I Never Meant to Be His Luna

Chapter 6

Lyra told herself she was only going to the house for coffee.

The rain had moved on overnight, leaving the world scrubbed and bright. Sun speared through the pines, making the guest cabin’s windows flash. Hollow Ridge sounded different in clear weather—birds, distant voices, a truck starting somewhere uphill.

Her wolf stretched, pleased.

“Traitor,” Lyra muttered, dragging on her boots.

She’d slept. Actually slept. No highway noise, no thin motel mattress, no neighbors fighting through paper walls. Just rain on the roof and the low, steady hum of a pack’s presence at the edge of her senses.

Too easy to get used to.

She stepped out onto the porch. The air smelled like wet earth, coffee, bacon, and wolves.

The main house door was propped open. Someone had hooked a screen across it, letting the breeze carry scents in and out. Lyra paused on the path, then snorted at herself.

Coffee. Food. Logs. Then back to the garage. Simple.

Inside, the house was a different animal than last night: noisy, bright, half of Hollow Ridge passing through the big room that served as both dining hall and living area.

A long table dominated the space, laden with platters—eggs, toast, fruit, something that looked like a mountain of bacon. Wolves in various stages of dress and wakefulness clustered around it, talking over each other.

Conversations dipped when she stepped in. Eyes flicked her way, curiosity sharpening the air.

A little boy—the one from the storm—stood on a chair near the middle of the table, waving a spoon like a sword.

“That’s her,” he stage-whispered. “The rogue.”

“Kian,” Elara said mildly from the other end. “Inside voice, please.”

Lyra almost turned around.

Atlas caught her movement and shook his head once. “You’re here,” he said. “Eat.”

It wasn’t an order, exactly. More like an invitation wrapped in alpha steel.

“Relax, Quinn,” Cassian murmured from her right. She hadn’t heard him come up. “We don’t bite at breakfast.”

“Speak for yourself,” a redheaded wolf near the coffee urn said. “Hi. I’m Sienna. Don’t touch my toolbox and we’ll get along fine.”

“That’s Nia,” Cassian corrected, nodding toward a scarred warrior leaning back in her chair, mug in hand. “Sienna’s the one who’ll threaten your toolbox.”

Sienna lifted her mug in salute from further down. “He’s not wrong.”

Some of the tension in Lyra’s shoulders eased. This, at least, she understood—banter, jabs, the way crews in bad situations kept themselves sane.

Elara pushed back her chair and came around with a plate. “Sit,” she said. “You’ll work better with more than caffeine in your system.”

Lyra took the plate because refusing felt like more of a scene than accepting. Elara steered her toward an empty spot halfway down the table, opposite Sienna.

Kian plopped down in the chair beside her, eyes huge.

“Is it true you live in your truck?” he asked.

“Kian,” Elara warned.

Lyra stabbed a piece of bacon. “Sometimes,” she said. “Sometimes I live in terrible motels with questionable carpets. The truck is nicer.”

“Do you have a pack?” he pressed.

“She’s rogue,” an older wolf muttered from further down. Not mean, exactly. Just wary.

Lyra’s wolf bristled. Lyra didn’t.

“Had one,” she said lightly. “It didn’t work out.”

Maeve—the teenage girl with dark braids Lyra had seen yesterday—studied her over her mug. “So you just…go wherever?”

“Wherever pays,” Lyra said. “With decent coffee.”

“Which is why she keeps coming back here,” Cassian said, sitting on her other side with his own overloaded plate. “Theo’s coffee is terrible. Ours is slightly less terrible.”

“Your sales pitch needs work,” Lyra said.

“Still got you to stay another night,” he replied.

“Storm did that,” she shot back.

But the denial rang thinner than she liked.

Atlas stood, mug in hand. The room quieted without him needing to raise his voice.

“Quick,” he said. “Before anyone falls asleep in their eggs. Patrols are doubled until Lyra and Theo tell me the system isn’t one bad sneeze away from collapse. No one goes out alone, no one plays hero.”

A ripple of assent moved around the table.

His gaze landed on Lyra. “You have everything you need?”

“Logs, access, a nervous tech,” she said. “I’ll start on the north ridge feeds. That’s where your ghosts are.”

Atlas nodded. “You need anything, you ask. You’re not working for a faceless vendor this time.”

The words hit harder than she expected.

Kian leaned into her arm. “You’re eating with us,” he said, as if that settled something. “That makes you half not-rogue.”

“Kian,” Elara murmured, but there was a smile in it.

Lyra looked down at the small, sticky hand on her sleeve, then at the table crowded with wolves who’d fought a storm and a quiet war with her in the last twenty-four hours.

Her wolf pressed forward, hopeful and stupid.

Lyra took a bite of bacon instead of answering, letting the salt and heat ground her.

Half not-rogue.

Breakfast. Then cameras. Then the road.

She repeated it in her head like a mantra, even as a traitorous part of her wondered what it would feel like to sit at this table without planning her exit.