Luna Forsaken (Arya and James) novel Chapter 74

74 The Room Where I Lost Her

James’s POV

I searched until the night bled into morning.

No rest.

No pause.

No thinking about injuries, hunger, exhaustion, none of it mattered. My boots hit roots, mud, stones. Branches slapped my face. Thorns snagged my clothes. I didn’t stop. Every second I stopped was a second her trail went colder.

I pushed deeper into the woods, then wider, then doubled back, then wider again.

I kept circling like a man trying to find a door that had already closed.

“Arya!” I shouted at first, raw, desperate.

My voice bounced off trees and died.

No answer.

Not even an echo that sounded like hope.

The only responses were distant night sounds and the occasional howl, my own men, still patrolling, still searching, still trying to bring control back to a pack that had been carved open.

I tried linking her.

Nothing.

Of course nothing.

I’d severed the bond with my own hands,

I’d cut the mark like it was a rope holding me back.

I’d thrown away the one thing that would have let me find her in the dark.

That was the truth that kept punching the air out of me every time my mind tried to form a plan.

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I couldn’t feel her.

I couldn’t pull her.

I couldn’t even speak into her mind.

All I had was scent.

And even that was fading.

“Damn it,” I growled, dragging a breath in through my nose so hard it burned.

Blood.

Smoke.

Wet earth.

Rot.

Too many bodies had passed through this forest tonight. Too many wolves had run. Too many attackers had bled. Too many pack members had died.

The air was layered with chaos.

It made tracking harder.

It made everything harder.

But Arya’s scent, Arya’s was different. It always had been.

Clean steel and storm.

Wolf and fire.

A woman who didn’t smell like submission.

A woman who smelled like war.

I caught it faintly, like a thread,

I followed it immediately, cutting right, then left, then straight, moving fast, teeth

grinding as I tried to ignore the pounding in my head.

Jasper was not silent anymore.

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He wasn’t calm.

He was furious.

He snarled inside me like a beast trapped in a burning cage.

FIND HER.

“Shut up,” I rasped under my breath.

But Jasper didn’t listen.

He howled in my skull.

YOU DID THIS. YOU LET THEM,

I shoved the thought away and ran harder.

Hours passed in violent fragments.

Sometimes I felt like I had her trail, clearer, stronger, fresh enough to make my heart

slam with hope.

Then it would scatter again.

Disappear into another crossing trail.

Fade into the stink of blood.

My frustration grew until it tasted like metal.

At some point, I stopped pretending I could do this as a man.

I needed my wolf.

I needed sharper senses,

I needed speed.

I needed to stop being James the Alpha and become James the hunter,

I tore my clothes off in one brutal motion, letting them fall into the dirt like dead weight, and shifted.

Bones cracked.

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Flesh burned.

Fur exploded across skin.

The world sharpened into scent and sound.

Cool night air hit my nose like clarity.

And Jasper surged forward like he’d been clawing for the front for hours.

We ran.

Faster.

Lower.

More violent.

We cut through

the forest like it was paper.

Paws hit ground, barely sinking, barely slowing.

We followed the faintest thread of Arya’s scent, taking it as gospel.

A faint trace on a branch.

A brush of fabric against bark.

A footstep that crushed leaves differently.

We chased it with hungry intensity.

And still,

Nixon had been right.

Her scent was almost long gone.

It kept thinning the further we went.

Not because she wasn’t there.

Because she was smart.

Because she moved fast.

Because she didn’t linger.

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Because she knew how to disappear.

Because she had been surviving long before she met me.

That truth burned in Jasper’s chest, and it burned in mine too.

The night began to pale slowly at the edges.

Not dawn yet, but the sky was shifting.

The world was turning grey.

My muscles ached even in wolf form. My lungs burned. My paws were scratched raw from stones and sharp roots, but we didn’t stop.

We kept running.

We kept searching.

We kept trying to pull her back with nothing but instinct and desperation.

Then the forest opened.

The smell changed.

Less earth.

