Luna Forsaken (Arya and James) novel Chapter 104

104 Choose the Fire

Arya’s POVO

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Metor

My wolf shoved against my skin, whining, wanting more, wanting his scent deeper, wanting to turn

and bare my throat and sink into it.

For one terrifying heartbeat, I almost did.

I almost melted.

I almost let myself lean back into him, let myself open, let myself forget the wreckage and the politics

and the pain and the very simple fact that I did not know what the hell this man would cost me.

The thought cut through the haze like ice.

I shoved him hard.

This time I did not try to stand first. I drove my palm up under his jaw and twisted away at the same

time, using the surprise and my full weight.

He let me go.

I stumbled to my feet, breath ragged, one hand flying to my neck, to the mark, to the burning place his

mouth had just been.

My skin felt branded.

My knees felt weak.

I hated it.

I hated him.

I hated that he was watching me with that same impossible calm while my entire body betrayed me.

“Don’t,” I said, voice shaking with fury. “Do. That. Again.”

Lev remained seated for a beat, looking up at me like I was a storm he had expected.

Then he stood.

The movement was unhurried. He was taller than me by enough that the air changed when he stepped

close.

I retreated one step before I could stop myself.

<104 Choose the Fire

His eyes flicked to my feet. He noticed.

Of course he noticed.

He stopped advancing.

“Good,” he said quietly.

I stared at him, disbelieving. “Did you hear what I just said?”

“Yes.”

“Then why do you look pleased?”

“Because you pushed me off instead of freezing.”

I wanted to throw something at him.

“You kissed me.”

“Yes.”

“Without permission.”

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His gaze held mine. “You told me to stop touching your mark. You didn’t tell me not to claim the space

around it.”

My mouth fell open.

The audacity of him.

The sheer, maddening, controlled audacity.

“You are unbelievable.”

“And you’re shaking.”

That only made me more furious because it was true. My hand was still at my neck, fingers trembling

where his mouth had been. My breathing was uneven. My chest rose and fell too fast. My pulse was

wild.

He took one step closer, slower this time, giving me room to move.

I stayed where I was.

Idiot.

Coward.

<104 Choose the Fire

Traitor, Ria purred.

I ignored her.

Lev’s eyes dropped to my hand at my throat. “You’re fighting the wrong thing.”

I laughed once, harsh. “Of course I am. According to you.”

“According to your body.”

“Stop talking about my body like it belongs to you.”

The air between us changed.

Not colder.

Heavier.

His eyes sharpened in a way that made my stomach tighten.

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“I didn’t say it belongs to me,” he said, voice low. “I said it’s been carrying more pain than you are

admitting.”

My jaw clenched. “You don’t know what I’m admitting.”

“Then tell me.”

I stared at him.

The challenge in the words was clean. No mocking. No coaxing. Just that same maddening demand

for honesty.

Tell me.

Tell him what?

That I woke with panic in my chest and rage in my teeth?

That I still felt phantom silver on my skin sometimes?

That every time I thought of James saying strategy while I bled, something inside me went cold and

savage?

That Lev’s mouth on my neck had lit me up so completely I wanted to cry from the shame of wanting anything at all while my life was still in pieces?

I swallowed and said the one thing that felt safe because it was sharp.

<104 Choose the Fire

“I am not here for comfort.”

His expression didn’t change “Good”

“I’m not here to be wanted”

know

“I’m not here to let another man decide what I need.”

That made his mouth curve faintly again. “Then decide.

I hated how he did that, how he threw the choice back in my hands and still somehow kept the

pressure on.

My fingers were still pressed to the mark. My skin still burned. My wolf was pacing like a caged thing,

angry and hungry and restless.

Justice

That word rose in me again, hard and bright.

1 looked at him and saw not just the man who had kissed my neck, not just the impossible pull of the bond, but the fighter he kept insisting he saw in me. The part I had been too exhausted to protect. The part I needed if I was going to survive what came next.

If I was going to do more than survive.

If I was going to make them answer.

