Luna Forsaken (Arya and James) novel Chapter 20

20 The Seat That Was Mine: Taken in Plain Sight

Arya’s POV

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I brushed my hair until it lay smooth. I pinned it back so it wouldn’t fall into my eyes. I used

a faint oil on my wrists to steady my scent, not to hide anything, just to keep myself from smelling like fear.

Ria was restless as I prepared, pacing inside me with a low growl.

She hated being restrained.

She hated being quiet.

She hated that our pack had turned its back on us so quickly.

But she pressed her muzzle against my emotions anyway, like she was reminding me she

was still there, still mine, still a part of me no one could dismiss with politics.

e endure, she murmured, not in words but in sensation.

xhaled slowly.

“Yes,” I whispered to the empty room. “We endure.”

Then I left.

The dinner was held in the large gathering hall outside the main packhouse, a space built for these nights, open enough to accommodate the whole pack, decorated with banners

and lanterns, fires lit along the edges to keep the chill away.

The full moon hung high above the trees, bright and unforgiving, bathing everything in pale

silver light.

It should have felt holy.

Instead it felt like a spotlight.

As I approached, I heard the sounds of the pack, voices, laughter, the clink of cups, the low

thud of drums someone always insisted on bringing out for tradition.

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<20 The Seat That Was Mine: Taken in Plain Sight

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The smell hit next.

Roasted meat.

Spiced stew.

Fresh bread.

Smoke and pine and the faint tang of alcohol.

My stomach turned faintly, not from disgust, but from the strange nausea that had become my companion lately. The baby demanded food and rejected it in the same breath. My body felt like it belonged to someone else most days.

I stepped into the hall.

And I knew immediately.

I no longer had a place.

The head table was set up as it always was, raised slightly on a platform, draped in dark cl oth, lanterns casting warm light over polished wood.

But the seat beside James, the seat that had been mine, was occupied.

Leah sat there.

Not tentatively.

Not like a guest.

Like she’d been born to it.

Her posture was perfect, shoulders back, chin lifted, hands folded neatly on the table. Her dress was pale, luminous under the moonlight, and she wore jewellery that caught the lantern flames and threw them back like sparks.

She looked like a picture of prestige.

A Rainhorn daughter playing the role she had been raised for.

James sat beside her.

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< 20 The Seat That Was Mine: Taken in Plain Sight

And that was the part that cut deeper than the seat itself.

He didn’t look uncomfortable.

He didn’t look like a man forced into a performance.

He looked… composed.

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His face was neutral, his gaze moving over the crowd with the steady authority of an Alpha presiding over his pack.

And Leah’s presence at his side had already been absorbed into the scene like it belonged.

It was as if I had never sat there.

As if my years beside him had been erased with a single week of silence.

I stood at the entrance for a moment too long.

Some heads turned.

Some eyes lingered.

I saw a few pack members stiffen, as if they weren’t sure what they were supposed to do

with me anymore.

A handful greeted me out of modesty.

“Arya.”

A quick nod.

A forced smile.

A greeting that sounded like obligation, not respect.

No one called me Luna.

No one motioned me toward the head table.

No one made space.

To my dismay, Marcel and Rebecca were in attendance. I guess the Nightwind pack was

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< 20 The Seat That Was Mine: Taken in Plain Sight

their new past time.

I swallowed hard and forced my feet forward.

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There were long tables stretching across the hall, packed with wolves in every rank,

warriors, hunters, cooks, healers, teenagers trying to sit with the adults, elders who still

acted like they ran the place even when their knees creaked.

Stools and benches filled the space.

And there, near the middle, slightly to the side, was a simple stool left open between two lower-ranked pack members. It had my name on it.

A normal seat.

A stable.

The kind ordinary wolves sat on.

My throat tightened as I moved toward it.

I sat down carefully, keeping my posture straight, my expression calm.

I refused to look like a woman being demoted.

But my chest ached.

I could feel whispers sliding through the hall like smoke.

Not loud enough to confront.

Just loud enough to bruise.

I kept my eyes forward, fixed on the lantern flames, on the table surface, on anything except the head table where Leah sat like a crown.

Minutes passed.

Food was being served. Plates carried by maids, cups filled, laughter rising.

But I barely tasted the air.

11:30.

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20 The Seat That Was Mine: Taken in Plain Sight

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I sat there too long, stiff and silent, and my mind drifted without permission into memory.

The battlefield.

Mud and blood under my nails.

The sound of wolves screaming as silver cut into flesh.

The way James had shouted my name once, once, when an enemy’s blade came too close,

the way he’d thrown himself between me and death without thinking.

The way I’d fought with everything in me so we could have this.

So we could have a hall to gather in under a full moon and call it home.

I still had scars from those fights.

Some visible, thin lines along my ribs, a jagged mark on my thigh, a faint burn on my forearm where silver had grazed me years ago.

Some invisible, nightmares that came without warning, sudden panic at loud sounds, the way my body still stiffened when I smelled smoke too sharply.

PTSD, Lesley had called it quietly, as if naming it gave me permission to admit it existed.

I had survived all of that.

And now…

Now they were cheapening it.

Reducing my years of sacrifice to station.

To pedigree.

To bloodline.

To who my parents were, as if my bones had been less brave because they weren’t born into power.

A sharp voice cut through my thoughts.

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<20 The Seat That Was Mine: Taken in Plain Sight

“Excuse me.”

I blinked and looked up.

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One of the officers stood in front of me, one of the senior ones, a man who had once sat at

my table, who had once sought my counsel when James was out on patrol.

His expression was stiff, official.

“Arya,” he said, voice clipped, as if even my name was something he didn’t want to say too

warmly.

“What is it?” I asked, keeping my tone neutral.

He glanced around, aware of the attention, then said, “You are required to follow the rules, as everyone does.”

My fingers tightened around the edge of the stool.

“The rules,” I repeated slowly.

“Yes,” he said, as if explaining to a child. “Before you sit, you must greet the Alpha and Luna of the pack. It is tradition.”

It took everything in me not to laugh.

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