Luna Forsaken (Arya and James) novel Chapter 198

198 What Family Feels Like 4

Arya’s POVO

The words sat in the hall like a claim finally laid down.

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Maxwell’s face did not change, but something old and knowing moved through his eyes.

I thought of James’s words from that day in the cell. The way he had looked down at me

like I was already less. The way he had spoken about place and ownership and what he

could deny me because he believed I had nowhere else to stand.

I would never forgive those words.

Not fully.

Maybe not ever.

The land was not just land.

It was labour.

It was blood.

It was what I had built there with my own hands, my own mind, my own body.

It was what I was owed.

Maxwell understood that without making me explain any of it. He just nodded once.

“I know.”

No more.

No less.

That was enough.

He turned then and reached for the gloves one of the guards held out to him. The extra

security behind him shifted into readiness. Rusty stepped closer.

“Route’s clear for now, Alpha.”

Maxwell nodded.

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David finally pushed off the wall.

“You’re taking enough men?”

Maxwell gave him a look.

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“I’m taking extra security, which is more than enough to remind Nightwind that

Dragonclaw still knows how to arrive properly.”

David grunted once.

“Fair.”

I looked past Maxwell at the men gathering near the front steps.

Too many for a simple visit.

Not enough for war.

Enough to send a message.

Part of me wanted to tell him not to go. Another part wanted to go with him myself.

Nightwind still lived too vividly inside me. Even after everything, the thought of Maxwell

walking into that territory, into spaces that had once held so much of my life before they

held my ruin, woke something restless and protective in my chest.

I wanted to see with my own eyes what James looked like now. Wanted to know if

regret had changed him or only sharpened him into a different kind of danger. Wanted, maybe most shamefully, to make sure Maxwell walked into and out of that pack

untouched.

But I knew I could not go.

Not because I was weak.

Because I was not ready.

Because one look at those walls might drag too much blood to the surface too quickly.

Because Maxwell was right to spare me that meeting while I still wanted James on my

list more than in my sight.

So all I said was,

“Be careful.”

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Maxwell’s face softened by a degree so small nobody else would have noticed it.

“I will.”

Then he looked between David and me in that way Alphas do when they are leaving a

house in trusted hands.

“You’re in charge until I return,” he told David.

David nodded once, the earlier humour gone now.

“Understood.”

Maxwell’s gaze shifted to me.

“And you,

“I know,” I said before he could start listing things like rest, caution, and not getting into

trouble with women who clearly needed slapping.

That pulled the faintest curve from one corner of his mouth.

“Good.”

Then he moved.

Down the hall.

Through the front doors.

Into the morning light where Dragonclaw guards straightened and the black SUVS

waited in the drive with engines already running low.

I followed as far as the threshold, but no further.

The courtyard smelled like cold air, petrol, pine, and that sharpened readiness wolves carry when they are about to escort an Alpha into uncertain ground. Maxwell got into the lead vehicle only after checking the formation himself. Rusty took the second. The others

fell in behind.

David came to stand beside me in the doorway, arms folded.

Neither of us spoke as the convoy rolled out through the gates.

I watched until the last taillight disappeared beyond the bend in the Dragonclaw road.

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Only then did I let out the breath I had been holding.

“He’ll be fine,” David said quietly beside me.

I nodded, though the restless feeling stayed where it was.

“I know.”

But knowing and liking were not the same thing.

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I wished, with a sudden sharpness that annoyed me, that I could have gone after all. Not

to plead with James. Not to soften anything. Not to rip old wounds open before they had

even managed to scar properly. Just to be there.

To see.

To know.

To make sure the ground under Nightwind understood that even if I did not walk it now,

I had not been erased from it either.

Instead I stood in Dragonclaw’s doorway with David beside me and the morning widening around us, and told myself the thing I had been telling myself more and more

these days.

Not being present did not mean not having power.

Still, as the gates closed and the last sound of Maxwell’s convoy disappeared into the distance, one final thought settled heavy in my chest.

I wished I could have gone with him.

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