Luna Forsaken (Arya and James) novel Chapter 138

138 Calling Maxwell

James’s POV

Nixon watched me without speaking.

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I dialed Silverfang’s main line. A guard answered. Formal. Nervous the moment I identified myself.

“Put Marcel on.”

“Alpha Marcel is unavailable.”

“Then put Rebecca on.”

A pause. “Luna Rebecca is also unavailable.”

I smiled without humour. “How convenient.”

“Alpha Nightwind, if you would like to leave a,”

I ended the call before he finished.

Jasper paced hard in my chest.

He’s hiding. He knows.

“He’s cornered,” I said. “There’s a difference.”

Both smell the same.

I called again anyway.

And again.

Nothing.

Each failed call stripped patience off me in layers.

Not because I expected honesty from Marcel now. I was past that. But because the silence itself told

me what he thought he could do, delay, control access, reset the story, decide which truths moved and

which died.

Lisa and Margret were my pack members.

Whatever they had done, whatever they deserved, he had no right to hold them indefinitely like

bargaining pieces.

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And if he had already lost control of them to Dragonclaw, as the rumours implied, then he was hiding from me because he knew I would hear what that meant.

I set the phone down too carefully and looked at Nixon. “Get me Maxwell.”

He blinked once. “Directly?”

“Formally.”

His mouth tightened in understanding.

A request, then. Not a personal call. Not James begging man to man. Alpha to Alpha.

Maybe that would get answered where pride would not.

Nixon made the call from his phone first, then handed it to me once Dragonclaw’s outer office

confirmed identity and routed through. I waited through two transfers and a long stretch of silence

that felt intentional.

Then Maxwell’s voice came on, rough and controlled.

“James.”

No greeting. No title.

“Maxwell.”

“What do you want?”

Straight to the bone. Fine. I deserved less.

I kept my tone level. “I’m requesting an audience.”

A beat.

“For what?”

The truth sat on my tongue in too many forms. To ask what happened at Silverfang. To ask if Arya is safe. To ask if she hates me enough to be healing. To ask if the rumours are true. To ask if you’ll let

me stand on your land long enough to tell her I know,

What I said was, “I need truth.”

The line went quiet enough that I wondered if he’d ended the call.

Then he spoke, colder.

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“Truth came looking for you before. You chose poorly.”

I took the hit because he was right.

“I know.”

Another silence. I could hear movement on his end, boots maybe, a door shutting, wind across a

receiver.

“I won’t be around,” Maxwell said at last. “So no.”

The refusal was clean. Final.

My grip tightened on the phone. “Maxwell,”

“No.”

I shut my eyes briefly.

This was the part where old James would push harder, demand, posture, make it worse.

I swallowed that version.

“If you return,” I said carefully, “I hope you’ll reach out.”

Silence.

Then, flatter than before, “I’ll think about it.”

The line went dead.

I stood there looking at the dark screen for a moment longer than made sense before handing Nixon

his phone back.

He slid it into his pocket. “No?”

“He says he won’t be around.”

Nixon’s mouth twitched in something like bitter understanding. “That could mean anything.”

“It means no,” I said.

And it meant more than that.

It meant Maxwell still saw me as a risk to her. A man who brought damage. A man too late to his own

lessons.

Again, fair.

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Nixon shifted his weight and watched me for a moment before asking, “What will you do about Leah knowing?”

I looked at him.

He went on, voice lower. “These rumours are moving fast. Silverfang’s unstable. If it reaches the pack through the wrong mouths first, she’ll hear. If she hears, she’ll try to shape it before you do.”

I almost said she already does that.

But something in his face made me hold it.

He wasn’t asking if Leah would cause trouble.

He was asking what I intended to do now that the poison had a name and the lie was starting to

surface.

My office suddenly felt too small.

I moved around the desk and stood by the window, looking down at the yard where two younger fighters were drilling under Archie’s second. Beyond them, the outer wall. Beyond that, trees and roads

and packs and traps and the mess I had called strategy.

What would I do?

Go after Arya and risk leaving Nightwind weak?

Stay and let Leah continue moving through my house like she belonged here?

Confront Marcel openly and force a war I might not win?

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