The Broken Luna, Now His Regret novel Chapter 28

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**Mira’s POV** 1

The symposium was scheduled for Wednesday – five days after the invitation arrived.

Mira spent those days in a strange liminal space. Monday: clinic work, Brielle’s therapy session with Dr. Hartley. Tuesday: preliminary reading on Dr. Marsh’s research, dinner with her parents while Brielle built towers with Freya upstairs.

Wednesday morning, she stood in front of her closet choosing what to wear. Not for pack politics. Not to smooth anyone’s expectations. Just for herself. She chose a tailored navy dress with a fitted jacket – professional, confident, the kind of thing she used to wear before she’d learned to make herself smaller.

Valeblack had offered to drive her to Crystalfall, but she’d declined. She needed to

arrive on her own terms.

The Regional Healer’s Council symposium was held in a converted manor house on the outskirts of Crystalfall – all dark wood and tall windows and the particular hush that descends over rooms full of people who are used to being listened to.

Valeblack was waiting by the entrance when she arrived. Charcoal suit, no tie, silver hair catching the late morning light. Two cups of coffee in his hands.

“Nervous?” he asked, falling into step beside her as they moved through the foyer.

“Should I be?”

“Dr. Marsh is intimidating. But she’s also fair. If you have something worth saying, she’ll hear it.” He handed her one of the coffees. It was exactly how she liked it without ever having told him.

They found seats near the front. The room filled quickly – Council members in formal grey, senior healers in white, younger practitioners with the wide–eyed look of people witnessing something important. Mira scanned the crowd out of habit, old Luna instinct cataloguing exits and faces.

Her breath caught.

Third row, right side. Kieran. Alone, no pack entourage, dressed in a simple dark jacket

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that made him look less like an Alpha and more like any other man who’d wandered into a room he didn’t belong in. His eyes were already on her when she looked. He didn’t look away.

Valeblack noticed the direction of her gaze. His expression didn’t change – no

jealousy, no territorial shift. Just quiet, steady awareness. “He’ll watch,” Valeblack said simply. “Let him.”

Mira turned back to the stage. *Let him.*

Dr. Elowen Marsh took the podium at precisely noon.

–

She was smaller than Mira had imagined — compact, sharp–featured, with iron–grey hair cropped close to her skull and eyes the color of storm clouds. She moved with the particular authority of someone who had spent decades earning every word she spoke.

The keynote was on regenerative bonding protocols – the science of healing damage caused by severed or corrupted mate bonds. Mira leaned forward in her seat from the first sentence. This was her work. This was the intersection where her training as a pediatric healer met the supernatural reality she’d lived inside for years. Every word Marsh spoke connected to something Mira had seen, felt, treated.

She took notes furiously. Valeblack glanced over occasionally, and something in his expression shifted — not surprise, exactly, but a deepening of the attention he’d been paying her all along.

–

The panel discussion came after lunch. Four healers on stage, moderated by Marsh herself. One of the panelists – a young woman from the Northern territories — stumbled on a question about bond–severance therapy in children. The silence stretched uncomfortably.

Marsh’s storm–cloud eyes swept the audience. “Does anyone have a perspective on

this?”

Mira’s hand was in the air before she consciously decided to raise it.

Valeblack didn’t react. Didn’t encourage or discourage. Just watched.

Marsh nodded. “Please.”

Mira stood. The room’s attention landed on her like a physical weight. She felt it the assessment, the skepticism, the particular scrutiny reserved for women who speak in

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rooms full of experts. She felt Kieran’s gaze from the third row, sharp and focused.

She ignored all of it.

“Bond–severance therapy in young children requires a fundamentally different framework than adult protocols,” she began, her voice steady. “Children don’t experience the bond as a conscious connection – they experience it as *safety*. When the bond is damaged or severed, what the child feels isn’t heartbreak. It’s the loss of their primary sense of security in the world.”

She paused. Organized her thoughts. The room was silent.

“The standard adult protocol focuses on gradually reducing bond sensitivity and/ rebuilding emotional autonomy. That works for adults because adults have other sources of safety – career, community, chosen relationships. A four–year–old doesn’t have those scaffolds yet. So the therapy has to build them simultaneously.” She turned to the panelist who’d stumbled. “The question isn’t how do we heal the bond damage. It’s how do we give the child a reason to feel safe while the bond is healing around them.”

Dr. Marsh was watching her with an expression Mira couldn’t quite read – appraising, yes, but something else underneath it. Interest, maybe. The particular alertness of a mind recognizing another mind.

