The Runaway Luna

#13

Eryx.

She picked up every piece of that broken glass without a word.

I watched her from the corner of my eye, pretending to read the papers in front of me. She was careful about it. Deliberate. Like she was making sure she got every single piece off the floor so nobody would get hurt.

That was the kind of person she was.

She had walked into a cottage with a drugged and dangerous Alpha and tried to help him. She had picked up broken glass piece by piece in complete silence. Small things. But I noticed them all and I hated that I did.

I looked back down at my papers.

The words meant nothing to me this morning. Trade agreements. Border updates. A letter from a neighbouring pack requesting an audience.

Things that would have had my full attention on any other day were sitting in front of me completely ignored because a woman in a maid's uniform was moving around my room and my eyes kept finding her without my permission.

She finished, gathered everything quietly and left without looking at me.

The room felt different when she was gone.

Smaller somehow. Which made absolutely no sense because she was not a large person. She was small and quiet and took up almost no space at all. But when she walked out, something went with her and I was left sitting at my desk feeling it.

I pushed back from the desk and stood up...I needed to get out of my own head.

Training grounds were the one place that always worked. There was nothing in the world that cleared my mind faster than physical pain and the sound of bodies hitting the ground.

I got there and my men straightened immediately. I didn't bother with warm up. I walked straight to the centre and pointed at the largest one.

He came at me hard. I put him on the ground in four moves.

The next one lasted six.

I kept going until I had worked through most of them and the ones still standing were looking at me with that particular expression my men got when they couldn't tell if I was training or genuinely trying to hurt someone.

Both. The answer was both.

Cade stood at the side with his arms folded, watching. When I finally stopped he walked over and handed me a cloth.

"Feel better?" he asked.

"No," I said honestly. He nodded like that was the answer he expected.

"She was in my room this morning," I said, wiping my face.

He said nothing. He knew better than to ask questions when I was still working something out.

"She picked up the glass," I said. "Didn't say a word about it. Just cleaned it up."

Cade was quiet for a moment. "What did you say to her?"

"I told her I knew her name wasn't Selena."

"And?"

"She didn't confirm it. Didn't deny it either." I threw the cloth over my shoulder. "She's good. Trained herself not to react."

"Or she's just scared," Cade said carefully. I looked at him.

He held my gaze for exactly two seconds then looked away. Smart.

But he wasn't wrong and that was the problem. She wasn't just cautious. She was scared in a specific way.

The kind of scared that comes from believing something terrible is about to happen to you. I had seen it enough times to know the difference.

She genuinely believed I was going to hurt her.

I had spent four years looking for her. I had turned down every woman brought to me. I had refused to break the bond even when my own ministers were pushing me to move on.

I had stood in that rogue market and walked away with a broken chest because I thought she had found happiness somewhere else.

And she thought I wanted her dead.

The distance between those two things sat in my chest like something sharp.

"Find out everything about her," I said. "Where she came from. Who she came in with. Who she talks to inside the palace. I want to know everything."

"And if she's hiding something?"

"She's definitely hiding something," I said. "Find out what."

Cade nodded and walked off.

I stood in the middle of the training ground alone and looked up at the sky.

The rational side of my brain was already working through it. She had come in deliberately. She had a fake name. She had a plan. Whatever she was here for, it wasn't to reconcile with her mate. She didn't even want me to know it was her.

That alone should have been enough for me to treat her like any other threat walking through my palace gates.

It wasn't.

Because every time I tried to think about her as a threat, I thought about her crying in that dungeon instead. Hot tears on my arm. Her voice breaking on the word please. And something in me that had never bent for anything came dangerously close to bending.

I walked back inside.

She was in the corridor near the east wing, on her knees scrubbing the floor with two other maids. She didn't see me coming. I slowed my steps without meaning to.

Her sleeves were rolled up. Her red hair was tucked under her cap but a few strands had come loose and fallen against the side of her neck. Right where my mark was.

She laughed at something one of the other maids said.

It was quiet and quick and she covered it almost immediately like she had remembered she wasn't supposed to be comfortable here. But for that one second it was real.

I had never seen her laugh before. I stopped walking completely.

She looked up and found me standing there. The laugh disappeared instantly. Her face went back to that careful blank expression she wore like armour and she dropped her eyes to the floor.

"My lord," she said quietly. I said nothing, walked past her and kept moving.

But I carried that laugh with me for the rest of the day like a man who had just discovered something he had no idea he had been missing.

And it made me dangerous.

Because now I didn't just want answers.

I wanted more of it.