The Broken Luna, Now His Regret novel Chapter 26

6 Chapter 26 WHAT ELSE DO YOU WANT

**Mira’s POV** 1

After Freya went to bed, Mira found Garrett in the study.

He was reading with his glasses perched on his nose, a glass of bourbon sweating on the desk beside him. He looked up when she appeared in the doorway. “Long day.”

“Very.” She dropped into the chair across from him and pulled her legs up underneath herself – an old habit, something she used to do as a teenager when she had something difficult to say. Garrett noticed. Set down his book.

“What is it?”

Mira told him everything. About Sera Sinclair. About the referral to Valeblack. About the quiet, cold certainty she’d felt making the call. Garrett listened without

–

interrupting – another old habit, this one the reason Mira had always come to him first with her truths.

When she finished, he was quiet for a long time.

“You know,” he said finally, turning the bourbon glass slowly in his hand, “when you were seventeen and told me you wanted to be a healer, I wasn’t surprised. You’d always been the one who couldn’t walk past someone hurting.” He paused. “But somewhere in the last five years, you stopped walking toward the hurt and started running from it.”

The words hit home. Mira swallowed hard.

“Tonight you walked toward it again,” Garrett said. He took a sip of his bourbon. “I think that’s worth something.”

She nodded, not trusting her voice, and stayed in the study with her father until the bourbon was gone and the house went quiet.

**Kieran’s POV – New York City, Friday Evening**

The Peninsula Hotel was exactly the kind of place Astrid loved – old money architecture, hushed carpets, the kind of silence that cost $400 a night. Kieran walked through the lobby without looking at any of it. His wolf was restless, hackles raised, every instinct screaming that this was wrong. That he should turn around. Get on a

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plane. Go back to Oakwood and fix what mattered.

He didn’t turn around.

Astrid was waiting in a private dining room on the fourteenth floor. She’d chosen the table farthest from the door – old habit, the way predators positioned themselves with their back to the wall. She looked exactly as she had the last time he’d seen her. composed, elegant, untouchable. Her blonde hair swept up, a single strand falling across her forehead with practiced carelessness. She wore black. She always wore

black.

“Kieran.” She smiled when he entered, and the smile was warm in the way a closed trap looks before it snaps. “You came.”

He didn’t sit. “You said you had information about pack law complications. Talk.”

Astrid’s smile didn’t waver. She reached into her bag – a small, matte–black clutch –

and set a USB drive on the table between them. It sat there, gleaming under the low light, innocuous as a pebble.

—

“Everything’s on this drive,” she said. “Your grandfather’s dealings. The forced marriage provisions. The bloodline obligations that make your divorce with Mira legally impossible under pack law without a ritual dissolution.”

Kieran stared at the drive. “How do you know about the forced marriage provisions?”

“Because your grandfather used them. On your mother.” Astrid leaned back, watching his face with the particular attention of someone who’d spent years learning to read Kieran Ravencrest. “Selene didn’t choose Caspian, Kieran. She was bound to him through an ancient provision that Oswald – your grandfather – invoked when Caspian turned twenty–two. It’s all documented. And it applies to you too.”

The room felt suddenly airless.

“That’s not-” Kieran started.

–

“It is.” Astrid’s voice was gentle now – almost kind, which made it worse. “The provision states that once a mate bond is established and a child is produced, the bond cannot be legally severed without both parties performing a ritual acknowledgment before the pack elders. A human court can grant a divorce. Pack law can’t.”

Kieran’s jaw tightened. “And you’ve been sitting on this information for how long?”

“Since before the press conference.” She shrugged one elegant shoulder. “I could have

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destroyed you then. I chose not to.”

“Why?”

Astrid considered the question. “Because destroying you was never the point.” She picked up her wine glass – a deep burgundy that caught the light like blood. The point was making sure you understood what you’d done. To her. To Brielle. To yourself.” A pause. “Have you?”

He didn’t answer.

Astrid set down her glass and pushed the drive closer to him. “The choice is yours. You can use this to prevent the divorce – keep Mira trapped in Oakwood, bound to you by laws she doesn’t even know exist. Or you can let her go. Actually let her go. And find a way to be the man she might one day choose to come back to.”

She stood, smoothing her jacket. “I’m leaving the drive. What you do with it is your business.” She paused at the door. “One more thing. Mira texted me last night.”

Kieran’s head snapped up.

“No. She didn’t.” Astrid smiled — a real smile this time, sharp and knowing. “But you believed it for half a second. That’s how scared you are of losing her.” She opened the door. “Enjoy New York, Kieran.”

She was gone before he could respond.

Kieran sat alone in the empty dining room, the USB drive between his fingers, and felt the mate bond pulse – distant, warm, steady as a heartbeat three hours away.

He looked at the drive for a very long time.

**Mira’s POV – Saturday Morning**

Valeblack called at 8 AM.

Not about Sera – though he confirmed he’d spoken with her, that the Council’s emergency relocation protocol was already in motion, that she’d be safe within forty–eight hours. He called because his voice had that particular quality it got when he was choosing his words carefully. Deliberate. Measured. The way a man speaks when he’s about to say something that matters.

“I want to see you,” he said. Simply. No professional framing. No Council business. Just:

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*I want to see you.*

Mira looked out the kitchen window at the grey Saturday morning, at the bare branches of the old oak in the Callum garden, at the frost still clinging to the grass.

“When?” she asked.

“Tonight. Dinner. Somewhere quiet – no business talk, no Council politics. Just dinner.” A pause. “If you want.”

She thought about Kieran in New York. About the mate bond’s steady, distant ache present but no longer consuming. About Brielle, still asleep upstairs, dreaming fox–and–river dreams. About Sera Sinclair, somewhere in the city, already beginning the long work of rebuilding a life.

“Tonight,” Mira said. “Yes.”

After she hung up, she sat at the kitchen table for a while, turning the phone over in her hands. No guilt. No panic. No inner war.

Just a woman, choosing what she wanted.

The front door opened. Garrett’s footsteps, then Estelle’s lighter ones behind him, both carrying grocery bags. Brielle’s sleepy voice drifted down the stairs – *Grandma? Is that you?*

The house filled with the ordinary sounds of a Saturday morning. Coffee brewing.

Brielle padding downstairs in her pajamas, hair a wild tangle, clutching the stuffed wolf against her chest.

She climbed into Mira’s lap without asking. Mira held her, breathing in the smell of children’s shampoo and sleep, and thought: *This is what I’m choosing for. Not escape. Not surrender. Just this.*

Her phone buzzed once more. A text from an unknown number – the same New York area code from before. But this time, the message was different:

*He didn’t take the drive.*

Three words. No signature. But Mira knew, with a certainty that bypassed logic entirely, exactly what they meant.

She set the phone face–down on the table. Kissed the top of Brielle’s head. And let the morning carry her forward.

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