Luna Forsaken (Arya and James) novel Chapter 140

140 The Calm Before He Arrived

Arya’s POVO

By the next morning, I knew two things with a certainty that felt carved into bone.

I had not slept.

And whatever softness was left in me had come back wrong.

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Dragonclaw woke the way strong packs always did, disciplined, layered, alive. Guards changing posts. Kitchen smoke rising. Footsteps in stone corridors. Voices low, efficient, purposeful. A functioning

world. A protected world.

A world my child would never see.

I stood at the window in the room Maxwell gave me and watched the morning spread pale light over the yard, and all I could think about was chains.

Not mine.

Theirs.

Lisa and Margaret had been brought in late, bound and weeping, their wrists marked raw from iron. I had seen them only long enough to confirm they were real, breathing, terrified, and no longer hidden behind Silverfang walls and Rebecca’s lies.

Margaret had looked at me and folded in on herself like a paper thing dropped in water.

Lisa had tried to speak.

I had walked away before she could.

I knew if I listened too soon, I might break in the wrong direction.

I might cry.

I was done crying in front of traitors.

My fingers tightened on the window ledge until my knuckles whitened.

Ria paced under my skin, restless, sharp, blood-hungry in the way grief sometimes made her.

They lied, she snarled.

I know.

140 The Calm Before He Arrived

They watched us bleed.

I know.

They watched the child die.

My throat tightened.

I pressed my eyes shut for one hard second, then opened them again.

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That was the problem with grief. It never came alone anymore. It came with memory. It came with humiliation. It came with the sound of a hall turning against me. It came with Rebecca’s slap. It came with James’s cold eyes. It came with my own voice cracking while I begged for proof and nobody

cared.

And now it came with two women in chains waiting below Dragonclaw’s stone.

A knock came at my door.

I didn’t answer.

The door opened anyway, because only one person in this house would do that.

Maxwell.

He stepped in, broad and solid, filling the doorway with that quiet Alpha presence that never needed performance. His gaze landed on me, swept once over my face, then shifted to the untouched breakfast tray on the table.

“You haven’t eaten.”

“I’m not hungry.”

His snort was low. “That sentence and truth are strangers.”

I said nothing.

He walked farther into the room, slow enough not to crowd me, and stopped beside the table. “They’ve been secured in the lower holding rooms.”

My pulse kicked once. Hard.

“Good.”

His eyes came back to me. “You asked for them. You’ve got them.”

I turned from the window fully then. “And?”

< 140 The Calm Before He Arrived

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“And before you go down there, I’m asking what you want.” His voice stayed even. “Not what your anger wants in the next ten minutes. You.”

The question hit harder than I expected.

Because last night, in Silverfang, it had felt simple.

Margaret under my hand.

Her hair in my fist.

Rebecca’s face changing as the truth tore its way out.

Marcel slapping his own wife in public when her lie endangered him.

The crowd murmuring. Judging. Recalculating.

The balance shifting.

That had felt like justice beginning.

This morning felt different.

This morning was quieter.

Quieter was dangerous. It made room for memory.

I looked at Maxwell and answered honestly because he had earned that much from me.

“I want them to hurt.”

His gaze didn’t leave mine.

“I know.”

“I want them to feel helpless.” My voice roughened. “I want them to know what it feels like to cry

have no one care.”

A pause.

Then, carefully, “And after that?”

I laughed once, empty and sharp. “You want me to say I’ll feel better?”

“No.” He didn’t soften it. “I want you to know whether this is punishment or collapse.”

The words lit my temper for half a second.

and

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Then the heat collapsed into something uglier.

“I don’t know,” I said.

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Maxwell nodded once, like uncertainty was not a failure but a fact to work around. “Then know this

before you start.”

My jaw tightened.

He held my gaze. “If you decide punishment, I’ll back you. If you decide execution, we talk first. If you decide to rip them apart with your hands, I stop you.”

Ria bristled immediately.

I stared at him. “You think I can’t control myself.”

“I think grief makes liars out of even the strong.” His voice stayed low. “And I am not burying you next

to your rage because two cowardly women sold themselves for safety.”

Something in my chest twisted at the word burying.

He saw it. Of course he saw it.

His face hardened a fraction, not at me, at the memory behind my eyes.

“Eat,” he said. “Then go downstairs if you still want to.”

I wanted to tell him to stop managing me.

I wanted to tell him I didn’t need feeding and instructions before vengeance.

Instead, I heard my own voice from another life, walking orphanage halls, scolding children for trying

to fight hungry, and felt the bitter irony scrape my throat raw.

I nodded once.

Maxwell took that as victory enough. “I’ll have water sent too. Not wine.”

My mouth almost twitched despite myself.

He turned to go, then paused at the door.

“Arya.”

I looked at him.

His eyes were steady. “Make them answer. Don’t become them.”

<140 The Calm Before He Arrived

Then he left.

I stared at the closed door for a long moment.

Then I sat and forced food down my throat like medicine.

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