Chapter 10

The Luna Who Refused to Stay Down
Boots. Laces. Liora’s fingers worked the knot twice before it held.

Kaelen leaned against the doorframe. He’d been quiet too long.

“Three hours to the chamber,” he said.

“I know the distance.”

“You could stay behind.”

“No.” She stood. “If I don’t walk into that room, they decide I’m guilty without a single word from me.”

He didn’t answer that. He came in instead, sat on the trunk near the window, elbows on his knees.

“Before we go.” He stopped. Started again. “This isn’t just duty anymore. Protecting you.”

Liora went still.

“My wolf paces when you leave a room. Has for weeks. I kept calling it a promise I made. It’s more than a promise now.”

She sat back down on the edge of the bed, needing something solid under her.

“Don’t say it,” she said.

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t know where to put it if you do.”

“You don’t have to put it anywhere.”

“That’s not true and we both know it.”

He waited. Didn’t fill the space. Just let her sit inside her own silence until it stopped feeling like a trap.

“He told me things like that too,” she said finally. “That I didn’t need to worry. He’d handle it.” Her jaw tightened. “He handled it. Handled me right out of my own life.”

“I’m not Ronan.”

“I know.”

“Then what are you scared of?”

“That knowing isn’t enough.” Her eyes stung. She blinked it back. “That I’ll want this and it’ll still go wrong.”

Kaelen crossed the room. Knelt in front of her so they were eye level.

“I can’t promise nothing goes wrong,” he said. “I can promise I won’t be the one who breaks you.”

She kissed him before she’d decided to.

It wasn’t careful. Everything she’d held together for ten straight months gave out at once, and he caught it caught her like he’d been braced for it the whole time. His mouth, his hands, the low sound in his chest that wasn’t quite human. She felt it against her skin more than heard it.

“Sure?” he asked once, breath ragged.

“Don’t ask again.”

He didn’t.

Afterward she lay with her head on his chest and the candle guttering low, and she didn’t think about the council or Ronan or any of it. Just his heartbeat. Steady under her ear until she slept.

She woke before he did.

Gray light through the shutters. His arm across her waist, heavy and warm. She lay there a long minute just breathing.

It happened. It was real.

She waited to feel settled. Instead her chest went tight with something closer to dread. Ten months. That’s all the space she’d put between herself and the last time she trusted someone with her body, and already she’d handed it over again.

She thought of Ronan’s hands before they turned cruel. How soft they’d been in the beginning. How soft had meant nothing.

Kaelen wasn’t him. She knew that in her bones. But knowing hadn’t kept her safe the first time, and some small, hard part of her wouldn’t let that go.

No regret, though. That much was clean and simple. Just was this too fast. Was she running toward him the same way she’d once run toward Ronan, blind and grateful and starving for someone to want her.

He woke. Found her staring at the ceiling.

“That’s a loud silence,” he said.

“Just thinking.”

“About regretting it?”

“No.” She turned to face him. “About whether wanting you this fast means something’s wrong with me.”

“Or it means you know what you want when you feel it.” He tucked hair behind her ear. “You don’t have to solve it this morning.”

She almost let herself believe that.

“We need to go,” she said instead. “The council doesn’t wait for anyone.”

The road to the capital ran long and cold. Liora spent most of it rehearsing arguments for people who’d already made up their minds.

Kaelen rode close, silent, present in a way that asked nothing of her.

The council hall appeared at the top of the last rise stone walls, banners cracking in the wind. Her stomach dropped as they dismounted. She straightened her coat. Told herself she’d walked through worse than this.

Then Ronan stepped into view.

Two of his men behind him. Him looking untouched by any of it, like the last ten months had happened to someone else entirely.

He smiled at her. The old smile.

“You should have stayed gone,” he said.

Kaelen’s growl started low, almost under the wind. Liora lifted a hand not toward him, just enough to say wait and walked forward on her own two feet.

He didn’t know what she’d taken from his study before she left. Didn’t know it was sitting folded against her ribs right now, inside her coat, waiting for the council’s ears.

He thought he still owned this conversation.

“Why don’t you make me?” she said. Flat. Cold.

For one second his confidence cracked. He stepped closer anyway, already reaching for the next cruelty
Then he stopped cold.

Head tilted. Nostrils working. Confusion first, quick and sharp, then something else entirely as it landed. The hair on her arms lifted before she understood why.

He closed the last of the distance, deaf to the warning rumbling out of Kaelen’s chest.

“You slept with him.” Not a question. His face carved itself into something hard and furious. “Didn’t you.”