The Hidden Luna- Moon Crowned Trilogy by Serena Clare

Chapter 3- Interrogations

The afternoon had the particular quality of a Wednesday that doesn’t intend to be anything other than what it is.

I preferred Wednesdays. They didn’t pretend. Monday through Tuesday the week was still building tension and Friday through Sunday were political — pack events, social obligations, the managed performance of visible leadership. Wednesday was work.

Which was what I was doing when Jackson set a folder of Ironwood correspondence on my desk and said, “I think you should reconsider the trade terms.”

“I won’t.”

“They’re not unreasonable.”

“They’re conditionally reasonable,” I turned a page. “The condition being that we take on their western patrol route in exchange for a grain deal that benefits them in five of seven years. The math doesn’t work.”

Jackson was quiet for a moment. “You’ve already run the seven-year projection.”

“Obviously.”

He sat. “I’ll push back on the eastern clause.”

“Push back on all of it. Start over. New proposal, Friday.”

He wrote something. I went back to the maps. This was how we worked — economy of motion, shared language.

Merrick arrived at two. He had been running the southern patrol debriefs, which he liked to do in person because he had a theory that reports written by tired people were filtered through optimism, which I agreed with. He came in trailing mud from the eastern trail despite the fact that I had expressly told him twice about the mud on the eastern trail, dropped a report folder on my desk, and said: “The southern raids are growing, people missing from packs, young women mostly.

I looked at the folder. “How many.”

“Five confirmed sightings in ten days. They're moving in a pattern — south to northwest — which isn’t random.”

“Blane.”

“That’d be my read.” He dropped into the chair. “Someone is moving people. Not charging them, just redirecting. Either running from something or being positioned.”

Jackson looked up. “Positioned for what.”

“That’s the interesting question.” Merrick stretched his legs. “Nothing we can answer today. But I want wider patrol coverage on the southwestern edge. Another four, rotating.”

“Done,” I said. “Run it through Caden’s rotation. I want daily reports until the pattern changes.”

“Done.” He reached across the desk and stole a pen. I let him have it because it wasn’t worth the argument. “Oh. Chloe’s taking her new friend to the lake.”

I was already writing. “I know.”

“Just reminding you.”

“I told her to be back before dark.”

“She was quite pleased about that.” He used the pen to gesture loosely. “She said you told her to be careful and she said you were paranoid. I think that counts as a success by recent standards.”

Jackson was looking at the window with excessive focus.

“Jackson,” I said.

“Mm.”

“Is there something you want to say about Chloe going to the lake.”

A pause. “No.”

Merrick looked at the ceiling.

I gave Jackson four more seconds of shared damn pretending and returned to my work. Ares had been alert since morning — not agitated, just oriented. It reminded me of this morning and the dream.

She is close, he said.

You’ve been saying that all day.

Closer each time.



I turned a page.

—

The afternoon wore on in the disciplined way afternoons did at SilverMoon, where even chaos tended to queue politely outside my office before entering.

Two families from the eastern residences were brought before me over a boundary dispute involving a stone wall, three rose bushes, and an insult allegedly delivered the Spring before, that had somehow survived longer than some marriages.

“It was the tone,” one of them said.

“It was a year ago,” I said.

“Exactly.”

I settled it in thirty-two minutes by moving the wall eighteen inches, assigning both households shared maintenance of the garden, and informing them if I heard the phrase property line again, I’d personally reassign them as neighbors in adjoining homes.

They left offended and satisfied, which in leadership usually counted as success.

Next came Aldric’s quarterly health report.

SilverMoon ran like a small city disguised as a pack. Over five thousand wolves across the main grounds, eastern residences, lake houses, training quarters, farms, and the outer timber holdings. Children, elders, soldiers, tradespeople, teachers, healers, accountants. Territory maps and bloodlines on one side, grocery deliveries and Sarah’s famous pies on the other.

People imagined being Alpha meant snarling on balconies and issuing decrees.

Mostly it meant reading spreadsheets while someone cried about fencing.

Two minor training injuries. One elder requiring medication adjustments. A note in Aldric’s precise handwriting requesting upgraded therapy pools for recovering joints.

Reasonable. Expensive. Already approved.

Another note at the bottom:

Pearl says you are skipping meals again.

I closed my eyes.

A knock came once, then the door opened anyway.

Pearl Adara entered carrying a silver tray with tea, fresh bread, sliced pears, and the expression of a woman who had buried husbands, raised half a generation, and feared nothing created by man or wolf.

Pearl had served SilverMoon thirty-one years. Housekeeper, steward, unofficial intelligence network, emotional enforcer. She was small with round cheeks, silver-haired, straight-backed, and moved through the Alpha House as if the walls consulted her before settling.

The pack house itself often did.

SilverMoon’s main house rose above the lake in white stone and dark cedar, old foundations wrapped in modern glass. Wide halls, warm lighting, carved beams, polished wood floors that remembered boots and bare feet alike. The place held power, yes, but also life. Somewhere below, laughter drifted up from the kitchen. A child tore through a corridor at criminal speed. Someone shouted for him to get back here right now.

Home, Ares rumbled.

Home.

Pearl set the tray down.

“You ate lunch?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“You ate it standing over paperwork.”

“That is still technically eating.”

“It is technically disappointing.”

I almost smiled.

She poured tea into my father’s old cup, the heavy black stoneware one I’d stolen before leaving for university and never returned. After he died, it became one of the few things I kept close without apology.

The office had a habit of reaching backward when I wasn’t prepared for it.

