Luna Forsaken (Arya and James) novel Chapter 19

19 The Seat That Was Mine

Arya’s POV

Get 5 >

= Menu

A week passed, and I could count how many times I’d seen James without needing fingers.

That was the strangest part.

Not that he avoided me entirely, because that would have been honest, in a cruel way.

No, he checked on me the way a man checked on a bruise he didn’t want anyone else to see. Quick glances. Short questions. A cup of water placed on the table and a stiff,

murmured instruction that I should rest.

He’d appear at my door, ask how I was feeling, ask if Lesley had been by, ask if I’d eaten,

then leave before any real conversation could form.

He never lingered.

He never sat down beside me like he used to when the world was loud and we only had each other to quiet it.

He never looked at me long enough for my heart to mistake his guilt for love.

And the pack noticed.

They noticed everything.

They noticed Leah’s shadow growing larger in the corridors, her voice rising in meetings, her presence at James’s side becoming ordinary. They noticed the way guards stepped aside for her now without hesitation. They noticed that when she spoke, people listened.

And they noticed what didn’t happen too.

They stopped calling me Luna.

Not dramatically.

Not in one obvious moment where someone declared it out loud and watched my face to

see if I broke.

11:30

10.27%

<19 The Seat That Was Mine

No.

Get 5 > = Menu

It happened in small cuts.

A greeting that used to be warm turning polite, then cold. A woman who used to smile at me switching to a quick nod that barely acknowledged my existence. A warrior who used to address me with respect shifting his eyes away when I passed, as though looking at me too long might be interpreted as disloyalty.

Titles were social currency in our world.

And mine had been quietly taken out of circulation.

I heard it in the way they said my name now, just Arya, plain and stripped of position. Like I was a memory in the house, a past that still walked.

Leah, on the other hand, didn’t even need to demand the title.

People started offering it to her without her asking.

Luna Leah.

Lady Leah.

Heavy meaning.

es seemed… fine with it.

That was what made my throat ache at night when the packhouse went quiet and all I had left was the sound of my own breathing and the faint, persistent throb of the bond I was trying not to feel.

Because James wasn’t ignorant.

He wasn’t blind.

He wasn’t unaware of what his silence did.

He just didn’t stop it.

He let it happen, like it was the cost of doing business with the Rainhorns, like it was collateral damage on his path to the Union council.

11:30

10.27%

<19 The Seat That Was Mine

Get 5 >

Menu

And in the spaces where my anger wanted to erupt, I pressed my palm to my stomach and

reminded myself:

Not yet.

Not like this.

Not at the cost of the baby.

Lesley checked on me when she could. She brought tonics, scolded me when I didn’t eat

enough, and looked like she wanted to drag James by the collar into my room and lock him in there until he remembered what he’d promised me years ago.

But Lesley couldn’t fight politics with herbs.

She could only patch the body while the world kept trying to break the spirit.

So I did what I had been learning to do.

I watched.

I listened.

I planned.

And I counted.

How many rooms Leah had already made hers.

How many pack members had already shifted their loyalty out of fear rather than faith.

How many times James chose the pack’s image over my dignity.

How many times I reminded myself that I would leave, someday, without ever saying it out

loud.

Because saying it out loud made it a challenge.

And challenges in this house had a habit of being punished.

Then the dinner of the full moon arrived.

11:30

19.98%

<19 The Seat That Was Mine

The monthly ritual.

Get 5 >

Menu

The one night the pack gathered not for politics, not for war councils, not for training or punishment, just for tradition.

Just for community.

Just for the old thing we all carried inside us: the need to remember that we were wolves,

not machines built for survival and sacrifice.

The full moon dinner had always meant something to me.

Even before we had a real hall. Even when we ate on mismatched stools in a half-roofed

room and the wind blew through cracks in the wall.

We made it a ritual anyway.

We cooked more than usual. We lit fires. We honoured fallen wolves. We let the young ones tell stories and the old ones complain and laugh. We let the wolves inside us breathe.

Back then, James and I would sit at the head table together, and it didn’t feel like a throne.

It felt like belonging.

This month, I didn’t want to attend.

Not because I was weak.

Because I was tired of being watched while I bled invisibly.

Because I could already taste what it would feel like, walking into that space and realising the pack no longer saw me as one of its pillars.

But James made it mandatory.

He didn’t come to my room and ask me personally.

He sent word.

A message passed through a guard, delivered like a decree:

“The Alpha requests your presence at the full moon dinner. Attendance is mandatory for

#)11:30

10.08%

<19 The Seat That Was Mine

all.”

Mandatory.

Not I want you there.

Not come with me.

Not even please.

So I went.

Not because I wanted to obey him.

Get 5 >

Menu

Because refusing would have become another story told about me. Another weapon. Another proof that I was difficult. Uncooperative. Bitter.

And Leah would have smiled through it all and called it unity.

So I dressed carefully.

Not in something extravagant, extravagance invited attention I didn’t want.

But in something dignified. Dark fabric, high neck. Sleeves long enough to cover the faint bruises still fading on my arms from the silver poisoning, long enough to make me feel like I was wearing armour instead of cloth.

Leave a comment

11:30

10.2%

<Luna Forsaken