The Luna He Rejected: An Alpha's Regret

CHAPTER 35

By noon, Marcus had the look of a man who had said the word "confirmed" so many times in the last twenty-four hours that it had stopped meaning anything to him personally.

"Confirmed," he said, appearing in the kitchen doorway like he'd been conjured by the smell of Marta's soup. "Isolde signed the total legal withdrawal at eleven forty. She's off Ironmoor territory as of eleven fifty-two. Pack car, heading north, two escorts, no incidents." He said the last part with the specific flatness of a man who had genuinely expected an incident and was almost disappointed not to get one to manage.

"No incidents," Dani repeated, from her spot at the kitchen table, where she had commandeered an entire loaf of Marta's bread and a jar of something that smelled aggressively of cinnamon. "After the week we've had, 'no incidents' feels like it should come with a parade. Possibly fireworks. At minimum a commemorative mug."

"I'll pass your feedback to the council," Marcus said, deadpan, and left again, presumably to go confirm something else at someone.

Kevin sat across from Dani with the letter, Isolde's letter, sealed, addressed to Evan in handwriting that had clearly cost her something to keep steady, turned over once in his hands before he set it down like it might go off.

"For what it's worth," he said, "and I say this as someone who grew up with a father who left when I was six and never once wrote me a single word explaining himself, having something, even something complicated, even something you have to grow into understanding, is better than having nothing. Evan's going to have questions someday that nobody in this house can fully answer. That letter's not going to fix what she did to him. But it might help him ask the right questions instead of just carrying the wrong ones around forever."

Raven, leaning against the counter with a coffee he'd clearly poured himself without asking Marta's permission, a level of bravery I hadn't expected from him even after everything, nodded slowly. "He's right. Kids fill silence with the worst possible version of the story, every time. At least this way there's something real in the gap, even if it's not enough."

"It's more self-awareness than I expected from her, honestly," Dani said, tearing off another piece of bread. "Which is the single most unsettling compliment I've paid a woman who tried to have this entire family assassinated. I'd like it on record that I'm deeply uncomfortable saying anything nice about her."

"Noted," I said. "For the record, so am I."

Marcus reappeared, this time with a folder under his arm and the specific expression of a man about to deliver good news he didn't entirely trust yet. "Rowan Greymoor's formal withdrawal is ready for submission to the central council. Once it's filed, the title challenge is dead. Permanently. No appeals window." He looked around the kitchen at all of us, Kevin, Dani, Raven, the smell of bread and cinnamon and Marta's soup, four humans and one very tired lawyer's worth of paperwork standing between this family and the end of the worst month of our lives, and something in his usually unreadable face softened. "It's over."

Nobody said anything for a second. Then Emery, who had apparently been listening from somewhere near the doorway with the specific stealth of a four-year-old who believed himself to be invisible, shouted "IT'S OVER!" at a volume that suggested he understood approximately none of the context and all of the vibe, and ran off to inform Luna, who could be heard a moment later informing him, calmly, that she had known it was over since Tuesday.

The goodbye, when it came, was somehow both faster and more devastating than I had braced for.

"I'm staying," I told them, once Marcus had gone to file his paperwork and the kitchen had settled back into something like quiet. "At Ironmoor. For now. I wanted you to hear it from me before you heard it from anyone else."

Dani's face did something complicated, happiness and loss arriving at the same time and fighting for control of her features, before she crossed the kitchen and pulled me into a hug hard enough to bruise. "I hate this so much," she said into my shoulder, voice thick. "I hate it so much and I am so happy for you and I genuinely cannot separate those two feelings right now, so just let me hug you until I figure out which one wins."

"You can visit," I said. "You're always welcome. The kids need you. I need you."

"I know. I know that. I'm still allowed five seconds of being dramatic about it." Dani pulled back, wiped at her eyes with the heel of her hand, and pointed a finger at me with mock severity. "If you turn into some polished, humorless Luna who forgets how to laugh at her own jokes, I will drive up this mountain myself and stage an intervention. I mean it. I will bring props."

"I would expect nothing less."

Kevin's goodbye was quieter, the way most things about Kevin were quieter, but no less felt for it. He hugged me once, brief and solid, and said only, "You know where to find us. And Marcus already offered me something up here, liaison work, docks, the Millhaven wolves. I might take it. Wouldn't be gone as long as you're thinking."

"I'd like that," I said, and meant it more than the words probably conveyed.

Raven waited until the others had drifted toward the cars, until it was just the two of us standing in the doorway with the cold mountain air pouring in and the sound of Emery narrating something dramatic to Luna somewhere down the hall.

"Walk with me a second," he said, and I followed him a few steps out onto the packhouse steps, bracing myself for whatever version of a goodbye speech he'd been quietly composing since the garden conversation a few days back.

"I'm not going to make this long," Raven said. "You've had enough long conversations this week to last several lifetimes. I just want to say one thing, and then I'm getting in the car, and you don't have to respond to it at all if you don't want to."

"Okay."

"Tell him." Raven's voice was steady, direct, none of his usual careful patience in it, just plain, unhedged honesty, the kind I suspected had cost him something to work up to. "Whatever you're still sitting on. Whatever you haven't said out loud yet because saying it makes it real and real things can be taken away from you. I watched you build an entire life out of never fully saying the true thing first, Sera. I understood it. I even loved you a little for how well you managed it. But I got kidn*pped and held in a guest room for three days this week, and it turns out that's an excellent way to reconsider your relationship with saying things out loud. Life's too short for half-measures. Say the whole thing. All of it. Today, if you can manage it."

He didn't wait for a response. He squeezed my shoulder once, walked down the steps to where Dani was already loudly relitigating the seating arrangement with Kevin, and didn't look back.

Well, I thought, watching the cars pull away down the long gravel drive, feeling something in my chest c***k open in a way that had nothing to do with grief and everything to do with terror. That's incredibly unhelpful advice to receive from a man currently getting into a car and driving three and a half hours away from the consequences of having given it.