Rebirth of the Broken Luna A Second Chance at Luna's Heart novel Chapter 424

Chapter 424

LUMINA

The tension in the house was suffocating. Three hours. Three hours since Xenois and his strike team had left, and we’d heard nothing. No updates, no emergency calls, not even a brief text to confirm they’d reached the staging area.

Just silence.

I watched Lyn pace across the living room for what had to be the hundredth time, his movements jerky with barely suppressed anxiety. Each pass took him from the window to the door and back again, his hands alternating between running through his hair and clenching into fists at his sides.

“Lyn,” I said gently, “you’re going to wear a hole in the floor.”

“I don’t care about the floor,” he snapped, then immediately looked apologetic. “Sorry. I’m just-three hours, Lumina. Three hours and nothing. We should have heard something by now. Even if it’s just ‘we’re in position’ or ‘beginning approach.’ This silence is killing me.”

I couldn’t argue with that. The silence was killing all of us.

The kids were scattered around the room, each dealing with the stress in their own way. Ollie sat curled in the armchair, hugging a pillow and staring at nothing. Riley had surrounded himself with laptops and tablets, monitoring every communication channel even though nothing was coming through. Lake was at the window, his hands occasionally flickering with portal magic as he practiced the emergency evacuation routes he’d memorized.

And Shawn sat on the floor against the wall, looking lost and guilty despite everyone’s repeated assurances that none of

this was his fault.

Margo, Xenois assistant in the office and my longtime friend had been with us for the first two hours, helping coordinate

and keeping everyone focused. But she’d eventually been called away to deal with some pack business that couldn’t wait,

leaving me as the sole adult trying to hold together a group of terrified, magically gifted children and one extremely anxious

werewitch Luna.

“They’re fine,” I said, trying to inject confidence I didn’t entirely feel into my voice, “Xenois is brilliant at tactical operations. Zade is experienced. They have good people backing them up. They’re going to get Samuel and Silvia out safely and come home.”

“You don’t know that,” Lyn said, his voice breaking slightly. “You can’t know that. Combat operations are unpredictable. eople die. Even good people with good plans and good intentions-they die.”

“Lyn-

“No,” he interrupted, stopping mid-pace to face me directly.

“Do you realize what we’re doing here? What we’re actually doing?”

faces that was currently making my chest tight with conflicting emotions. was right.

God help me, he was completely right.

“They wanted to keep us safe,” I said weakly. “They wanted us out of harm’s way.”

“And that’s admirable,” Lyn agreed. “That’s what you do for people you love-you try to protect them. But Luwina, what if protecting us means they can’t protect themselves? What if by keeping the most powerful assets off the battlefield, they’ve actually made the mission more dangerous?”

“We’re not assets,” Ollie said quietly. “We’re family.”

“You can be both,” Lyn said, his voice gentler now as he addressed Xenois’s son. “You can be someone’s family and also be someone who has abilities that could save their life. Those things aren’t mutually exclusive.”

“So what are you suggesting?” I asked, though I had a horrible feeling I already knew.

“I’m suggesting we do something,” Lyn said. “I’m suggesting we stop sitting here helplessly waiting for news and start actively supporting the people we love. We have abilities they don’t. We have options they don’t. We should be using them.”

“Xenois specifically told us to stay here,” I reminded him. “He made it clear that our job was to hold down the fort and provide emergency backup only if called.”

“And if they’re in trouble but can’t call?” Lyn challenged. “If communication is compromised or they’re too busy fighting to send updates? Are we supposed to just sit here and wait until it’s too late?”