My chin lifted

“Fine,” I said. “You want me to train? We train.

Something dark and pleased flashed in his eyes.

Not thumphant

Satisfied

As if he had expected that answer all along

“Hard,” I added, taking a step forward this time, because if he was going to drag me into this, then would drag blood from it. “No pity. No soft handling because I was hurt. No treating me like glass because of what happened.”

His gaze dropped, very briefly, to my throat again, then returned to my eyes. “I wasn’t planning to.”

<104 Choose the Fire

“Good.”

“You’ll hate me.

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“I already do.”

His mouth almost smiled. “No. You don’t.”

I bared my teeth at him. “Keep saying that and I’ll prove otherwise

“Good,” he repeated, and there was heat in the word now. “Bring that to the yard.”

The image hit me without warning, his hands on me in sparring, his body moving against mine, sweat

and breath and impact, his voice in my ear correcting stance and leverage while my wolf snarled and

my skin remembered that kiss.

My stomach twisted.

My anger sharpened to cover it.

“When?”

“Now.”

Iblinked, “Now?”

He stepped closer, close enough that I had to tilt my head back slightly to keep eye contact. “Before

your head talks you out of it. Because Marcel is a sly enemy to have and you don’t strike me as a

woman who wants saving.”

I should have argued. I should have pointed out breakfast, Maxwell, the fact that my world was still

rubble and I was standing there half–shaken from a neck kiss like some moonstruck fool.

Instead, the fighter in me, bruised, furious, starved, rose.

“Fine”

I turned toward the door.

His hand caught my collar.

Not my arm.

Not my waist

My collar.

< 104 Choose the Fire

Two fingers hooking the fabric lightly, stopping me with insulting ease.

I went still.

Heat rushed through me all over again, immediate and treacherous, because his hand was close to the mark, because I could still feel the heat of his mouth there, because this man seemed to know exactly how to touch me in ways that felt half restraint, half claim.

“Lev,” I said through my teeth.

He stepped into my back, not pressing, just there, his chest a warm line behind me. His hand remained at my collar.

“Before we train,” he said softly, “you answer one thing.”

I closed my eyes briefly. “What.”

“Are you training to stop hurting…” His fingers shifted, brushing the edge of the scarred skin at my neck. “…or to become dangerous again?”

The question slid straight into my ribs.

I opened my eyes and stared at the door, at the wood grain I suddenly could not focus on.

Because the answer was not clean.

I wanted both.

I wanted relief.

I wanted sleep.

I wanted my body not to feel like a battlefield after everyone had gone home.

I also wanted blood.

I wanted James to look at me one day and realise exactly what he had thrown away and exactly what

he had created

I wanted Leah’s smile to crack.

I wanted Marcel to stop speaking like I was collateral.

I wanted every person who watched me break and called it necessary to choke on what I became

after.

My voice came out low and steady.

“Both.”

Silence stretched a beat behind me.

Then I felt it, Lev’s breath at my neck, close enough to raise chills along my skin.

“Good answer,” he murmured.

My fingers curled.

His hand tightened once on my collar, not enough to pull, enough to be felt.

A claim.

My mark throbbed under the memory of his mouth.

I turned my head sharply, intending to throw another warning at him, to put some distance back into the room before I drowned in heat and fury and the violent relief of being seen too clearly.

The door opened.

The sound cracked through the room like a whip.

I jerked back instinctively.

Lev did not.

Maxwell stepped in, one hand still on the door, his presence filling the threshold in a way that felt

deceptively quiet until you saw his eyes.

And his eyes went straight to us.

To me standing rigid, breathing too hard.

To Lev behind me

To Lev’s hand still hooked in the collar of my shirt, fingers near my throat.

Near the cancelled mark

Near the place still burning from his mouth.

Maxwell’s gaze sharpened. His jaw tightened. His eyes narrowed with a dangerous, assessing calm

that made the room feel suddenly much smaller.

“Lev…” he said, voice low and controlled.

A beat of silence.

<104 Choose the Fire

Then, colder:

“Explain.”

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