Alpha's Discarded Luna (Talia) novel Chapter 289

Alpha’s Discarded Luna

Chapter 286

Aires’ POV

The underground parking garage of Nick’s luxury high-rise is freezing, the hum of the concrete building doing nothing to dull the frantic, discordant piano keys still ringing in my head.

I bypass the front security desk entirely, stepping into the private elevator that leads directly to his penthouse suite. My fingers grip the spare electronic key card in my pocket: a token of lifelong pack brotherhood, a symbol of a trust that has never been questioned since we were boys learning to hunt in the northern woods.

The elevator doors slide open with a silent, metallic hiss. I step directly into the small entrance foyer of his penthouse, my movements quiet, deliberate, and entirely unannounced. I don’t ring the bell. I don’t want a grand greeting or a barrage of questions about why the Alpha of the pack is wandering the streets at midnight looking like a ghost. I just want to walk into his living room, find his heavy crystal decanter, and pour enough burning bourbon down my throat to paralyze my

overactive senses.

I slide the key card through the electronic lock. The mechanism clicks softly, the heavy oak door swinging open into the absolute darkness of the expansive apartment.

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The penthouse is completely dim, the modern furniture casting long, jagged shadows across the polished floorboards under the pale moonlight. The space is dead quiet, except for a sharp, familiar voice drifting into the living room from the open glass balcony doors. It is Nick.

I pause on the plush rug near the entrance foyer, my hand freezing on the doorknob. His voice doesn’t carry the usual relaxed, cheerful tone he uses when we are throwing back drinks after a long pack meeting. It is lower. It is a gravelly, venomous rasp that immediately makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. My wolf instincts, already raw and hyper-sensitive from the suffocating dread that chased me out of my mansion, snap to attention.

I slip off my leather jacket, letting it drop silently onto a nearby bench, and take three quiet, measured steps toward the center of the dark living room. The cool midnight wind rushes through the open terrace doors, carrying the sharp scent of expensive cologne and ozone, but beneath it, my nose picks up the sour, distinct tang of malicious excitement.

Nick is walking back and forth along the glass railing of the balcony, a sleek black phone pressed tightly to his ear.

“I am telling you, everything is set perfectly,” Nick laughs into the receiver, the sound a sharp, ugly bark that cuts through the quiet apartment like a rusty blade. He stops his pacing, leaning. his elbows against the metal railing as he looks down

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Chapter 286

glittering city grid below. “The tracking team just confirmed her location ten minutes ago. The little bitch has been locking herself inside that independent recording studio for forty-eight hours straight, entirely blind to the world.”

My breath catches painfully in my chest. Her. The word lands like a heavy block of ice in my stomach. The frantic, discordant melody in my skull screeches to a violent halt, replaced by a thumping, deafening rush of my own blood in my ears.

“The best part?” Nick continues, a low, malicious chuckle escaping his throat as he shifts the phone to his other ear. “She left her phone sitting right on top of the studio mixing console. She has absolutely no way to call Raymond, no way to page Jack, and no way to reach anyone. She is completely cut off from help. She thinks she is completely safe in her little musical sanctuary, but she is walking straight into a black hole.”

I approach the glass doors, my footsteps entirely non-existent on the dark hardwood floor, my body melting into the deepest shadows of the heavy velvet drapes. I stop just inches from the open terrace frame, my eyes locked onto the back of my lifelong friend’s head.

The illusion of the naive, loyal pack brother-the boy who always had my back, the man I assumed was a little foolish but entirely harmless-shatters into a million jagged, irrecoverable pieces right before my eyes.

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“The vans are already stationed two blocks away,” Nick brags loudly into the phone, his voice dripping with an absolute, predatory satisfaction that makes my stomach turn in violent

revulsion. “As soon as she crosses the isolated 12th intersection

on her walk back to the transit line, my hired goons will corner her. Twenty of the meanest underground mercenaries money can buy. I told the leader explicitly: show her the true price of being a slut. She wants to use powerful men to her advantage and humiliate our circle? Now she will know exactly what it is like to be taken advantage of by real monsters until she is nothing but a bag of bones.”

Nick pauses, listening to the voice on the other end, a proud, vicious smirk visible in his reflection against the dark glass pane. “By tomorrow morning, she won’t even be able to look at a stage, let alone perform. She’ll be lucky if she doesn’t swallow a bottle of pills out of sheer despair.”

I freeze.

Every muscle in my body turns to solid stone, the sheer, horrific weight of the exposure paralyzing my limbs. The blood in my veins goes entirely dead, a suffocating, freezing void opening up inside my chest. Nick. My pack brother. My trusted adviser. He didn’t just harbor a petty grievance over the gala; he forged a lethal, depraved contract with underground monsters to systematically destroy the mother of my children. To violate her until her spirit was entirely erased.

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A violent, catastrophic fury ignites in the deepest depths of my soul, so immense and absolute that it threatens to tear my human flesh apart. My wolf inside me doesn’t just howl; it rears back with a lethal, crimson rage, its teeth baring, its claws scratching wildly at my consciousness to be unleashed. The atmospheric pressure in the dark penthouse drops instantly, the air turning thick, heavy, and suffocating with the sudden, explosive rise of my Alpha aura.

The glass doors of the balcony begin to vibrate softly under the sheer force of my suppression.

Nick freezes on the terrace, his laughter dying instantly in his throat as his wolf instincts pick up the terrifying, murderous presence expanding right behind his back. He drops his hand from the railing, his body turning rigid as a cold sweat breaks out across his neck. He slowly begins to turn his head around to face the dark room, his eyes wide with a sudden, primal terror.

But I don’t give him the time to look at me. I don’t unleash the growl ripping at my throat.

The 12th intersection. She is there right now. Alone.

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