Luna Forsaken (Arya and James) novel Chapter 235

235 I Will Handle It 2

Lev’s POVO

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The details after a certain point were still a blade inside her. I knew enough of them now.

Enough to know where the real rot began. Enough to know how much she had already

had to claw through just to arrive here in one piece.

She looked at me briefly.

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gave a single nod.

And then she began.

Her voice was steady at first. Too steady maybe. The kind of steadiness people used

when they were speaking past pain rather than through it.

“James told me,” she said, “that Marcel Rainhorn said he could help Nightwind join the

Union.”

Simple.

Clean.

No dramatic flourishes.

Good.

The room listened.

She continued, “At the time, Nightwind needed security. We had built the pack, but we

were still exposed. James believed Union recognition would protect the pack and secure

its future.”

Her jaw tightened ever so slightly before she went on.

“Marcel’s conditions were that he be given land, gold, and that his daughter be made

Luna.”

No one interrupted.

Even Marcel did not dare.

Maybe because the clarity of it sounded so different from his earlier lies. Maybe because

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there was no hysteria in her tone. No desperate need to be believed. She spoke like

someone laying stones in a path she had already walked barefoot.

“James agreed,” she said. “He did all that was asked of him. He gave the land. He gave

the gold. He married Leah Rainhorn, despite the fact that he was mated to me.”

A small murmur moved through the room again.

Not because they did not understand what she meant.

Because hearing it said plainly made it uglier.

My hands curled against the chair arms once.

I kept my face neutral.

Arya did not falter.

“He did it because he believed Marcel could get him a seat on the Union and secure

Nightwind.”

There it was.

The core of it.

Ambition. Fear. Manipulation. The exact poison men like Marcel fed other men when they

wanted something.

She went on, and as she did I could hear the room changing. Not outwardly perhaps, but in focus. They were no longer looking at her like a decorative scandal seated beside me.

They were listening to testimony.

“We held a banquet,” she said. “James arranged it because Marcel said Union officers were coming to inspect the pack and sign the certification.”

The disgust in me deepened.

So-called Union officers.

A whole performance built on false authority and greed.

“They were entertained,” she said. “Everything was prepared. The house, the pack, the dinner, the papers. We were led to believe that if the evening went well, Nightwind

would finally be recognised.”

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Her

es had gone colder now. Far away and exact.

Then her voice changed just a little.

Not weaker.

Sharper.

“Before the document could be signed, Leah began to bleed.”

The hall seemed to tighten around the words.

“She was rushed to the infirmary,” Arya said. “The incident was immediately turned into

a reason to halt the certification.”

Marcel shifted in his seat.

I noticed.

So did half the room.

Arya kept going.

“The pack was told that their chance to join the Union had been jeopardised.” Her mouth

thinned. “And I was blamed for it.”

I looked at Marcel then.

Briefly.

Just long enough for him to know I was.

He looked away first.

Coward.

“Marcel threatened retaliation,” Arya continued. “He threatened to attack the pack for

poisoning his daughter.”

A few men swore under their breath at that. Not loudly, but enough. They were seeing it

now. The extortion. The trap tightening from both ends. Promise recognition, force

concessions, stage crisis, threaten violence.

Exactly the kind of scheme Marcel would think clever.

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“Lisa and Margaret accused me,” Arya said. “They said I had done it. They pinned it on me.”

Her voice stayed level, but I could hear something straining under it now.

That was the point.

The edge.

We were getting close to the part of the story where it stopped being politics in a room and became personal destruction. The part where her body remembered before her voice did. The part where the punishment began.

My jaw locked.

I wanted to stop it.

I also knew I could not stop her if she needed this said.

She looked straight ahead, not at Marcel, not at Radimir, not even at me now.

“I was punished for it,” she said.

That was all.

Just that.

But there was enough in those words to tell any intelligent man at the table that what followed had not been clean. Not lawful. Not deserved. Punished by a pack already primed to resent her. Punished while a false Luna bled dramatically in the next room.

Punished while Marcel threatened attack and James chased certification and control.

I knew more.

Not everything. But enough.

Enough to know the details after that were still splinters in her.

Enough to know how much she was not saying.

Enough to know she had chosen exactly where to stop.

And I respected her for it more than I could put into words.

Because I could see the tears in her eyes.

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Not falling.

Never that easy.