Luna Forsaken (Arya and James) novel Chapter 137

137 The House She Left Behind

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James’s POVO

The pack felt wrong without her.

Not quiet, Nightwind was never quiet anymore, but wrong.

Like the walls had shifted while I was gone and settled back crooked.

Men still trained in the yard. Guards still changed shifts. Patrol reports still came in on my phone every few hours. The generators still hummed behind the east building. Trucks still rolled through the supply gate. People still bowed their heads when I passed and called me Alpha.

But the centre was gone.

Arya had been the centre even when we fought.

Even when she was angry. Even when she challenged me in front of my own men. Even when I was too stubborn, too cornered, too damned proud to admit she was holding more together than I was.

Now every hallway reminded me of her and every room reminded me what it cost to doubt her.

I stood in my office staring at the map on the wall and saw none of it.

Borders. Patrol routes. Rogue movement markers. Supply roads. Union territories. Pending

certification notes. Marcel’s influence lines. Boris’s region.

I saw all of it and all I could think was: Arya was right.

Jasper moved under my skin, a low, restless pressure, not separate from me but never silent anymore.

Too late to think it now, he growled inside me.

Ishu

my

“I know.”

once.

The words came out rough. Empty office. Closed door. No one to hear me talk to myself.

Or to the wolf that was myself.

I dragged a hand over my jaw and looked at the phone on my desk.

I had already checked with scouts. Twice.

Dragonclaw sightings confirmed. Maxwell had moved in and out of Silverfang territory recently. Union-

137 The House She Left Behind

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level movement. Security tighter than usual. And Arya, my mate, my Luna, the woman I failed, was in Dragonclaw territory under Maxwell’s protection.

Safe, if safe was a thing she could still feel.

Beyond my reach, definitely.

The knowledge should have eased something in me.

It did not.

It only split me in half.

One half wanted my keys, a truck, a road north, and whatever humiliation waited at the end of it. I wanted to stand in front of Maxwell’s gate until he ordered men to throw me out. I wanted one look at her. One. To know she was breathing. To know she still hated me to my face instead of in the silence

where I deserved it.

The other half looked at the reports piling on my desk and knew leaving now would be another

betrayal.

Nightwind was standing on damaged legs.

Union pressure. Marcel circling. Boris emboldened. Rumours spreading. Internal fear still simmering after the attack. Men watching me for certainty while I was running on guilt and instinct.

If I left without stabilising things, I could come back to a pack already half-swallowed.

If I stayed, every hour felt like another coward’s excuse.

Jasper shoved harder against my ribs.

Go get her.

“And come back to ashes?” I muttered, jaw tight.

She held this place while you were gone.

The words hit exactly where he meant them to.

I looked away from the map and braced both hands on the desk.

“She shouldn’t have had to.”

Silence.

Not peace. Just the kind that comes before another blow.

137 The House She Left Behind

A knock sounded on the door, two quick raps, then one. Nixon.

“Come in.”

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He entered with his phone in one hand and dust still on his boots, expression set in that controlled way he used when he was carrying something bad and trying not to wear it before speaking. He shut the door behind him and stayed standing.

“Nixon.”

“Alpha.”

His eyes flicked over me once, reading more than I wanted him to. We had fought together too long for me to hide much from him.

“What is it?” I asked.

He exhaled. “More from Silverfang.”

My shoulders locked.

He stepped closer and put a file printout on my desk, but he spoke first. “Word’s spreading through Union circles. Fast. People are talking about what happened in the hall.”

I held his gaze. “Say it.”

Nixon did not soften it.

“They’re saying the two women, Lisa and Margret, lied against Arya,” he said. “That one of them confessed in public. That Rebecca offered them Silverfang membership and protection in exchange for their testimony. That Leah told them to pin the poisoning on Arya.”

For one second I felt nothing.

Then everything hit at once.

I already knew.

I had smelled the rot in it. I had heard the contradictions. I had replayed that day so many times my skull felt split open. I had listened to the prisoners, to the timing, to the lies wrapped around half- truths. I had already reached the point where denial was insult, not defence.

But hearing it again, hearing it as rumour moving across packs, hearing the shape of it from another man’s mouth, hearing confirmation even dressed in gossip, felt like someone da blade in slow

and twisted.

My hand tightened on the edge of the desk until the wood creaked.

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Jasper surged with rage and grief, both ours, one body trying to hold too much.

They set her up. They set her up and you let them.

I looked at Nixon because if I looked away I might put my fist through the wall.

“You’re sure?”

Nixon’s jaw flexed. “As sure as I can be without standing in that hall myself. Same details from different mouths. The story is consistent.”

My laugh came out low and ugly. “Consistent. That’s more than what I got in my own house.”

Nixon didn’t answer.

Didn’t need to.

I looked down at the printout and then past it, seeing a different room, a different day.

Arya crying at the banquet.

Not angry first. Not sharp-tongued. Crying.

Arya.

1 should have known right there.

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