Alpha's Discarded Luna (Talia) novel Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Talia’s POV

Aeson was drawing when I got home.

“Mom.” His eyes lit up when he saw me. “Can you make the Saint–Honoré? The one with the little cream puffs. I want to

eat.”

For a second I forgot the piano. The hospital. The cold word difficult.

He hadn’t asked me for anything in months.

“Of course,” I said, before I could think better of it. “I’ll make it tonight.”

He smiled at me.

Aeson couldn’t eat what other children ate. Eggs, dairy, tree nuts, refined sugar–one wrong bite and his throat closed. A Saint–Honoré is built on every single thing that could kill him. To make him one that wouldn’t, I needed substitutes most shops didn’t carry.

It was still raining.

1 went anyway. Three markets across the city, then a specially:21

< Chapter 4

grocer near the old quarter that kept the aquafaba and the rice cream I needed. By the time I got home my shoes were ruined and my hands were shaking with cold.

I baked through the night.

I piped each tiny puff by hand. I built the caramel low and slow so it wouldn’t scorch. I stacked the ring, dressed it, set the last puff on top just before dawn, and stood back and looked at it.

It was beautiful. It was safe for him.

Then I carried it upstairs.

His door was open a crack. I heard Martha’s voice first, low and

unsure.

-but these are the Luna’s things, Aeson. I can’t just ”

“Take them to the basement.” My son’s voice, certain, bored. “All of it. Mom’s room too.”

I stopped on the stair.

“Imema’s going to have a baby. A little brother for me.” A pause. “Dad says when she moves in she shouldn’t have to see Mom’s stuff everywhere. It’ll make her sad. And sad isn’t good for the baby.”

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Chapter 4

“Does your mother know?”

“Dad’s taking care of it. He’s sending her somewhere tomorrow so it’s easier.” A drawer slid shut. “Come on, Martha. Before she’s back.”

I don’t know how I got down the stairs.

A baby. Imema was pregnant.

And tomorrow, while they emptied my life into the basement,

Aires would have me sent away so it would be easier.

I used to think only my husband didn’t love me.

Now I knew. My son didn’t either.

The family I’d given five years to wasn’t mine.

I set the cake down on the wet step, very gently.

Then I walked out into the yard until the house was just a shape

behind the rain.

I could feel the matebond–thin and gold and humming.

He’d marked me after we married. Sealed the bond with his own teeth, then spent five years acting like it cost him nothing. I’d carried it the whole time, that warm sealed thread, telling myself

Chapter 4

a mark like that had to mean something.

It meant I’d have to tear it out by the root.

I reached for the thread.

“I, Talia Cooper, reject you, Aires Perseus, Alpha of Blue Ridge, as my mate.”

And I pulled.

The pain was beyond anything. Like peeling skin from muscle. Like every nerve I had drawing tight at once and tearing. My wolf screamed–she’d been silent so long I’d forgotten she could –and I went down on my knees in the mud and pulled anyway, hand over hand, ripping out something that had grown into me for five years.

Aires‘ POV

As always, I spent the evening with Imema.

୮

Since she’d come back, I’d taken to watching her play in the

evenings.

I sat back and watched the candlelight move over her face, waiting to feel the way I used to when she played–that quickening in my chest.

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Chapter 4

It didn’t come.

The longer I watched, the less it was her hands on the keys. Her pale gold hair seemed to darken at the edges of my vision. Her fingers lengthened, surer, coaxing out a sound deeper than anything Imema had ever played–a piece I knew, though I couldn’t say from where. And when she turned her head, just slightly, toward the candlelight, it was become Imema Talia.

I blinked, and she was gone. Imema again–pale hair, soft hands, the same simple melody. Nothing had changed.

I frowned into my wine. Why was I thinking of Talia at all. She was the schemer. The snare. The debt I would never finish collecting. Imema was the one playing for me now. Imema was the one I was supposed to want.

I lifted the glass to drown the thought

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But the wine was halfway to my mouth when it hit me.

Pain. Sudden, enormous, straight through the chest, like a hand had closed around my heart and torn. The glass slipped. Shattered on the floor. I was on my feet without remembering standing, one fist knotted in my own shirt, unable to breathe.

The music stopped. “Aires?” Imema half–rose, alarmed. “What’s wrong?”

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< Chapter 4

I couldn’t answer her.

Inside me, Vincent had gone insane.

1. NO. He threw himself against the inside of my skull, howling, frantic.

THE MATEBOND.

My wolf’s voice cracked, raw with a grief I had never once heard in him in thirty years.

My mate severed it.

B

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Alpha’s Discarded Luna