Rebirth of the Broken Luna A Second Chance at Luna's Heart novel Chapter 417

Chapter 417

SILVIA

The arguing had been going on for at least twenty minutes now, and honestly, it was getting tedious.

Jerome and his coalition of revenge-seekers were having what could only be described as a complete breakdown in the room just beyond our cell. We couldn’t see them-they’d moved out of camera range after ending the video call with Xenois- but we could certainly hear them.

“You made us look like fools!” someone shouted. I thought it might be the female nightwalker with white hair-Elena, I’d heard someone call her. “We had them on camera, had their son watching, and instead of making demands, you let two elderly prisoners mock you for ten minutes!”

“I didn’t let them do anything,” Jerome snarled back. “They’re uncontrollable. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to intimidate people who genuinely don’t care if they die?”

“That’s exactly the problem!” another voice chimed in-one of the werewitches, male, with an accent I couldn’t quite place. “Your entire plan was built on the assumption that Alpha Xenois would be desperate to save his parents. That he’d negotiate, compromise, maybe even abandon his progressive policies to get them back. But now he’s seen that they’re fine- better than fine, they’re laughing at us-and he has zero incentive to give us anything!”

“He gave us twelve hours,” Jerome said, his voice tight with barely controlled fury. “That’s not nothing. That’s time to prepare, to fortify, to—”

“To what?” Elena interrupted. “To wait for him to show up with an army and tear through our defenses? We’re not prepared for a full assault from the Blackwood pack, Jerome. This was supposed to be a hostage negotiation, not a war!”

“If you’d all just stayed calm and let me handle_”

“You couldn’t even handle two prisoners making jokes about caskets!” someone else shouted. I was losing track of who was yelling what. “They completely derailed your entire theatrical presentation. Made you look weak and foolish. And now everyone’s heard about it-the story’s spreading through the supernatural community. ‘Jerome Thorne, ancient nightwalker, bested by a seventy-year-old werewolf who complained about makeup.””

I felt a surge of satisfaction at that. Good. Let them know that Samuel and I weren’t going to cower just because they’d managed to capture us through overwhelming numbers and ambush tactics.

“Did you see the guard’s keys?” I murmured to Samuel, keeping my voice low enough that it wouldn’t carry beyond our

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“Hip pocket, left side,” he confirmed, his eyes tracking the young nightwalker who’d been assigned to watch us. Poor thing looked barely a century old-practically an infant by nightwalker standards. “Think you can distract him long enough for me to grab them?”

“Please,” I scoffed quietly. “I’ve been distracting men for seventy years. This will be easy.”

What followed was possibly the most undignified five minutes of my life, but it worked. I called the guard over with complaints about the silver chains burning my skin-which wasn’t entirely a lie, they did burn-and while he was focused on examining my wrists and explaining why he couldn’t remove the restraints, Samuel used every bit of his remaining flexibility to hook the keys from the guard’s pocket.

The guard never noticed. He returned to his post thinking he’d been professionally compassionate, completely unaware that we’d just acquired the means to our escape.

We waited.

Patience had never been my strong suit, but I’d learned it during the territorial wars. Learned that sometimes the best tactical move was to sit still and let your enemies think you were defeated while you planned your next strike.

Beside me, Samuel was working on the lock of his chains with the small piece of metal he’d palmed during one of the guard changes. I’d distracted them by asking loudly about bathroom facilities-a question that had made our young, inexperienced guards extremely uncomfortable-while Samuel had lifted the key ring and carefully removed what we needed.

We’d been doing this for forty-three years. Playing good cop and bad cop, distraction and theft, whatever it took to survive and gain advantage. These people thought they could hold us with simple chains and minimal guards?

They clearly hadn’t done their research on exactly how the Blood Luna and her mate had survived the territorial wars.

“Got it,” Samuel whispered, his chains falling away with barely a sound.

I continued listening to the argument while he worked on mine, paying attention to the guard rotations and movement

patterns we’d been observing since they’d thrown us in here.

“The plan is falling apart, Elena was saying now, her voice carrying desperation. “We didn’t even get to make proper

demands. We gave them a deadline but no specific terms. What exactly are we expecting Alpha Xenois to do in twelve hours?

Show up and politely ask for his parents back?”

He’s going to attack, the werewitch said flatly. “Anyone with basic tactical sense would. He knows roughly where we are,

as allies, and he’s been given a time limit that creates urgency. He’s not going to negotiate-he’s going to assault this

sition with overwhelming force and extract his parents by violence.”

‘Which is exactly what I’ve been preparing for,” Jerome insisted. “We have defenses, we have numbers, we have-*

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