Luna Forsaken (Arya and James) novel Chapter 197

197 What Family Feels Like 3

Arya’s POV

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Morning came too fast.

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I woke with that lingering heaviness that comes when a body has rested but not deeply

enough, the kind of sleep that helps the muscles and leaves the mind untouched. Pale

light had only just started pushing at the curtains when I dressed and went downstairs,

expecting breakfast to be quieter than dinner had been.

It wasn’t.

The house was already moving.

Men were walking with more purpose than usual. Orders were travelling faster. From the

east windows, I could see too many guards in full readiness in the courtyard for it to be

anything routine. My stomach tightened before anybody even told me why.

I found Maxwell in the outer hall fastening the cuffs of a dark coat, already armed, his

expression hard with focus. Two extra security men stood a few steps away waiting for

instructions, and Rusty was near the door checking a route slate with another guard.

David leaned against the wall nearby, half dressed and fully awake in the way only

wolves raised in pack houses know how to be when trouble enters before breakfast.

I crossed to them.

“What’s happening?”

Maxwell looked at me immediately.

“I’m heading to Nightwind.”

I stopped.

“Nightwind?”

The word came out sharper than I meant it to.

Too many thoughts hit at once. Tangled. Hard. None of them easy.

Nightwind meant James.

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Nightwind meant memory.

Nightwind meant blood and loss and betrayal and smoke and my child and the cell and

his voice and my humiliation and the bones of what I had once tried to build with him.

My first feeling was not concern.

It was resistance.

“What for?” I asked.

Maxwell finished with one cuff and answered plainly.

“I can’t let James come to Dragonclaw. I know you don’t want to see him.”

That eased one knot in me and tightened three more.

He kept going before I could speak again.

“But he needs help.”

There it was.

David straightened a little off the wall but said nothing. He had clearly heard this

already. Maxwell’s tone stayed level. He was not defending himself. Not asking me to

approve. Just telling me the truth as he saw it.

“He’s been trying to reach me for a while now,” he said. “And if whoever is after his land

realises he has no protection, they’ll keep pushing.”

James.

Even hearing the shape of him in the conversation felt like pressing a hand into an old

bruise.

I said nothing.

Maxwell looked at me carefully, like he was measuring how much to say and choosing

honesty over comfort.

“What he did to you was bad,” he said.

The simplicity of that made it hit harder.

Not because it was too little.

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Because it wasn’t.

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Because Maxwell knew enough not to wrap betrayal in softer language than it deserved.

“And I know it was desperation,” he added. “Not an excuse. A reason.”

I folded my arms across my chest, not because I was trying to look closed off, but

because I suddenly needed something solid over my ribs.

For a second Maxwell’s gaze went distant. Memory passed across his face clearly

enough for me to see it.

“The first time James came to me about joining the Union,” he said, “he didn’t come

asking for prestige. He came afraid.”

That made me look up properly.

Maxwell held my gaze and kept going.

“He was terrified one of those attacks would take you before he could secure the pack

enough to protect you. I remember how he looked. I remember how hard he begged.”

Maxwell’s mouth hardened. “That fear twisted into something ugly later. Ambition.

Panic. Marcel’s manipulation. But I haven’t forgotten where it began.”

That landed deeper than I wanted it to.

Because I remembered that James too.

Not the man at the banquet.

Not the man in the cell.

Not the man who chose wrong and kept choosing wrong until the cost became too big to

hide.

The earlier James.

The one who built with me.

Fought with me.

Looked at me like I was home and war and answer all at once.

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