Rise Of A Shattered Luna (Natalie) by Kave Derry novel Chapter 382

Chapter-382 The Message From The Shadows

Chapter 382 The Message From The Shadows

Natalie’s POV

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The heavy iron door of the lead Nomadic rig slammed back against the exterior frame with a deafening crack that echoed across the gravel clearing.

Flynn and two of our elite Nomadic scouts dragged a bruised, shivering werewolf into the center of the basin, their boots grinding against the loose limestone as they hauled their prisoner forward with brutal efficiency.

The captured figure stumbled repeatedly, his legs barely able to support his own weight, but Flynn’s iron grip on his collar allowed no slack, no mercy, no opportunity for escape.

The spy hit the wet dirt road hard on his knees, his tattered grey leather jacket covered in thick mountain mud that had been ground into the fabric during what must have been hours of crawling through the underbrush.

A fresh cut above his eyebrow leaked a thin stream of dark blood down the side of his hollow face, and his breath came in short, ragged gasps that fogged in the freezing morning air.

He wasn’t a warrior from the old southern wars-that much was immediately obvious from the way he cowered, the way his shoulders hunched inward as though trying to make himself smaller, less visible.

He didn’t bear the pride of a wandering Nomad or the disciplined composure of a trained soldier.

His scent was completely tainted with the heavy, stagnant smell of stale river water and decaying leaves-the unmistakable biological marker of the low-tier scavengers who lived in the marshes,

These were the desperate ones, the ones who took whatever work they could find, who sold their loyalty to the highest bidder because loyalty was a luxury they couldn’t afford.

“He was crawling through the rear fuel lines of rig fourteen, Natalie,” Flynn rumbled, his grey eyes narrowing into two sharp slits of steel as his large hand remained locked tightly around the spy’s scruff armor.

The muscles in his forearm bulged with restrained violence, and the cold fury radiating from his posture.

“We caught him trying to splice a tracking link into our communication array The bastard had a full kit-wire cutters, signal boosters, even a portable encryption breaker. He knew exactly which lines to target.”

I stepped down from the iron running board of the lead transport, my long wool coat sweeping through the wet weeds that grew in stubborn clumps along the edge of the gravel clearing.

The morning dew still clung to the grass blades, shimmering faintly in the pale grey light that filtered through the mountain clouds but as my boots touched the earth, something changed..

Behind me, the thirty armored transports of the Nomadic Pack stood in perfect formation, their engines idling in tow, steady rhythm.

Waylon and Ruby flanked the command rig, their ancestral broadswords still streaked with the dried crimes of their golden eyes fixed on the scene unfolding before them.

The morning sun had barely crestend the eastern peaks, painting the granite chime in Shades of the dawn did nothing to soften the cold lethality that had settled gym the cleaning

pals amber and em, but the ways

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Chapter-382 The Message From The Shadows

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Hooked down at the shivering scavenger, my gold eyes flaring with a bright, unsuppressed Scribe current that made the spy physically tremble.

His inner beast-a mangy, underfed wolf that had never known the pride of a true pack whined in naked terror behind his ribs, its Instinctive recognition of my power overwhelming whatever scraps of courage the man had managed to muster.

“Who sent you?” I asked, my voice smooth as velvet but dropping an octave into a register that froze the air cells between us.

“Speak. Now.”

The spy swallowed hard, his prominent Adam’s apple bobbing convulsively as a thin trail of dark blood escaped his split lower lip

His eyes-a watery, pale brown that held none of the fire of a true Alpha-darted nervously from my glowing pupils to the massive ancestral broadswords resting against Waylon and Ruby’s shoulders behind my back, then to Flynn’s unyielding grip on his collar, then to the silent, watchful ranks of Nomadic soldiers who had gathered in a loose semicircle around the clearing.

He was surrounded. Outnumbered. Outmatched.

And from the way his breath hitched and his pulse fluttered visibly in his throat, he knew it.

“The… the Moon Pack Matriarch,” the spy wheezed, his hands shaking violently as he raised his open palms in a desperate plea for mercy.

Mud caked his fingernails, and his knuckles were raw and bleeding from his crawl through the fuel lines.

