Luna Forsaken (Arya and James) novel Chapter 103

103 A Kiss on a Broken Claim

Arya’s POV

My body betrayed me so fast it was obscene. Heat spread down my spine. My breath shuddered. My thighs tightened reflexively, and I could have screamed with the humiliation of it.

Lev’s eyes dropped to my throat where my pulse was racing.

When he spoke again, his voice was softer, lower, infinitely more dangerous.

“Your body keeps telling the truth first.”

“I hate you,” I whispered.

His mouth curved, barely. “No, you don’t.”

The certainty in it nearly made me slap him.

I moved before I could think.

I twisted sharply, drove my palm against his chest, and shoved hard while trying to stand at the same time. This time I put my weight into it, my shoulder turning, hips shifting, using skill instead of panic.

His arm locked around my waist.

I got half a rise before he pulled me back down.

The movement was controlled but strong enough to rip a gasp from me as my back hit his chest again and his other hand caught my forearm, pinning it lightly across my stomach.

My wolf surged.

My skin lit up.

Every nerve in me screamed with anger and something much more dangerous.

“Again,” he said quietly.

I twisted my head to glare at him. “What?”

His breath moved against the side of my face. “You wanted to get free. You used more force that time. Better angle. You hesitated when you felt resistance.”

I stared at him in disbelief.

He was coaching me.

* 103 A Kiss on a Broken Claim

While holding me.

On his lap.

Like this was normal.

Like I wasn’t one heartbeat away from either clawing him or kissing him.

“You’re insane,” I said.

“Probably.”

“Let me go.”

He loosened his grip on my forearm but kept his arm at my waist. “Try again.”

I should not have.

I knew I should not have.

But anger was easier than the way my body was reacting, easier than the confusion, easier than the echo of his mouth near my mark and the memory of James’s hands on me only in violence and argument by the end.

So I did.

I jerked my elbow back. He shifted.

I dropped my weight left and tried to slide free. His thigh blocked mine.

I hooked my heel against the chair leg and pushed. He adjusted before I gained leverage.

Every move I made, he read.

Every mistake, he absorbed and countered without strain.

It should have infuriated me.

It did.

It also woke something old in me, something before the cell, before the chains, before the humiliation. The part of me that had sparred till my lungs burned. The part that loved the clean honesty of force and skill. The part that felt most alive when her body had a purpose beyond enduring pain.

My breathing changed.

Lev felt it instantly.

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< 103 A Kiss on a Broken

“There,” he murmured.

I froze, panting lightly.

His hand tightened once at my waist, not restraining, grounding.

“That,” he said near my ear, “is the part I want. Not the panic. Not the grief. The fighter.”

My throat tightened unexpectedly.

No one had spoken to that part of me in what felt like years.

Not since everything became strategy and politics and sacrifice and what I should endure for the

pack.

James had once admired my strength.

Then he started treating it like a problem to manage.

Lev, infuriatingly, was treating it like a weapon to sharpen.

My eyes burned.

I was so angry I could have bitten him.

He must have felt the shift in me again, because his voice changed, turning quieter, rougher.

“Good,” he said. “Be angry.”

“I am.”

“I know.”

His fingers moved from my waist to my collarbone, then slowly, deliberately, up to the edge of my

collar.

My breath hitched.

I caught his wrist immediately. “Lev.”

There was warning in it. Real warning.

He looked at my hand gripping him, then up at my face. “I know.”

“Then stop.”

“Do you want me to?”

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< 103 A Kiss on a B

The question was a trap because it was too honest.

My heart pounded so hard it hurt.

I should have said yes immediately.

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