My father behind the Alpha desk, sleeves rolled, voice calm enough to quiet a room before he raised it. My mother beside him at her Luna desk, moon-silver inlay glinting beneath lamplight as she corrected reports and people with equal grace. Him steady strength. Her sharp warmth. Between them, this room had once felt indestructible.

Some days grief came like a storm.

Some days it came disguised as a coffee cup.

I exhaled once and set the feeling where I set most things that had no convenient place to go.

Pearl placed the cup in front of me, then looked me over with the same expression she used when I was five and caught on a chair, hand buried in the cookie jar, crumbs on my face and lies already forming.

“You’re hovering,” I said.

“I helped raise you. Hovering is a sacred right.”

Pearl said it as she always did, like the law had personally consulted her before being written.

She stood there, warm and solid and entirely unmovable, a plump woman in her late sixties with soft silver curls pinned back and eyes sharp enough to catch lies before they formed. The house fit around her the way it fit around no one else. Even the light seemed to settle when she entered a room.

“You use that word too freely,” I said.

“I earned that word,” she replied, calm as stone. “I bathed you, chased you through three wings of this house, spoon-fed you peas you treated like a personal betrayal, and once dragged you naked from the ornamental fountain after you declared yourself Sea King of SilverMoon.”

Ares burst into laughter.

I leaned back in my chair, folding my hands like a man completely above such accusations. “That story becomes more elaborate every time you tell it.”

“You peed in the fountain.”

“It was a strategic miscalculation.”

“You saluted first.”

I pressed my lips together, losing that battle.

Pearl’s smile bloomed, full and pleased, the kind that had soothed fevers and ended arguments long before I took this office.

She nudged the bread closer, the motion gentle but entirely non-negotiable.

I tore off a piece and ate it.

“There,” she said, satisfied. “Growth.”

“I run a territory of five thousand wolves.”

“And still require supervision.”

“I’m Alpha.”

“In council chambers,” she said sweetly. “In this house, you are the boy who cried because a goose looked at him sternly.”

“That goose was aggressive.”

“That goose had discernment.”

Ares dissolved into laughter.

I shook my head, but the smile stayed. “You enjoy this far too much.”

Her eyes sparkled, as she poured me more tea, more fruit and bread across the desk.

Pearl lowered herself into the chair across from my desk.

“Chloe went to the lake,” she said.

“I know.”

“With rogues sniffing around the borders.”

“Patrols were doubled this morning.”

“Mmm.”

That sound from Pearl could mean agreement, skepticism, prophecy, or indigestion.

She sipped her tea.

“George and Sarah’s diner.”

“I know where the diner is.”

“She’s been going there for weeks.”

I looked up.

Pearl met my gaze serenely, enjoying herself.

“The girl there,” she continued. “Annabelle.”

The name moved through me strangely. Softly. Like a hand over still water.

Ares lifted his head.

“She’s been kind to Chloe,” Pearl said. “Real kind. The quiet kind. Remembers what Chloe likes. Makes sure she laughs. She needs that.

I said nothing.

Pearl smiled into her cup.

“You’re doing something,” I said.

“I am informing my Alpha.”

“You are meddling.”

“I prefer stewardship.”

“She’s human.”

Pearl shrugged. “So were plenty of my mistakes.”

I coughed into my tea.

She patted my hand once, entirely without remorse.

Then she stood.

I stared at her.

“Pearl.”

“What?” She adjusted the tray. “My senses remain excellent.”

“You are impossible.”

“And yet beloved.”

She moved to the door, then paused.

“You’ve carried this place like a man trying to outrun gravity,” she said, voice gentler now. “Sometimes good things arrive quietly, Dominic. Try not to interrogate them to death.”

Then she left me there with tea, bread, and the sudden urge to interrogate everyone.

I walked the perimeter my self at 5.

The east trail dropped from the house through pine and cedar, down toward the tree line, roots like traps beneath the leaves. I ran hard, lungs burning, body grateful for something honest. No politics. No reports. No palace letters scented with perfume and threats.

Ares ran with me, vast and sure.

Northwest, he said.

Toward the lake.

I came back sweat-soaked and restless, showered fast, then stood at the study window with a towel over my shoulders.

Dark came early in October. Light withdrew in measured stages until suddenly it was gone.

Below me, SilverMoon settled into evening.

Kitchen lights glowed gold through the lower windows. Smoke curled from the great hearth chimney. Guards changed posts along the south perimeter. Somewhere in the west hall, Pearl was verbally destroying someone for using the wrong serving platter.

Children laughed. Pots clanged. Doors opened and shut. Lives layered over lives.

This was what I protected.

This was what I loved.

My phone read 6:42.

I told myself the unease in my chest was the rogue report from that morning.

South to northwest movement.

Reasonable concern.

Responsible vigilance.

Ares was unimpressed.

At 6:51 I called Jackson.

He answered on the second ring. “You miss me already?”

“Where’s Chloe.”

A pause. Half a second too long.

“Lake trail,” he said. “Checked in twenty minutes ago. Heading back.”

“She should be back now.”

“Dom.”

“Two men on the south trail.”

His tone shifted instantly. Beta. Soldier. Brother. “Already moving.”

“The girl with her,” he said carefully. “Human, but…”

“Drive, Jackson.”

A low chuckle. “Yes, Alpha.”

I ended the call.

The western tree line had gone black now, the kind of darkness that looked back if you stared too long.

I had patrols.

I had Chloe’s location.

I had no reason for the tension coiling through my ribs.

Ares stood silent inside me, alert in a way that sharpened every nerve.

You know something.

He did not answer.

The bastard.

I rolled my shoulders and reached for a palace report thick enough to stun a horse.

Ares practically yawned.

I tossed it aside.

Then I went downstairs to wait.