“Loretta… She sent me. She paid me in advance-twenty silver vouchers and a promise of more if I delivered the message without getting caught. Please, I didn’t want to do it, but the marshes are freezing over and my family_”

“I don’t care about your family,” I cut him off, my voice dropping even colder,

“I care about why Loretta Luke is still breathing, let alone sending messengers into my perimeter. Jensen’s Nightfang empire is dead. The council has frozen every asset she ever touched. So why is Loretta still running lines on my lane?”

“Because Jensen was nothing but a useless partner to her!” the spy blurted out, the panic in his voice thoroughly liquidating whatever remaining defenses he had been clinging to.

The words tumbled out of him in a desperate flood, as though speed might earn him the mercy that his mission had forfeited.

“She never cared about him! That’s all she ever wanted-the gold, the deeds, the territory. Jensen was just the weapon she planned to wield!”

The spy sucked in a ragged breath, his chest heaving with the effort of his confession, his body trembling so violently that pebbles skittered away from his knees.

He looked straight into my face, and what he saw there made his already pate complexion drain to the color of old bone

truit

Jensen wanted you for himself, Natalie,” the scavenger continued his voice tracking against the freezing matalass swept down from the peaks and whipped through the clearing. “He was obsessed. She fed his observon him that you would be the prize that secured his legacy. But he failed. He got socked in a containment call at the neural channels completely fried by your processing fire, and now the high syndicates are quidating assets unit by unit. Every property, every account, every vault-they’re stripping Hot Bare. She has nothing and her hatred

He took another ragged breath, his voice dropping to a terrified whip that barelycan

ow the gravel

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Chapter-382 The Message From The Shadows

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She sent me to deliver a final warning. She has four unbranded grey transit rigs packed with unaligned mercenaries, she’s got them parked in the willow grove drainage ditches, less than two hours from your boundary line. She knows Baron’s identity as the Witch Doctor is exposed. She knows the council is debating whether to sanction him She knows your alliance is vulnerable.”

His voice dropped even lower, trembling with the weight of the message he had been paid to deliver.

“She says she is giving you this one final chance to surrender the Blackridge territorial deeds and transfer the entire wealth to her registry blocks. If you don’t write the assets over to her before the sun clears the ridge peaks… she is coming to the clearing herself to execute your children and burn the pack to the bedrock.”

A cold, heavy silence slammed over the gravel basin like a physical weight descending from the mountain peaks.

Flynn’s grey eyes darkened to the color of thunderheads, his jaw clenching so tightly that the tendons in his neck stood out like iron cables.

Behind me, I heard Ruby’s sharp intake of breath.

Waylon stepped forward, his massive profile throwing a long, predatory shadow over the kneeling spy.

“The bitch is running on pure suicide malice, Natalie,” Waylon rumbled, his deep baritone rolling across the clearing like distant thunder. Each word was heavy with decades of hard-won wisdom and harder-won vengeance.

“She knows her empire is ash. She knows the council will never recognize her claims. She’s not trying to negotiate-she’s trying to hurt us on her way down. She wants to use our grandchildren’s clearing as the funeral pyre for her bankrupt lineage.”

The warning was clear, simple, and entirely out in the open.

I turned my face toward the command cabin, my voice carrying that absolute northern authority that left zero room for tactical hesitation, zero room for debate, zero room for anything except immediate, decisive action.

“Flynn, dump the spy in the rear storage rig under heavy guard/I want him bound and blindfolded-if he so much as twitches toward an exit, break his legs and ask questions later.” My brother nodded once, already hauling the trembling scavenger to his feet with a grip that promised no gentleness whatsoever.

“Mom, Dad-fire up the turbine gates! The Moon Pack has given us their vector, and we are closing the account. We mobilize the entire thirty-truck caravan straight back to the main Blackridge driveway right damn now!”

I climbed back into the command cabin, my hands finding the cold steel of the overhead grip bar as the transport lurched forward.

“Not my children,” I whispered into the cold cabin air, the words barely audible above the engine’s roar. “Not my family. Not my home.”

The transport surged forward, and the entire Nomadic caravan plunged down the mountain slope, racing against the rising sun in meet the threat before it could sink its fangs into everything we had fought so hard to protect

Let her come