Rebirth of the Broken Luna A Second Chance at Luna's Heart novel Chapter 336

Chapter 336

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Lumina and I were both exhausted as we finally made our way back from the pack house’s main building toward our residential wing. The emergency council meeting had run long, followed by individual conversations with concerned pack members, followed by yet more tactical planning with Marcus and James. By the time we’d finished, it was nearly midnight.

“I need a shower and about twelve hours of sleep,” Lumina muttered, leaning against me as we walked down the darkened hallway.

“You and me both,” I agreed, stifling a yawn. “Though I doubt I’ll be able to actually sleep. My brain won’t stop running through

worst-case scenarios.”

“We’ll figure it out,” she said, though her voice lacked conviction. “We always do.”

I was about to respond when I heard it-low voices coming from the direction of the kitchen. My first instinct was concern. It was late; the boys should have been asleep hours ago. But as we got closer, I recognized Lake’s voice, then Riley’s, engaged in what sounded

like an intense conversation.

I held up a hand, stopping Lumina. She gave me a questioning look, but I pressed a finger to my lips and gestured toward the kitchen. We moved quietly, staying just out of sight in the darkened hallway where we could hear but not be seen.

“-they needed me for the location of the different facilities, could I not write them a letter and have them gone?” Riley was saying, his voice carrying that flat, logical tone he used when he was trying to problem-solve without emotional attachment.

“They’re not going to just say ‘oh thank you, sorry for the trouble, bye, of course you’re free to have a normal life,” Lake responded, and I could hear the frustration beneath his careful control. “They know the locations. They want us, Riley. Andy’s favorite experiments. The ones who survived while the ninety-four other children didn’t.”

My heart clenched at that number. Ninety-four. Ninety-four children who hadn’t survived whatever horrors Andy had subjected them to. The casual way Lake mentioned it-like it was just a statistic, just a known fact of their existence-made me feel physically sick.

Beside me, Lumina had gone rigid, her hand covering her mouth. I could see tears gathering in her eyes, but she didn’t make a sound. We both stayed frozen, listening.

“I knew we should have run away back in Zade’s territory,” Riley groaned, and I heard what sounded like his head hitting the kitchen table. “Dex and Snow are safe. AWOL and not being searched for. They got out.”

“That’s because no one knows where they are,” Lake said. There was a pause, then his voice changed, took on that particular tone that meant he’d just had an idea. “Maybe… maybe we could contact them. They survived. They could, I don’t know, help.”

“How do we contact them?” Riley asked, sounding skeptical.

“Besides, Snow wouldn’t help me. She hates werewolves. She spent half our time together telling me how werewolves killed her family,

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Chapter 336

how they’re all monsters. She’s not going to help a werewolf pack defend against her own kind.”

“She’s a nightwalker?” Lake asked, though his tone suggested he already knew the answer.

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“Yeah,” Riley confirmed. “She won’t kill her own kind. Probably. And anyway, Lake, you got the cool power. Nobody is getting past your

portals. You could send them to an active volcano. You did that with the-”

“What happened to not spilling secrets, Riley?” Lake interrupted sharply, and I heard the sound of a chair scraping, like he’d moved

suddenly.

I exchanged a glance with Lumina. Lake had sent someone to an active volcano? That was both terrifying and impressive, and I

desperately wanted to know who and why, but before I could process that revelation, I heard different footsteps on the stairs.

*—and then the dragon ate all the evil wizards and everyone was happy!” Ollie’s voice announced his presence before he appeared,

clearly talking to himself about some story he’d been thinking about. “Except the evil wizards probably had families who were sad, but

they should have thought about that before being evil-oh! Lake! Riley! Are you having a midnight snack? Can I have cereal too?*

Lumina grabbed my arm, pulling me back further into the shadows. We couldn’t stay here eavesdropping now that Ollie had arrived-

it was one thing to overhear a private conversation between the boys, but another entirely to spy on all three children together.

“Quick,” Lumina whispered. “We need to make it look like we just got here.”

We hurried back down the hallway, then made a show of walking toward the kitchen with normal footsteps, talking in regular voices

about mundane things.

“-and I think we need to order more notebooks for the documentation,” I was saying as we rounded the corner into the kitchen. ‘Oh,

you’re all still up?”

The three boys looked up from the kitchen table where they’d gathered. Lake and Riley both had bowls of cereal in front of them, and Ollie was already pouring himself a massive serving of something that looked like it was ninety percent sugar and food coloring.

“We couldn’t sleep,” Lake said, his expression carefully neutral. “Too much thinking about everything.”

“I couldn’t sleep either,” Ollie added through a mouthful of cereal. “My brain won’t turn off. It keeps making up stories about shadow

monsters and portal traps.”

Riley said nothing, just watched us with those eerily perceptive eyes. I had the uncomfortable feeling that he knew exactly what we’d overheard, that his precognitive abilities had already shown him this moment and he was waiting to see how we’d handle it.

“Mind if we join you?” Lumina asked, moving to the refrigerator. ‘I think I need some comfort food after the day we’ve had.”

“There’s leftover cake from yesterday,” Ollie volunteered helpfully. “It’s in the back behind the vegetables because Dad tried to hide it

from me, but I have excellent food-finding skills.”

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Chapter 336

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“Traitor,” I said without heat, pulling out the cake and some plates. “Those excellent food-finding skills are why we can never keep

desserts in this house for more than a day.”

“It’s a gift,” Ollie said solemnly. “Some people can see the future, some people can make portals, some people can find hidden cake.

We all have our talents.”

Lake snorted into his cereal, and even Riley’s lips twitched slightly. The normalcy of the moment-sitting around the kitchen table at

midnight, eating cereal and cake, making jokes about hidden desserts-felt surreal after everything we’d learned today.

But I also recognized it for what it was: the boys processing stress the only way they knew how. By staying up, staying together,

trying to solve problems that shouldn’t be their responsibility to solve.

“We overheard some of your conversation,” I admitted, figuring honesty was better than pretending. “Not deliberately eavesdropping,

but we were coming back from the meeting and heard voices.”

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13:00 Thu, Jan 29 M.

Reborn From Regret A Second Chance at Luna’s Heart