Luna Forsaken (Arya and James) novel Chapter 174

174 Hope Is the Cruelest Trap 3

Arya’s POV

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I could feel the heat of him now. Feel the room shrink around the shape of his body and mine. His hand finally released my wrist only to brace beside my shoulder, trapping me without touching more than he had to.

“I want,” he said slowly, each word measured like he was choosing not just what to say but what not to do, “what fate gave me.”

My breath shook.

I searched his face for deceit because that was easier than surrendering to what those

words did to me.

I looked for calculation.

For strategy.

For pity.

For the male arrogance that assumes desire and possession are the same thing.

I found none of it.

Only certainty.

And that terrified me more than lies would have.

Because lies I knew how to fight.

Truth, especially truth spoken by a man like him, in a room like this, with the taste of

another heartbreak still living in my throat, was far more dangerous.

My heart hurt. My skin felt too tight. Fear spread cold under my ribs, swallowing heat,

because the worst part of wanting someone after betrayal is not desire.

It is the knowledge that if you let them in and they break you, there may not be enough

of you left to rebuild again.

I could survive rage.

I could survive loss.

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I could survive humiliation.

I wasn’t sure I could survive hope turning on me a second time.

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I turned my face away and pushed at his chest, meaning to slip past him before my body

betrayed me again.

He caught my hand.

Of course he did.

Not rough.

Never frantic.

Just certain.

“Arya.”

I refused to look at him.

My voice scraped on the way out. “Move.”

“Look at me.”

“No.”

His thumb traced once over my knuckles, and the gentleness of it nearly broke my

composure faster than force would have.

I hated him for knowing that.

I hated myself more for reacting.

When I finally looked up, his face was closer than before, all hard lines and restrained

heat. The ballroom’s muffled music pulsed through the walls like a heartbeat not our

own.

He spoke quietly, but there was command threaded through every syllable.

“How long do you plan to keep running?”

I almost laughed at the question because the answer was written all over me.

In the mark on my throat.

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In the grief under my skin.

In the way I still measured every room for exits.

In the way I wanted him and distrusted wanting itself.

I swallowed and said nothing.

He waited.

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That was another thing about him, he could corner without rushing. Press without crowding. Demand an answer and hold the silence until it became more unbearable than

truth.

My eyes burned again. I looked past his shoulder, jaw clenched.

“I’m not running,” I said at last.

His stare did not shift. “You left the ballroom because you were hurt.”

“I left because I am not stupid.”

A muscle moved in his jaw. “Meaning?”

“Meaning I know what rooms like that do to women like me.” The words came out low

and bitter before I could smooth them. “Meaning I know what people say when old men

announce brides and heirs say no and everyone starts looking for a reason. Meaning I

know I have no place in their games.”

“You are not a game piece.”

I snapped then, too raw to hear certainty and not strike at it.

“Don’t tell me what I am in a world built by people like them!”

The words hit the walls and came back at us.

For one hot, breathless second I thought he might answer with anger.

Instead, he leaned in closer, forehead almost touching mine, voice dropping until it was

little more than a dark vibration between us.

“I am telling you,” he said, “what you are to me.”

My mouth went dry.

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Ria surged under my skin, restless, aching, furious with me for fighting what she considered obvious. He is choosing, she snarled. You keep acting like he is not.

Men choose until they don’t, I shot back, and the bitterness of it almost made me flinch.

Lev’s eyes searched my face. He could not hear Ria, but sometimes it felt like he read the

war anyway.

“You think this is about impulse,” he said quietly. “Or heat. Or the old man forcing my

hand.”

I said nothing.

He took my silence as answer and gave a grim, humourless huff. “I danced with one

woman tonight.”

My pulse kicked.

“I know,” I said, and hated how the words sounded.

His gaze dropped briefly to my mouth and rose again. “I refused him in front of the

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