Luna Forsaken (Arya and James) novel Chapter 159

159 The Union’s Blade

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James’s POV

Waiting was starting to feel like punishment.

Not the kind a man served in chains.

The worse kind.

The kind where you sat in your own office, inside your own pack house, at your own

desk, with your phone in your hand and your pride rotting by the minute while another

Alpha decided whether you were worth answering.

Maxwell still had not called back.

I checked my phone again anyway.

No missed call.

No text.

Nothing.

Just silence.

I dropped the phone onto the desk harder than I intended and leaned back in the chair,

staring at the ceiling like it might give me strategy, absolution, or a miracle. It gave me wood beams and old stains and the memory of every bad decision that had led me here.

Arya was in Dragonclaw.

Alive.

That should have brought relief. It did. Some nights it was the only thing that kept me from tearing the walls apart. Knowing she was breathing somewhere outside my reach was better than the images that still ambushed me when I slept, her body in the yard,

blood under her, too late.

But relief had teeth.

Because alive meant real.

Alive meant I had to live with what I had done to her.

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Alive meant there was still a chance to stand in front of her and apologise, and I had no

idea if I had the right to ask for that chance.

Maxwell knew that.

He was not a stupid man. He had every reason to keep me away from her. If I were in his

place, I might have done worse than refuse calls.

I scrubbed both hands over my face and forced myself to breathe.

Across the room, Leah’s perfume still lingered faintly from her last attempt to turn my

office into a bedroom.

I could smell it on the sofa.

On the edge of the curtain where she had leaned.

Even in the air near the cabinet where she had stood pretending to look for wine while

watching me work.

I hated it.

I had thought threatening her in my office would make her back off. Thought fear and humiliation might finally push her to run home to her father. Instead, she stayed. Smiling when others were around. Pressing closer when we were alone. Testing doors. Testing limits. Testing how much I would tolerate before I snapped.

She still tried to get into my bed.

Every night felt like a siege.

I could feel Jasper pacing under my skin at the thought of her. Not speaking, not separate from me, just that old savage pressure in my ribs and teeth whenever he scented her

near my private rooms.

Throw her out, the wolf in me growled.

I flexed my jaw. “I know.”

But throwing her out was not a clean move. Not yet. Not while Marcel held his claws under the table and Union eyes kept drifting toward my land like vultures waiting for a

weakened animal to stop moving.

I wanted to run sometimes.

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God, I wanted to.

Get in a car.

Drive until the roads ended.

Leave the office, the politics, the false smiles, the pressure, the trap.

But this was my pack.

My land.

My people.

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I had already failed them once by trusting the wrong man and leaving at the wrong time.

I would not abandon them now because I couldn’t stand the smell of my own mistakes.

I sat forward again, grabbed my phone, and checked for Maxwell’s reply one more time.

Nothing.

“Fine,” I muttered. “Then I work.”

I hit the intercom and told the guard outside to send Nixon, Devin, and Archie to my

office.

If Maxwell wouldn’t answer, I would keep moving without him.

I had done enough damage waiting on men to rescue me from situations I walked into

with my eyes open.

They came in less than ten minutes later.

Nixon first, sharp-eyed and controlled as always, shutting the door behind him with the

kind of quiet that meant he had already guessed this was not a routine briefing. Devin

followed, broader in the shoulders, restless energy tucked under discipline. Archie came last, carrying a tablet and a paper folder because he never trusted one format when

information might matter.

I stood when they entered.

No formalities. No posturing.

“Sit,” I said.

<159 The Union’s Blade

They sat.

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Nixon watched me for a second, reading my face. “No word from Dragonclaw?”

My mouth tightened. “No.”

He nodded once, not surprised.

I didn’t waste time on it. “We plan tonight.”

Devin leaned forward. “Retaliation?”

“Clean retaliation,” I said. “Or something that gets us leverage without handing Union a

knife.”

Archie slid the folder onto the desk and opened it. “Then we start with the bylaws.”

I looked at him. “Tell me.”

He tapped a printed sheet, then another, his expression grim. “We pulled everything we

could through older records, trader copies, and transcripts from packs that got dragged

to tribunal. We don’t have the full current Union handbook, but we have enough to know

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