Luna Forsaken (Arya and James) novel Chapter 200

200 You Lost Everything for Nothing 2

James’s POVE

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Maxwell exhaled through his nose, not quite a sigh, more the sound of a man already

annoyed with the conversation he knew he had to have.

“She is better than the way you left her,” he said.

The words struck clean. No mercy in them. No decoration. And before I could respond, he

continued.

“And now that she is my daughter, I will tell you explicitly to stay away from her.”

Something in my chest tightened so violently it almost made me sway.

My daughter.

He said it with total certainty. No hesitation. No qualification.

I had heard, through rumours and scraps and Nixon’s cautious mentions, that Maxwell

had taken her in fully. That he had named her so. That Dragonclaw had begun accepting

it not as temporary charity but as fact. Hearing him say it to my face made it real in a

new way.

It should have enraged me maybe, if I were a smaller man.

Instead it hollowed me out.

Because somewhere under the jealousy and pain and humiliation was one ugly

undeniable truth.

He had done what I should have done.

He had stood by her.

He had named her.

He had protected what I cast out.

I looked down once, then forced myself to meet his eyes again.

“What you did to her was wicked, James.”

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I had been called many things in the last months. Ambitious. Desperate. A fool. A

coward. A man played by Marcel. A man with no patience and even less self control. But

wicked. No one had said that yet. Not to my face.

The word settled into me like poison finding a wound that had already been opened.

I didn’t defend myself.

Couldn’t.

Maxwell took my silence as invitation to continue, and maybe I deserved that too.

“I thought going to the Union was for her,” he said, and for the first time there was real

anger under the control, visible in the tightness around his mouth. “The moment she

didn’t come with the deal, you should have let it go.”

His gaze sharpened, hard enough to cut.

“Instead you let ambition drive you.”

I looked away first. Not out of disrespect. Because I could not hold that truth and his

eyes at the same time.

He was right.

That was the worst of it.

Not in the crude simple version my enemies would enjoy, that I wanted power and sold

my mate for it. The truth was filthier than that. More tangled. More cowardly.

I had wanted safety. Recognition. Protection for the pack. A seat at a table strong

enough that men like Boris would stop circling my borders like my land was already half

theirs.

I had told myself the route Marcel offered was brutal but temporary. That Arya would

survive the hurt. That I could fix the rest later. That once Nightwind was secure, once the

Union was settled, once the pack stopped living one attack away from disaster, I would

make it right.

Those were the lies.

The ambition was not wanting the Union.

It was believing I could control the cost once I agreed to pay it.

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Maxwell wasn’t done.

“You let Marcel and his family walk all over her.”

His voice had gone quieter now.

That made it worse.

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“You locked her up and had her beaten for nothing.” He took one step closer. “She was

carrying your child, James. How vicious could you be?”

My throat tightened so fast it hurt.

There are some truths no amount of self hatred dulls.

That was one of them.

Arya. Pregnant. Locked in a cell. Beaten under my authority. Bleeding. Alone. My child

inside her while I stood on the wrong side of the bars and called my cowardice strategy.

I closed my eyes for one second.

When I opened them, Maxwell was still looking at me with the disgust of a man who

had once respected me and now had to force himself to remember why.

“It wouldn’t have cost you anything,” he said, “to stand beside the woman you claimed to

love.”

That one nearly dropped me where I stood.

Because it was true in the smallest clearest way.

Whatever Marcel threatened. Whatever the pack muttered. Whatever Union officers, real

or fake, sat in that hall with their pomp and false importance.

Standing beside her would have cost less than what I paid instead.

I swallowed and made myself answer, because silence now would sound too much like

indifference and I had already been guilty of that once.

“I don’t have an excuse,” I said.

The words felt pathetic the moment they left me. Weak. Small. Still I kept going because

stopping would have been cowardice again.

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“Everything happened so fast. Marcel threatening war, the officers disappointed, the

pack members…” My voice thinned around the memory. “They were going to lynch her.”

I hated how weak that sounded.

Hated it because it was true and still not enough.

Maxwell’s face did not soften.

“An Alpha who can’t protect his family is not worthy of the title.”

There was nothing I could say to that.

Nothing.

Because by every standard that mattered, I had failed.

Failed as her mate.

Failed as an Alpha.

Failed as the father of the child she lost under the pressure of my weakness and other

people’s schemes.

My hands curled at my sides.

I forced them open again.

Maxwell let the silence sit long enough to become punishment, then delivered the next

blow without warning.

“By the way,” he said, voice flattening, “Lisa and Margaret are in Dragonclaw.”

My head snapped up.

For a second I forgot shame. Forgot posture. Forgot everything but the names.

Lisa.

Margaret.

The women whose words had become iron bars around Arya.

I stared at Maxwell.

He held my gaze and finished the sentence with brutal precision.

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“They confessed. Leah poisoned herself.”

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The room went strange around me. Not spinning. Not blurring. Too clear. As if every

object had suddenly sharpened at the same time.