“And how would you accomplish that?” Marsh asked.

“Consistency,” Mira said. “From both parents. Not perfection – that’s impossible and the child knows it. But *reliability*. The child needs to learn that the world will keep showing up for them even when the bond is broken. That’s the real work. Everything else is secondary.”

–

The silence that followed lasted three full seconds. Then Dr. Marsh nodded a single, precise movement — and said: “Thank you, Dr. Whitmore. That’s exactly right.”

–

The applause was quiet but genuine. A ripple of heads turning, of colleagues registering a name they hadn’t heard before. Mira sat back down. Her hands were trembling slightly. Valeblack’s hand found hers under the armrest – a brief, warm pressure. *Well done.*

She didn’t look at Kieran.

She didn’t need to. She could feel it through the bond – something shifting in him, something breaking open that had been locked for a very long time. Not love. Not yet,

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maybe not ever again in the way it had been. But *recognition*. The sudden,

devastating clarity of seeing someone you thought you knew and realizing you never did.

**Kieran’s POV – The Drive Back to Oakwood**

Kieran didn’t remember the drive home.

He remembered Mira standing in that room – small against the stage, no/pack insignia, no Luna authority, nothing but her own mind and her own voice – and the way she’d spoken about bond damage in children with a precision and compassion that made the room fall silent.

He remembered Dr. Marsh’s nod. The applause. The way Valeblack had leaned over to touch Mira’s hand, and how Mira had smiled — not the careful, guarded smile she used to give Kieran, but something open and surprised, as if she hadn’t expected to feel it.

He remembered sitting in his seat afterward, unable to move, while the room emptied

around him.

Now he drove through the grey Oakwood afternoon, the symposium program on the passenger seat beside him, and thought about what it meant to truly see someone. Not the version you wanted them to be. Not the role they filled in your life. But the person they actually were when you weren’t demanding they be something else.

Mira was brilliant.

She’d always been brilliant. He just hadn’t been paying attention.

His phone rang. Brielle’s ringtone – the one he’d set to her favorite song. He answered through the car speakers.

“Daddy?”

“Hey, baby girl. I’m driving home from something. What’s up?”

A pause. The kind of pause that meant she was deciding whether to say what she really wanted to say.

“Daddy… when are you seeing Mommy again?”

Kieran’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Tomorrow’s not my visit day, sweetheart. I see you Thursday, remember? We made a schedule.”

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“I know.” Another pause. “But I want Mommy to come too.”

The words hit him harder than they should have. “Why, Brielle?”

“Because…” Her voice got very small. “Because in the sandbox, Dr. Hartley said the mommy and daddy figurines moved closer together. And I moved them. But they’re still not together–together. They’re just…. closer.”

Kieran closed his eyes for half a second, then opened them because he was driving. “That’s okay, baby. Closer is good. Closer is really good.”

“But I want together,” Brielle said, and there was a wobble in her voice that meant tears were coming. “I want you and Mommy to be in the same place at the same time without being mad. Can you do that?”

Kieran pulled over. Put the car in park. Looked out at the grey afternoon and the bare trees and the road stretching back toward Crystalfall where Mira was probably still talking to Valeblack, still smiling that open, surprised smile.

“I don’t know, sweetheart,” he said honestly. “That’s up to Mommy. But I can ask her if she’s okay with it. Would that help?”

“Yes.” A sniffle. “I miss her, Daddy. Even when I’m with you.”

The confession broke something in his chest that had been holding on too tight for too long. “I know. And that’s okay. You’re allowed to miss her when you’re with me. That’s how love works.”

“Do you miss her too?”

The question was so unexpected, so direct in the way only a four–year–old could be, that Kieran didn’t have time to construct a careful answer.

“Yes,” he said. “I do.”

“Then why don’t you tell her?”

“Because sometimes,” Kieran said carefully, “the best way to love someone is to let them choose what they want. Even if they don’t choose you.”

Brielle was quiet for a long moment. Then: “That sounds sad.”

“It is sad. But it’s also the right thing to do.”

Another pause. Then, very quietly: “Okay, Daddy. I have to go. Grandma says it’s almost dinner.”

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“Okay, baby. I love you.”

“Love you too.”

The line went dead. Kieran sat in the parked car, staring at nothing, feeling the mate bond pulse – distant, warm, steady. Mira. Somewhere back in Crystalfall, probably leaving the symposium now, probably about to drive home.

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