247 What He Stole Will Be Mine
Arya’s POV
The moment the call ended, I stayed where I was. I did not move away from the window. I did not sit
down either. I just stood there with the phone still in my hand, my chest rising and falling slowly, my mind already gone ahead of me to Silverfang. I could see it too clearly. The walls. The gates. The smugness that had lived inside that place for too long. Marcel’s power. Rebecca’s comfort. The way they had both moved like the world owed them softness while I bled out under everything they helped
destroy.
No.
I did not want softness for them. I wanted fear. I wanted confusion. I wanted the kind of panic that grips the throat when a person realises too late that what protected them is gone.
A small bitter smile almost touched my mouth.
Good.
Let them feel it. Let them feel even one little drop of what they poured into me.
I lowered the phone slowly and placed it on the table. My hand rested on the wood after that. I pressed down, grounding myself because something dark and alive was moving through me now. Not wild. Not a blind rage that makes people do stupid things and then regret them. This was clearer than that. Worse than that. It felt cold. Clean. The kind of anger that had sat for too long and finally found the
right shape to wear.
Silverfang would burn.
Maybe not literally. Maybe not in flames. But it would burn in the only way that mattered to Marcel. It
would be taken from him.
That mattered more.
Men like Marcel could lose money and find more. They could lose face and hide behind politics until people forgot. They could even lose blood and still walk around puffed up on their own importance if they still had a seat, a title, land beneath their feet, people forced to answer to them. But a home? A pack? A territory? That cut deeper.
My fingers curled against the edge of the table as I let myself imagine it. Marcel standing there, realising his title meant nothing. Rebecca seeing strange wolves inside her territory and knowing the walls around her life had failed. The Rainhorn name turning worthless in the very place they had used to elevate themselves. That thought made something warm and ugly settle low in my stomach.
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<247 What He Stole Will Be Mine
I wanted it.
God, I wanted it.
I was so deep in it that I did not hear the door open at first. I only felt him. Lev had a way of changing a room before he even spoke. The air would tighten slightly. My body would know before my ears did. There was always that quiet shift, that instinctive awareness that he was close. I felt it now and turned too fast, my heart jumping once before it steadied when I saw him.
He was leaning against the partly open door, one hand still on the handle, his eyes on me.
My breath caught.
Not because he had startled me. Because I knew from his face that he had heard. All of it.
For one second, neither of us said anything His gaze moved from my face to the phone on the table,
then back again. Not accusing. Not shocked. Just knowing.
I swallowed but did not look away.
Lev closed the door behind him quietly and walked towards me. Slow. Controlled. Every step certain. He did not look angry. That would have been easier. He did not look disappointed either. He looked like
a man who had listened carefully and had already decided what he thought. That made me tense
more than I wanted it to.
He stopped a few feet away.
“You move fast,” he said.
His voice was low, even, impossible to read if you did not know him. I lifted my chin.
“I told you I would think about it.”
A faint shadow of something crossed his face. Maybe amusement. Maybe approval. With Lev, those
things sometimes looked too similar.
“You did,” he said.
I waited. So did he. The silence stretched between us, heavy but not empty. My heart was beating too hard for how still I looked. I hated that. I hated that he could walk into a room and make me feel
exposed without even touching me.
Finally, I asked,
“How much did you hear?”
“All of it,” he said.
<247 What He Stole Will Be Mine
There it was. No pretending. No soft lie to spare me the discomfort. Just the truth placed down
between us.
I nodded once.
Some stubborn part of me bristled anyway. Not because I had done anything wrong. I did not think I had. But because the plan was mine. The anger was mine. The need was mine. I did not want him thinking he could simply step in and take over because he was stronger, because his men were better
trained, because he had more power than Daniel and every rogue I knew.
This was not his to claim.
He must have seen some of that move across my face because his mouth shifted slightly.
“You’re preparing for war already,” he said.
“I’m preparing for justice,” I replied.
That made his eyes darken in a way that did something dangerous to my pulse. Not anger. Something else. Something heavier. The kind of look a man gives when he sees a woman standing in the centre
of her own fire and likes her more for it.
He came closer then, just one step, and I had to force myself not to step back out of instinct. Not because I was afraid of him. I was not. But because Lev close to me always did things to my body my
pride did not enjoy admitting.
He stopped close enough that I could smell him. Soap. Male skin. That deeper wolf scent beneath it that had been on my sheets when I woke. My stomach tightened at once. Damn him.
“I won’t stop you,” he said.
I blinked.
That was not what I expected.
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