Luna Forsaken (Arya and James) novel Chapter 279

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James’ POVO

He took out the phone and opened the Union message. Then he stepped forward and held it where Leah could see through the bars. She leaned toward it in disbelief first, then in desperation, like maybe if she stared hard enough the words would rearrange themselves into something kinder.

They didn’t. I watched her face while she read. That was the part I wanted. The exact second belief

broke. The exact second it became real. Her breathing changed first. Then her lips started trembling.

Then her head began to move again.

“No,” Leah said. “No, no, no.”

Nixon kept the screen there.

Leah looked at it again. Then at me. Then back at it.

“No,” Leah said louder. “It’s a lie.”

I laughed. Because what else was there to do with that? A lie? No. Not this time. This was not one of Marcel’s little stage shows. This was not fake officers eating my food and smiling like authority. This was the real thing, and she knew it. That was why her voice sounded like that. Thin. Shaky. Broken under the weight of something she could not talk her way out of.

I nodded at Nixon and he lowered the phone. Leah looked like she wanted to grab it and stare again.

Too late. I had seen enough.

“Starve her for three days,” I said.

The words dropped hard in the cell. Leah turned so fast her hair whipped across her face.

“What?”

“Then drag her out,” I said, “and cane her in front of everyone.”

Her eyes widened.

I kept going.

“And brand her.”

That did it.

Real terror moved through her then. Not the kind she wore when Marcel shouted. Not the kind she performed in halls and offices. This was deeper. It shook her. It made her step backward from the

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bars like the words themselves could strike her.

“No,” Leah whispered.

Her face had gone white.

I looked at her and thought of Arya again.

Of course I did.

How could I not when I stood in this exact place? How could I not when I remembered what was done to her, what I let be done to her, how I stood and watched and chose badly again and again because thought I was saving something? There was no escaping Arya here. No escaping the memory. Leah got to stand in the shape of it now. Not because that would balance anything. It wouldn’t. Nothing could. But because I wanted her to feel the walls of the thing she built.

“You user,” Leah spat suddenly. “You traitor.”

I looked at her.

That one almost made me smile for a different reason. Because yes. ‘User’. ‘Traitor’. Those words belonged in this room. But not the way she meant. I stepped right up to the bars.

“Honestly?” I said.

Leah looked at me with hatred now. Fear too. But hatred had come back enough for her to spit.

“Honestly,” I said again, “if Arya had truly poisoned you, I would have counted my losses and allowed you to remain by my side.”

That shocked her more than the threat of the branding had.

Good. Because I meant it. And maybe it was twisted to say it now. Maybe it made me look worse. I no longer cared. I was done cleaning truth into something polite.

“If that had been true,” I said, “if Arya had truly done that, I would not have discarded you simply because I have Union protection now.”

Leah stared at me. I let the words hang before I cut deeper.

“But knowing I lost my mate and my unborn child for a lie you concocted?” I said. “No. I cannot let you

go scot-free.”

There it was. The real thing. Not politics. Not Union. Not power. My mate. My child. Those were the words that still poisoned my mouth every time I said them. Mate. Child. Lost. Because of a lie. Because of a lie and my own stupidity. Because she lied and I believed and Arya paid with blood and

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humiliation and our child paid with its life and I paid by becoming a man I could barely stand to live- inside. I leaned forward then, close enough that she could not look away from me.

“What is good for the goose is also good for the gander,” I told her.

Her breath hitched.

“You framed Arya,” I said. “You had Arya punished and humiliated. So you will be punished the same

way.”

Leah started crying harder now.

Not soft tears. Ugly tears. Desperate tears. The kind that came from finally understanding that this was no longer some fight between her father and me that she could talk her way around. This was personal now. Deeply. Irrevocably.

“You will suffer the same things Arya suffered from,” I said.

She shook her head violently.

“No, James. Please.”

That should have mattered more to me.

It didn’t.

Not enough.

Because all I could see was Arya. Arya looking at me from pain and disbelief. Arya not understanding how I could love her and still do that. Arya carrying my child while I allowed other people’s lies to touch her body and her name. Arya becoming a rogue because I was too selfish and too afraid to lose her cleanly. Those images were bigger than Leah’s tears. Much bigger.

“I will make your life hell,” I said.

I meant it.

I hated that I meant it.

But I did.

“My heart hurts for everything I have lost,” I said. “So I will make sure you hurt too.”

Her fingers clutched the bars so hard her knuckles went pale.

“You can’t,” Leah said.

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I looked at her and thought, I already did worse to the wrong woman. What exactly is left of can’t imme

now?

But I did not say that.

I had no desire to hand her that piece of my soul.

Instead I straightened and let her see the cold thing I had become in this moment. The thing grief made. The thing guilt made. The thing betrayal made. The thing love twisted into rage made.

“You should have thought of all this before you touched Arya’s life,” I said.

Leah was crying so hard now she could barely breathe right.

“My father,”

“Your father,” I cut in, “has bigger problems now.”

That shut her up again.

Good.

Because I wanted that fear to stay where it belonged. On Silverfang. On Marcel. On the land they thought was secure. On the enemies who had been waiting. Let her go to sleep, if she slept at all, with that thought in her head. Let her think of her father worrying. Let her think of what suspension meant. Let her think of all the ways the ground under her had broken while she was still trying to threaten me

with old names.

I turned to leave.

For a second I thought that was enough. That the words had done what I needed them to do. That I could walk away now and let the cell do the rest. But then Arya came back into my mind again, not as blood this time, but as silence. As loneliness. As being left here with no comfort and no kindness and no hand reaching through the bars to make anything less cruel. So I stopped at the door of the row and looked at the guards.

“No visitors,” I said.

They straightened.

“No food,” I added. “Let her rot.”

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