More dust.

More oil.

More road.

We burst out of the tree line and hit the edge of the main road.

I slowed sharply.

Because something hit me the moment my paws touched the harder ground.

Her scent wasn’t continuing along the road in a straight line.

It was scattered,

Broken.

As if she’d been here.

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Then gone,

Then the air swallowed her.

Jasper circled once, nose down, searching..

HERE. He snarled.

We tracked the strongest patch of her scent and found it, near the roadside, where the

dirt was disturbed, where footprints overlapped, where tyre tracks cut close.

I lowered my head and inhaled hard.

Arya.

Close.

Fresh enough to make rage flare.

Then, another scent layered over it.

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Foreign.

Another pack.

Not Nightwind.

Car oil.

Metal.

A vehicle had stopped here.

And her scent moved toward it, then lifted, up, into the air.

Not walking away.

Not continuing into the woods.

Up.

Into a car.

My body went still.

My wolf went rigid.

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Then Jasper let out a sound, half growl, half wounded howl.

Because we both understood at the same time.

She had hitched a ride.

The bastard driver had picked her up.

And now her trail was gone.

Gone.

No paws could follow tyres on a road once the wind and distance did their work.

No nose could trace which direction she went when the scent was carried off behind a

moving car and smeared into miles of dust.

I stood in the early morning air, wolf form trembling, and rage slammed into me so hard

it almost made me shift back from the force of it.

I threw my head back and howled.

Not a call.

Not command.

A furious, helpless sound.

The kind of sound a wolf makes when it loses its mate and can’t bite the world in half to

fix it.

My paws dug into the roadside dirt.

I wanted to rip the road apart.

I wanted to chase every car that passed and tear it open.

I wanted to hunt until my throat bled from howling her name.

But it was done.

She was gone,

I forced myself to breathe.

Forced myself to turn.

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Forced myself to move.

Because standing here screaming wouldn’t bring her back.

And my pack,

My pack was still bleeding.

I shifted back into human form with a violent crack, grabbed my clothes from where I’d

left them in the woods, muddy, torn, and dragged them on without care.

My hands shook as I dressed.

My heart was beating too fast.

Everything in me felt like it was on the edge of collapse.

I turned and started back.

Fast.

Hard.

Angry.

Each step back to the pack felt like walking toward judgement.

Not because I cared what they thought.

Because I knew what they’d say.

I knew what I’d hear.

And I knew I deserved it.

When I reached the outskirts, the smell hit me again.

Death,

Smoke.

Grief.

The pack looked like a wound that hadn’t stopped bleeding.

People were still outside.

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Still gathered.

Still mourning.

Some sat on the ground, rocking. Some held wrapped bodies. Some stared blankly at

burnt homes like they were waiting for the walls to stand back up.

And as soon as they saw me,

As soon as they saw their Alpha walking in alone,

The air shifted.

Anger rose.

Voices started.

It began with one shout, then another, then a wave.

“Where were you?”

A woman’s voice, raw, furious.

“Where were you, Alpha?!”

A man stepped forward, face smeared with soot, eyes red from crying.

“Where were you when they came?”

Another voice, sharper.

“Where is our Luna?”

Someone laughed, bitter and ugly.

“Which Luna? The one with the broken nose? Or the one you locked away like an

animal?”

The crowd surged closer,

Not to attack, yet, but to demand.

To accuse.

To spit truth they’d been holding in their mouths all night.

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And I stood there, chest heaving, hands still trembling, and the pack that used to cheer

for me looked at me like I was a stranger.

A liar.

A failure.

A man who promised protection and delivered smoke.

“Answer us!” someone screamed.

“Tell us where you were!”

I opened my mouth,

No sound came out.

Because what could I say?

I was at lunch.

I was being paraded around by Marcel Rainhorn like a prize dog.

I was being deceived.

I was too stupid to see it.

My silence made them angrier.

A man pushed forward, jaw clenched.

“It was Arya that helped us!” he shouted. “Arya!”

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