All Chapters of The Human Luna's Goodbye: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

Elara's POV"Alright," he said. "Don't be upset anymore. I'll stay close these next few days." A pause. "I've been thinking about what Landon said."I went still."Another baby," he said. "He's right. It's the surest shot we have. You know the numbers, Elara. Thirty-six packs, and fewer than sixty pups born this whole year. We've screened every viable donor there is. The one Lily used..."He stopped. Then he started over, more carefully."It may have been the only match in the country."He kissed me.I let it happen. I was tired. The kind of tired where anything familiar felt like a life raft. Even him. Even this. And for one dizzy second, it was easy to forget why anything was wrong at all.This kiss felt like a routine. There was no love in it. Maybe I was just too tired. Maybe I was too worried about Mia.He kissed me again, deeper, and walked me back until my shoulders met the wall by the kitchen door. One hand braced against it beside my head, the other sliding down to my hip wit

Elara's POV"Not yet. He's picking us up tomorrow morning for the resort." I paused. "I'm going to tell him before we leave."He looked at me over the menu. "He's not going to take it well.""He doesn't take anything well.""This is different. This'll hit that territorial thing in him. And that thing doesn't do reason.""I know." I unfolded my napkin. "I can handle it."He set the menu down. "I'll call her after dinner. You'll have your appointment by morning."We ordered. The pasta came. We talked about the BioHub timeline, a supply contract I was still negotiating, and a paper I'd been blocked on for three weeks. Neither of us mentioned Orion again until the wine was nearly gone and the restaurant had gone quiet around us.That was when the door opened.I heard her before I saw her. Veronica's voice always carried. She was the kind of woman who never once wondered if people wanted to hear her.She came in with two women I didn't know, laughing at something, mid-sentence. She was pas

Orion's POVI had never agreed to anything this absurd in my life.And yet here I was, sitting in a waiting room that smelled of antiseptic. Elara sat next to me filling out forms like it was any other Tuesday, and I sat there trying to wrap my head around what I'd just done. I was going to father a child in a clinic. Through a procedure. With some stranger handling it in the next room.I had agreed. Without conditions.I pressed the heel of my hand against my forehead and tried to find the moment it had happened. The exact second I lost that argument. I couldn't find it, which was its own humiliation for a man who prided himself on never losing. There hadn't been a single moment. She had simply laid out the only world available to me, and I had stepped into it, because the alternative was Mia. And Mia was not something I was willing to gamble with.But that was how I'd ended up here.I looked at Elara across the waiting room. She was speaking quietly to the receptionist, handing back

Elara's POVI thought about that kiss for the entire drive back to pick up Mia.I didn't want to think about it. It was a Thursday morning, I'd just left a fertility clinic, and I had a child to pick up. But I couldn't stop. Eleven months of divorce, a mate bond formally severed, and my body still remembered everything I'd ordered it to forget.He had kissed me the way he always had. Like I was something he intended to keep. Like hesitation was a language he had never learned. Like nothing had changed.And I had stood there.Not because I had forgiven him. Not because the past five years hadn't happened.I had stood there because I was twenty-six years old and I had spent five years responding to exactly that kind of kiss. Muscle memory. That was all it was.I drove through four traffic lights telling myself that was all it was.I was still telling myself that when I parked outside Fiona's building.I stopped trying to believe it and simply got out of the car.******Golden Spring Res

Elara's POVAnd now here was his voice, carrying through the grasses of a resort pergola, asking his sister: "Did Celeste tell you that Lily is my daughter?"Not: "Lily is not my daughter."Not: "That's not true."He asked a question. Calm and careful, like he didn't know yet what his sister had heard. It could mean anything. And the answer was on the other side of that wall, where I couldn't get to it.I waited.The grass shifted in the wind. Veronica answered, but I couldn't make out a word. Too quiet, too fast. The resort noise ate half of it, and my own heartbeat ate the rest. It was pounding so hard I could barely hear anything else.I heard only the question.Not the answer.The receipt tore in my hand. I hadn't realized I was gripping it that hard.I pushed off from the wall.I told myself I didn't know what it meant. I told myself there were other ways to read it. I told myself that a question was not a confirmation, that I had only caught one side of one exchange, that I was