Chapter 42 42
Aurélie POV
Pack members had followed us into the courtyard, gathering in murmuring clusters. Their whispers drifted through the air astonishment, awe, disbelief. They spoke of my return from the dead, of blessings and fate, of the true Luna finally coming home.
Hope lit their faces.
I had the sickening sense that I was about to shatter it.
This was not the resurrection they dreamed of. I wasn’t back for them. I wasn’t here to reclaim anything I had lost.
I was here for my son.
And my son alone.
Damien POV
I had been awake late into the night after receiving word quietly, discreetly that the Darkvale pack had suffered an attack. I kept spies everywhere. The information reached me in the small hours of the morning, slipping through the cracks before anyone else could clamp down on it.
Lucas and I worked relentlessly, trying to uncover what had happened and who had dared to strike them.
I even reached out to Alpha Quentin of the Saint Wolf pack for confirmation. He denied knowing anything about it.
Sleep had been a stranger to me lately.
Aurélie haunted my dreams again and again. Always the same: her trapped in some twisted parallel realm, pounding on the lid of a sealed coffin, begging to be let out. Every time I tore it open, shouting her name, her body cold, corpse-like would spring upright, forcing me awake with my heart pounding.
Last night was no different.
The broken sleep was beginning to unravel me.
For the first time in my life, I skipped morning training.
I didn’t think I’d ever done that before. Training had always been sacred leading it, participating in it, or in recent years, watching from the sidelines. But Lucas and I hadn’t finished our research until close to six in the morning, and judging by the sounds of Pierre or Florence slamming things around the kitchen, it was already nearing lunchtime.
“Alpha.”
My consciousness shifted uneasily.
“Alpha!”
Lucas’s voice ripped through my mind-link.
“For fuck’s sake, Lucas,” I growl back, irritation flaring instantly. He’d crossed a line. Why wasn’t he asleep? “What is so urgent?”
“The men on the gate,” he says quickly. “They’re reporting that the Luna has arrived with Darkvale warriors. They’re requesting access.”
“What?”
Adrenaline surges as my wolf lunges forward, practically hurling me out of bed an excitement flooding him that was entirely out of character.
“Grant access,” I snap. “Escort them slowly to the courtyard.”
“Yes, Alpha,” Lucas confirms before severing the link.
Fuck.
She was here.
My legal threat had worked after all. The Darkvale Alpha had handed her back to me without resistance. Some mighty Alpha he turned out to be rolling over the second I reminded him of the binding contract.
A contract my father had ensured was nearly impossible to break… even if the ones who signed it were long dead.
I drag on clothes quickly a T-shirt and jeans. Enough to shift if needed. I didn’t like enemy warriors stepping foot on my land. If they had come, it wasn’t without intent.
I summon my warriors through the mind-link and stalk my office, pacing as the minutes tick by. The drawn-out escort was deliberate, and I refused to wait at the gates. I wouldn’t give them or her the satisfaction of thinking they were welcome.
Outside, I hear it.
Whispers.
Gasps.
Even cries of joy.
The pack my pack celebrating the return of their beloved Luna.
I inhale deeply, locking my expression into place, donning the arrogant, unshakeable Alpha mask I’d worn for years.
Then I step outside.
My warriors stand gathered as ordered, but I push past them, moving straight to the front.
And there she is.
Standing at the center.
The sight of her steals the breath from my lungs but something is wrong. I can sense it instantly. The exhaustion in her eyes. The tension woven through her posture.
She hadn’t slept.
She didn’t want to be here.
She wanted to be anywhere but this place anywhere but standing in front of me.