Luna Forsaken (Arya and James) novel Chapter 172

172 Hope Is the Cruelest Trap

Arya’s POV

I should not have been surprised.

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That was the first lie I told myself as the ballroom held its breath around Radimir’s

announcement and Lev’s refusal.

I should not have felt anything.

That was the second.

Because Rebecca had already planted the warning in my head long before tonight, he is

engaged, and I had repeated it to myself often enough that it should have become

armour by now. A fact. A wall. A thing I could hide behind whenever Lev looked at me

too long, touched me too deliberately, or spoke in that low, steady voice that kept

slipping past my anger and settling under my skin.

I knew better.

I knew men like Lev did not get to belong to themselves, not fully. Not when they were

born into seats like Blackbirth. Not when power sat on their shoulders like a crown made

of debt. Men like him were married to alliances before they were ever mated to women.

I knew this.

And yet when Radimir said there was a date, when he said Lev and Mary in that public,

polished voice, something inside me broke with the quiet precision of glass cracking

under pressure.

Not loudly.

Not enough for the room to hear.

Just enough for me to feel every shard.

I stood where Maxwell had left me, spine straight, hands at my sides, face calm because

I had learned the hard way that wolves feast on visible wounds. Around me, the

ballroom glittered. Silk whispered. Jewellery caught light. Powerful people shifted from

surprise to curiosity to calculation in less than a minute.

And all I could think was: So this is what I was stupid enough to hope for.

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Not a life. Not a title. Not fantasies of forever.

Just… a chance.

A chance that what flared between us was not one-sided madness.

A chance that fate had not mocked me twice.

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A chance that the way Lev looked at me meant something beyond hunger, beyond

instinct, beyond the cold pull of a bond.

The joke was on me.

Of course it was.

I could feel Rebecca’s eyes before I looked at her. She stood near Marcel with triumph

curdled into something uglier, the kind of smile a woman wore when she believed humiliation had finally found the right target. Marcel looked tense for other reasons, but

Rebecca, Rebecca looked almost relieved. As if this public arrangement restored the

order she preferred: Arya beneath everyone, Arya excluded, Arya reminded exactly

where she belonged.

Nowhere.

I swallowed once and forced my gaze away.

I would not break in front of them.

Not here.

Not in Blackbirth.

Not in a room full of alphas and their wives and daughters and spies dressed like guests.

Lev’s voice cut through the silence then, calm and lethal, refusing the match in front of

everyone.

I heard it.

I understood it.

I felt the room shift.

But hurt is not reasonable. It doesn’t wait politely for context. It strikes first and asks

questions later.

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He had refused Radimir.

Good.

He had not looked at me while doing it.

That should not have mattered.

It did.

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Because in that moment, with Mary standing there pale and humiliated and Radimir’s

power cracking at the edges, I suddenly felt how exposed I was. How easy it would be

for every eye in the room to turn and decide I was the reason. The stray. The cast-out.

The woman who walked in and brought disruption with her.

Again.

My lungs tightened.

I needed to leave before my face betrayed me.

A touch landed gently on my shoulder.

I flinched before I could stop myself and turned sharply, pulse kicking.

David.

His expression, for once, held no mockery. The earlier roughness was gone, the defensive

bitterness smoothed out into concern he seemed almost uncomfortable wearing.

“Arya,” he said quietly, leaning just enough to shield the moment from watching eyes.

“Are you alright?”

The kindness almost undid me.

My throat burned instantly.

“I’m fine,” I heard myself say, and my voice sounded wrong, rougher than usual, too thin

around the edges. I cleared it and tried again. “I just… need the restroom.”

David’s gaze flicked over my face in a way that told me he knew I was lying.

He did not call me on it.

He only nodded once, gentler than I expected from him. “Second corridor on the right, I

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122 Hope Is the Cruelest Trap

think. If not, ask one of the staff.”

“Thank you.”

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I moved before Maxwell could turn and catch me, before he could ask a question with

those sharp father-eyes of his, before Lev could come down from Radimir’s side and look

at me in that way that made honesty feel like a trap.

I walked fast but not so fast that it became a scene.

Past couples frozen in whispered conversations.

Past a server pretending not to stare.

Past the musicians, who still looked uncertain whether to resume.

Past the gold-lit pillars and carved walls and portraits of dead wolves who had probably

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