Luna Forsaken (Arya and James) novel Chapter 118

118 The Smell of a Setup

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Meno

James’s POV

“Stop digging.”

The line went dead before I could answer.

I stood in my office with my phone still pressed to my ear, staring at nothing while Marcel’s voice kept echoing inside my skull like a threat nailed into the wall.

Stop digging.

No greeting.

No pretense of concern.

No explanation for why he was calling me directly and speaking like he had a right to command me in my own pack.

Just that one sentence.

Slow. Cold. Certain.

Mowered the phone and looked at the screen as if I might somehow pull a different meaning out of it if I stared long enough.

There wasn’t one.

My jaw locked.

A hard, cold thought settled in my chest.

He knew too much.

He knew I was asking questions. He knew I was digging. He knew enough to call and cut me off before I found what he was afraid of.

Which meant my phone had been tapped.

Or watched.

Or somebody close enough to my movements was feeding him information fast.

Either way, the message was the same.

I was not dealing with a difficult ally.

138 The Smell of a Setup

I was dealing with a man who felt comfortable enough to warn me like I was already in his pocket

A sick anger rolled through me.

Mettu

Jasper stirred inside me, low and mean, the sound of him crawling up from the dark place where rage

and instinct met.

I told you he stank.

“I know,” I muttered.

The words came out rough.

My throat felt tight. My chest felt heavier than it should have. Not just anger. Not just suspicion

Regret

It came in hard and ugly because the moment Marcel’s threat made the trap clearer, everything behind

it sharpened too.

How had I been stupid enough to trust him this far?

How had I let myself get this deep with a man like Marcel Rainhorn controlling the pace, the pressure,

the access, the fear?

I sank into the chair behind my desk and braced my forearms on my thighs, phone hanging loose in

my hand Outside the office window, men were moving across the yard, rebuilding damaged sections,

hauling lumber, checking perimeters, trying to put shape back into what had almost been taken from

Us

Almost

My stomach twisted.

If Arya had not held that pack together while I was away.

If she had not stepped into command.

If she had broken when they expected her to break,

I would have come home to nothing

No pack

No land

No house.

Men

No title worth defending.

A rogue again.

The thought should have humiliated me because of what it said about my absence, but what tore through me harder was the next truth right behind it.

Arya saved what was mine while I destroyed what was ours.

1 shut my eyes for one second and saw her again.

The banquet.

Her crying.

The memory hit so hard I sucked in a sharp breath.

Arya never cried like that.

Not in front of people. Not where anyone could use it. She burned. She fought. She lashed. She held herself together even when she was furious enough to shake.

But that night,

She had looked helpless.

Afraid

And I had seen it.

1 had seen it and still chosen suspicion.

Still chosen Marcel’s urgency.

Still chosen the signing

Still chosen the pressure of what could be gained over the woman standing in front of me, breaking in

a way that should have warned me something was deeply wrong

My heart felt like it was being crushed from the inside.

Jasper snarled, the sound scraping through my skull

She was innocent.

I pressed my thumb hard against my forehead. “I know now.

You should have known then.

I exhaled a bitter laugh that he

That was the worst part of it.

Looking back, the signs were there. Too many of them.

Arya’s fear.

Arya’s confusion.

The timing.

The poison.

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