Luna Forsaken (Arya and James) novel Chapter 156

156 Moonlight, Not Promises 2

Arya’s POV

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I swallowed and looked away from the moon, toward the darker line of the hedge.

No, I thought, slower now. He isn’t.

That was part of the problem.

If Lev had been easier to dismiss, vain, careless, cruel in obvious ways, eager to own

what he had not earned, I would have known what to do with him. I would have

sharpened myself and kept my distance and called it wisdom.

But Lev was patient in the most dangerous way.

He saw too much.

He touched like he meant what he touched.

He stopped when he could have pushed.

He held like restraint was not weakness.

He made space and took it at the same time.

He looked at me as if the wreckage did not reduce me.

And my body, traitor that it was, answered him before my thoughts could assemble a

defence.

Ria’s voice softened, which somehow made it worse. Won’t you honour it?

I laughed again, harsher this time. “Honour it?” I murmured under my breath. “Ria…”

I leaned my head back and stared at the sky.

The moon was full enough to make everything look touched by story. If this were

another woman’s life, maybe this would have been the part where she let herself believe

in fate and healing and a stronger Alpha who arrived after betrayal and made all the

broken things mean something.

But this was my life.

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<156 Moonlight, Not Promises 2

And I had learned what fate cost.

Don’t aim too high, I told her.

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She went still inside me. That is not your voice. That is your fear talking with your mouth.

It is my sense talking, I shot back. Lev is the Alpha of Blackbirth. He is Radimir’s nephew.

He is not just some pack Alpha with strong hands and a temper. He is… I exhaled

sharply. He is royalty, Ria. He is the head of all of them whether they say it aloud or not.

Men like him make alliances. They marry for power. For balance. For bloodlines and

politics and old names.

Ria bristled. And?

And I am a woman who was claimed and rejected in public. The words scraped my

throat on the way out. I touched the side of my neck without meaning to, fingers finding

the place where the cancelled mark had become scar and symbol. I have a mark for it. I

have gossip attached to my name. I was called rogue often enough that I started hearing

it inside my own skull. Even now some people look at me and see a cautionary tale, not

a mate.

Ria pushed against me, angry. Dragonclaw does not.

Dragonclaw is Maxwell’s house, I said. And even here, people talk.

That was the quiet truth under everything else.

The whispers at the banquet.

The looks.

The calculations.

The question hanging under every smile, what was I to Lev, and how long would that

last?

I shut my eyes and forced the next words out because they had been living in me for

days, ugly and cold and practical.

Even if Lev wants me now, Radimir would fight it.

Ria fell silent.

Not because she agreed.

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156 Moonlight, Not Promises 2

Because she knew I was not imagining the obstacle.

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I saw it too clearly, rooms full of old power, men discussing blood and succession and

respectability while pretending they were discussing order. Lev standing in the middle of it all, and me beside him with a cancelled mark at my throat and a history men could use

like a knife.

My chest tightened.

There it was.

The real thing beneath all my reasoning.

Not pride.

Terror.

I pressed my lips together and thought, I cannot do this again.

Ria answered in a low, aching murmur. You are already doing it.

I laughed without humour and scrubbed a hand over my face.

“No point,” I whispered. “There is no point getting my heart broken again.”

The words sounded too soft in the night, like a confession the garden had no right to hear.

I swallowed and kept going because once the truth cracked, it kept coming.

“I have gone through enough pain and heartbreak to last a lifetime.”

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