His Rejected Luna: The Bond That Wouldn’t Die

Chapter 17 – Cracks Between Worlds

By the time I make it back to Locke territory, the sky is the color of dirty dishwater. The kind of gray that flattens everything, hides the smoke stains on brick and the way people flinch at sirens now.

Elian is waiting in Corin’s office, perched on the edge of the desk like the paperwork beneath him is an afterthought. His tablet glows beside him, a dozen windows open. He looks like he hasn’t slept since before the fire.

“Did he say ‘Regional Youth Adjustment Facility’ out loud?” is his first question.

“Yes.” I shut the door behind me. “With a straight face.”

He exhales through his teeth. “Subtlety really isn’t their strong suit anymore.”

I sink into the same leather chair I sat in the night Claire walked in with Severin’s ultimatum. It feels different now. Less like a trap, more like a war table.

“Daniel Hart,” I say. “Friendly smile, soothing tone, knew my name and my file before we shook hands.”

“He would,” Elian says. “He helped write parts of it.”

My stomach tightens. “He was there?”

“Not physically. On the paperwork.” Elian taps the tablet, pulls up a document I wish I’d never seen the first time. “He was Severin’s junior analyst back then. Assigned to ‘high‑risk bond interventions.’ He’s the one who compiled the risk profiles that justified bringing humans into our rituals.”

He flips to a signature line. Daniel’s name is there, neat and tidy, just below Severin’s.

I swallow bile. “So the man who tried to sell me on ‘more secure facilities’ for my kids cut his teeth turning my bond into a case study.”

“Welcome to institutional memory,” Elian says, bitter.

The door opens again. Corin steps in, shoulders dusted with the faint scent of rain and asphalt. Patrol, then. His gaze sweeps over us, assessing, as he shuts the door with his heel.

“How bad?” he asks.

“On a scale from ‘mild inconvenience’ to ‘Severin’s dream scenario’?” I say. “Somewhere in the ‘we need a very large bonfire of paperwork’ range.”

I fill them in: the inspection, Daniel’s pitch, the smiling insistence that relocation is “temporary” and “for their own good.”

By the time I finish, Corin’s jaw is locked tight. Elian’s eyes are very, very calm. It’s never good when Elian gets calm.

“So,” Elian says. “Hart’s pushing to move high‑risk kids into a facility we know is tied to the Department’s more creative experiments. He’s doing it under cover of fire safety. And he’s doing it through you.”

“Because I’m the choke point,” I say. “Caseworker. Advocate. The one whose signature they need to make it look voluntary.”

“And if you refuse,” Corin says, “they paint you as obstructing their efforts to ‘protect vulnerable youth.’ Use that to go around you. Maybe over you.”

I picture Hart’s measured look, his careful “we’re on the same team.” The way the inspector shifted when Theo said camps out loud.

“They’re testing the ground,” I say. “Seeing how far they can push before we scream loud enough for anyone to hear.”

Elian leans back, fingers steepled. “We can’t let those kids vanish into that facility. Not yours. Not anyone’s.”

“No argument,” I say. “But I can’t just bar the doors and bite hands. They’ll use the law like a crowbar.”

“That’s where we come in,” Elian says. “We have two fronts: legal and… less legal.”

Corin’s gaze sharpens. “What did you find?”

“Paper trails,” Elian says. He flips through screens. “Funding routed to Hart’s outreach division from the same shell nonprofits that bankroll the ‘community watch’ groups torching shifter‑adjacent spaces. Lists of ‘pilot participants’ in adjustment programs that line up a little too neatly with kids picked up in raids.”

He turns the tablet toward us. Names and dates scroll past. Some I recognize from whispered conversations in Keane’s lobby. Some from Varro’s incident reports.

“I can’t prove Hart personally ordered the fire at Keane,” Elian says. “Yet. But I can prove his programs benefit when shifter‑friendly sites are declared unsafe.”

Rage flares, clean and bright. “Burn us, then offer umbrellas,” I say. “Efficient.”

Corin’s eyes are silvering at the edges. He drags in a slow breath, deliberately leashing his wolf.

“What about inside?” he asks. “Do we have anyone in that facility who can talk?”

“Working on it,” Elian says. “A nurse Theo dug up is skittish, but she hates what she’s seeing. If we can guarantee she and her family won’t disappear, she might go on record.”

Guarantee. My mind flicks to Lysa’s grim line—We are not safe people to know—and to Theo’s stubborn, soot‑streaked face.

“I can stall Hart,” I say. “Tell him families need time. That there’s too much trauma. Threaten media if he pushes too hard, too fast. But it buys us weeks at best, not months.”

“And in those weeks,” Corin says quietly, “they’ll try to make you the problem.”

“Already are,” I say. “Hart made it very clear: if ‘the next incident’ happens, he’ll say they offered help and I refused it.”

“You did,” Elian points out.

“Yes,” I say. “Because his ‘help’ is a cage with better branding.”

Silence settles, thick with shared fury.

Corin moves around the desk, coming to stand beside my chair. Not looming. Just there. Close enough that the warmth of him seeps through my sleeve.

“What do you need from us?” he asks. Not “here’s what you’ll do.” Not orders. A question.

I blink once, thrown. Then answer honestly.

“Proof,” I say. “Enough to make Hart and Severin radioactive to their own allies. Enough to make moving kids look like what it is: abuse of power, not protection.”

“You’ll have it,” Elian says, with a conviction that makes something in my chest unknot.

“And backup,” I add. “If they try to come through my professional licenses, my human channels. They’re used to scaring people quiet with threats of losing funding, jobs, custody.”

“Anyone touches your license,” Corin says, voice gone very soft, “they find their budgets tied up in audits for the next five years. Anyone reaches for your kids—they answer to us.”

He doesn’t specify whether he means wolves or lawyers. For the first time, I realize it doesn’t matter. We have both.

“Then we do it loudly,” I say. “No more quiet meetings in back offices. If Hart wants to ‘help,’ he can do it in front of anyone with a camera.”

Elian’s mouth curves. “Public hearings. Oversight committees. Whistleblower protections. Tedious, glorious bureaucracy.”

“And,” I add, “we quietly start building a network for the kids who already got taken. So when we knock on those adjustment facility doors—legally or otherwise—we have somewhere to bring them.”

Corin nods once. Decision settling over him like armor.

“I’ll talk to the other alphas,” he says. “And to Brann.” He says the name like a concession. “If Hart’s program is touching their kids too, they’ll want in.”

“Brann?” I echo. “You trust him that much?”

“No,” Corin says. “But I trust his self‑interest. And his hatred of being anyone’s dog.”

It’s a start.

Elian’s tablet buzzes. He glances at it, eyebrows lifting. “Speaking of which. Varro says human media picked up Theo’s last article. It’s trending. Hart’s name is in the tags.”

I huff a breath that might one day be a laugh. “About time someone put a spotlight on their golden boy.”

Corin’s hand brushes, just barely, against my shoulder as he moves back toward the desk. The touch sends a brief, steadying warmth through the bond.

“Then we push,” he says. “On every crack. With every tool.”

“And if they push back?” I ask.

He meets my gaze, eyes ringed in silver, wolf very close to the surface.

“Then,” he says, “they’ll find out what happens when they mistake our restraint for weakness.”

My wolf lifts her head, answering his with a quiet, lethal certainty.

Cracks between our worlds, I think, looking at Elian’s maps and lists, at the ash still smudged on Corin’s knuckles.

Cracks can be fault lines.

But they can also be where the light gets in.