Luna Forsaken (Arya and James) novel Chapter 282

282 Fifty Men and a Dead Bond

James’ POVO

The office had become the only place in Nightwind where I could pretend the walls still answered to me. Pretend. That was the word for most things now. Pretend this desk still meant control./Pretend the ledgers under my hand mattered more than the wreckage sitting underneath my ribs. Pretend the reports spread across the polished wood were the real problem. Patrol rotations. Boundary checks Grain tallies. Complaints from the lower houses. Repairs needed on the east side fencing after last

week’s storm. Names. Numbers. Costs. Duties. All of it useful. All of it real. All of it easier than the

truth.

The truth was that every room in this packhouse still had Arya in it. Not her body. Not her scent the

way it used to be, thick and warm and alive in the halls, clinging to doorframes and bed linen and the

skin at the base of my throat. That was fading now. Time was doing what time did best. Erasing what

a man deserved to keep. But her absence had shape. It sat in the corners like a witness.

I signed off on a grain request from the southern storage house and tossed it aside. Picked up another

sheet. Read the first line. Realised I had not taken in a single word of it. My fingers tightened around the page until it creased.

Nightwind kept moving. It always did. That had been the reason, hadn’t it? The excuse. The polished

blade I kept pressing to my own throat because it looked cleaner than the truth. Survival. Security. The future of the pack. I had said those words so many times they should have turned to dust in my mouth

by now. Instead they lived there still, bitter and hard, every one of them tied to her.

A knock sounded once. I did not look up.

“Come in.”

The door opened. Closed. Footsteps crossed the room. I knew the weight of them before I lifted my

head. Nixon never moved like he needed permission. Even when he was careful, he still carried himself

like a man who had chosen his ground and meant to keep it. He stopped at the front of my desk with a folded paper in one hand and the kind of look that said he was bringing more than one problem.

“What is it?” I asked.

Nixon glanced at the ledgers spread in front of me, then at the untouched mug of coffee gone cold

near my elbow.

“You look foul,” he said.

I leaned back in my chair.

“That your update?”

<282 Fifty Men and a Dead Bond

His mouth twitched once, not quite a smile.

“No.”

He held up the paper.

“Invitation from the Union house.”

!

Something in my chest went tight without warning. Not sharp. Not sudden. Worse than that. Famillar, The kind of tightening that came before a wound split open again. I held his gaze.

“For what?”

“Banquet,” Nixon said. “Lev’s hosting. Celebration for his cousin’s birthday. Union members, close allies, expected faces. The sort of gathering people pretend is social while they count who attends and

who doesn’t.”

I stared at him for half a second too long. He noticed. Nixon noticed everything. I looked away first,

toward the window, because it was easier to look at the training yard than the knowledge in his face.

Banquet. Lev’s house. Union members. Important people. Soft music. Silk. Power. And Arya. Of course

Arya would be there. She would walk those halls like she belonged in them. Maybe because now she did. Maybe because she should always have belonged somewhere brighter than the cage I gave her.

A muscle jumped once in my jaw. I picked up a quill from the desk, rolled it between my fingers, set it down again.

“She’ll be there,” Nixon said quietly.

It was not a question. He knew it. Knew that was the only part of that invitation that mattered enough to change the air in the room. I laughed once under my breath, though there was no humour in it.

“Then I won’t be.”

Nixon did not answer immediately. He watched me the way a man watches a blade being turned in

someone else’s hand.

“You could go,” he said after a beat. “No one would stop you.”

“No,” I said.

The word came out flat and final, but it did not feel that way inside me. Inside me it felt like ripping skin off something half-healed. Go? Walk into Lev’s house and stand under chandeliers and polished

smiles while she looked at me with those eyes? Those same eyes I had taught myself to live for. Those same eyes I had put pain into with my own hands. No. There were things a man could face. A border attack. A war council. A pack uprising. Blood on the floor. Death at the gate. Arya looking at me

with full knowledge of what I had done was not one of them. Not yet. I shoved a report away from me

<282 Fifty Men and a Dead Bond

hard enough for the papers underneath to shift.

“When I stand in front of her again,” I said, my voice low, “it won’t be while Marcel still breathes easy.

I’ll face Arya after I’ve gotten even with the Rainhorns.”

The room went still after that. The words had weight. I wanted them to. They sat between me and Nixon like a promise carved with a dirty knife. Nixon looked at me for a long second, and whatever he

saw in my face must have been enough because he gave one short nod and let it go. No lecture. No pity. No attempt to drag me toward a courage I did not have. Good. I was in no mood to be saved from

myself.

He set the invitation down on the corner of my desk like the thing itself was harmless.

“Fine,” he said. “Then the answer goes back as a refusal.”

“Send regrets if you want to be polite.”

Nixon snorted.

“Since when do you care about polite?”

“I don’t,” I said. “But Maxwell would. And I’d rather not insult the only Union wolf who might still answer a message from me without spitting first.”

A shadow of approval crossed Nixon’s face. It vanished quickly.

“There’s more,” he said.

“There’s always more.”

This time he did smile, but only with one side of his mouth.

“Leah.”

The name made my stomach turn cold. Not because I cared. Not anymore. Maybe not ever, not in the way everyone had insisted I should. But the name brought the whole rot with it. Marcel’s voice. Rebecca’s smug silences. Political calculation dressed up as family. White dresses. Signatures. Bargains. The smell of my own cowardice. I said nothing. Nixon took that as permission to continue.

“She’s been making noise since sunrise,” he said. “Demanding a divorce. Demanding to see you. Demanding to speak to her father. She threatened one of the maids with a vase and tried to force her way past the guard at noon. When that didn’t work, she started crying loud enough to wake the dead.”

I leaned both forearms on the desk and stared at the wood grain.

“Has she?” I said.

<282 Fifty Men and a Dead Bond

Nixon folded his arms.

“She also keeps saying none of this can continue and that she won’t be treated like a prisoner.”

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