit in since the day he took the title. He loo