The Alpha's blind Luna: Desired by Rival Alphas

the second thought

Lyra’s POV

The bandage was too tight.

Or maybe it wasn't. Maybe that was just what a burn felt like when the numbing wore off and the night got quiet enough for your body to start reporting everything it had been holding. I sat on the edge of the bed and looked at my hand and tried to remember the last time something had hurt this cleanly. This without complication. Pain with a source you could point to was almost a relief.

The rest of it had no source. That was the problem.

I didn't know my last name.

I'd been sitting with that fact for weeks now and it still didn't fit anywhere. It just floated. Unattached. Every morning I woke up and reached for something that should have been there, the way you reach for a glass of water in the dark and find only air, and every morning the reaching came back empty.

My wolf stirred against my ribs. Low. Restless.

"I know," I said quietly.

She settled, but not completely.

I flexed my unbandaged hand slowly. Looked at the ceiling. The room they'd given me was small but clean, and I had learned its dimensions without meaning to. Four steps from the bed to the window. Seven from the door to the far wall. The window faced east and let in the cold before it let in the light.

I had tried, in those first careful days, to ask.

The older maid, Bessa, had looked at me with something that might have been pity before she turned back to the sink. *"Not my place to say, love."* The girl who brought linens on Thursdays had gone still at the question before murmuring something about it not being relevant. One of the kitchen staff had simply walked away mid-sentence, like the question itself was something to be avoided.

They all said the same thing in different ways.

Ask the Alpha.

I pressed my lips together and looked at my bandaged hand again.

Ask the Alpha. As though that were a simple thing. As though Diego Hunter were a door you just walked up and knocked on. As though his eyes didn't do what they did when they landed on you, that cold, cutting quality, like he was measuring a problem and finding it inconvenient.

But it was past midnight and the house had gone completely silent and something in my chest would not stop pulling. Not my wolf this time. Something older than that. The part of a person that simply cannot rest when a question this large goes unanswered.

I didn't know who I was.

I had a face I couldn't see. A name with nothing attached to it. Somewhere in the world there were people who knew me, maybe, or there weren't, and I had no way of telling which was worse. The not knowing sat in me like a stone in still water. Permanent. Heavy. Changing the shape of everything around it.

My wolf pressed against my sternum.

I stood up.

The study was on the upper floor, east corridor, third door. I knew because the house had its own geography and I had memorised it the way I memorised everything. By feel. By sound. By the way certain floorboards gave slightly under weight and others held firm.

I climbed the stairs slowly, one hand trailing the banister. The corridor was dim but not dark. A line of soft light came from under the third door.

So he was awake.

I stood in the corridor for a moment and breathed.

My wolf went very still inside me, the way she always did when he was close. Like every part of her leaned slightly in his direction without asking my permission. I had stopped trying to explain it. It happened every time. The stillness, then the pull, then that low warmth she sent up through my ribs that I pretended not to notice.

I raised my hand and knocked. And for one fleeting moment, I felt like I'd done the most humiliating thing.

Then, "Come in."

The door was slightly ajar. I pushed it open.

The study smelled like paper and something darker. Wood polish, maybe, or the particular smell of a room that gets used late at night by someone who doesn't sleep well. I heard the shift of his weight before I heard anything else, the quiet adjustment of a man who had looked up.

I felt his gaze the way you feel a change in temperature.

My wolf went perfectly, completely still.

I swallowed.

I opened my mouth.

"Leave."

He didn't even let me speak. Before my mind could cook up something, maybe a reply or a word, my feet moved two steps toward the door. My hand found the frame. My body was already folding itself around the instruction the way it had learned to fold around all instructions in this house. Quietly. Without protest. Without taking up too much space.

My fingers touched the door.

And then I stopped.

I stood there with my back to him and my hand on the door and I thought about Bessa turning to the sink. About the linen girl looking away. About weeks of questions that came back empty. About a name with nothing behind it and a face I had never seen and a life I couldn't locate no matter how hard I reached.

My wolf pressed forward. S

I closed the door and did one more stupid thing:turn around.

He was watching me from behind the desk. His expression hadn't changed.His eyes were on me this time, his brow slightly furrowed.

I looked in his direction and I held my ground and I said it quietly, clearly, without any performance behind it.

"On a second thought. No."

The room was very still.

His pen was still in his hand. He hadn't moved.

I pressed on before the silence could close around me.

"I need to know who I am." My voice came out steadier than I expected. "I have asked everyone in this house and they all say the same thing. Ask the Alpha. So I'm asking." I pressed my unbandaged hand flat against my thigh to keep it from trembling. "I'm not leaving until you tell me something."

The clock on the mantle ticked once. Twice.

Diego looked at me for a long moment. Something moved behind his eyes, something he didn't let reach his face. His jaw shifted, that slow, almost imperceptible tightening I had learned to notice even though I couldn't see it clearly.

He set the pen down.