Luna Aurora‘s Second Chane

Chapter 7

Aurora's POV

Noah's head is warm against my chest, and I hold him tighter than I need to.

His breathing evens out and stays there. I lie in the dark and listen to it until I stop thinking about anything else.

***

The knock comes before the room is fully light.

I'm already half-awake when the door opens — one of the maids, still in her apron, her face drawn tight with something she's trying to keep from spilling.

"Luna. Miss Eileen — she's in your office. She's been trying to get the safe open."

My feet hit the floor before she finishes.

Beside me, Noah stirs. He rubs both eyes with his fists, squinting up at me.

I lean down and press my lips to his forehead. "Mom has to go handle something. I'll be back before breakfast. Stay here and sleep a little more, okay?"

He looks at me for a long moment — those pure blue eyes taking in whatever he reads in my face — and then nods.

I'm already pulling clothes on before the door closes.

The soldiers at the entrance of the pack hall bow their heads as I pass, one after another. I don't slow down.

Luna's office is on the second floor, east wing — set between Alpha's office on one side and the main conference room and vault on the other. Most secured block in the building. Guards at the stairwell landing at all hours.

I still don't know how she got past them.

I push the office door open.

Eileen is at the safe, her back to me, working through another combination. The panel lets out its flat rejection tone. Then again. Then again. She doesn't hear me come in. I watch her for one second — the way she's pressing each digit with complete patience, like she's simply being inconvenienced by a stubborn lock — and the heat behind my sternum flares.

I know exactly what's in that safe. Five years of internal financial records. Emergency supply depot coordinates. Treasury keys. Everything that keeps Redmoon standing if things go wrong.

"What are you doing!"

She turns.

And smiles.

"Perfect timing." She gestures at the safe like she's handing me an errand. "Open it for me."

"Who gave you permission to come up here?" I step forward. "What gives you the right to demand anything in this office?"

Eileen's smile doesn't move. She tilts her head, appraising me the way you appraise something funny. Then, without answering, she turns from the safe and crosses the room — slowly, deliberately, heels tapping with each step — and sits down at my desk.

My desk.

She settles into the chair like she owns it. Leans back until it gives under her weight. Crosses one leg over the other, the needle-thin heel of her stiletto lifting and rotating toward me in a slow, deliberate point — sharp as a blade aimed at my chest.

"Not one person stopped me," she says, picking at a nail like the conversation bores her. "Not the soldiers. Not the staff. Nobody." She looks up. "Everyone in this pack already knows what's coming. So why are you still performing?"

My hand comes down on the desk hard enough to rattle the pen holder.

"It seems," I say, "that you don't actually deserve my respect." I hold her gaze. "Listen carefully. A guest who forces her way into a pack's classified operations area is committing an act of war. "

"Get out of this office. Now."

Eileen laughs. A small, light sound, like something genuinely amused her.

"What are you going to do?" She leans forward across my desk, and when she speaks again her lip curls back just enough to show the edge of her canines, the tips catching the light. "You don't even have a wolf. You're nothing but a cripple with a borrowed title."

The maid behind me makes a sharp, frightened sound.

I don't move.

But something settles cold in my chest, and I let myself think it through clearly.

I think about what kind of Luna she would be. I thought about the way she had treated my son. I thought about how she had been willing to put the entire pack at risk just to frame me at the banquet. A woman like Eileen — scheming, ruthless, with no real care for anyone she can't use — if she holds the key to Redmoon Pack.

No, I will not allow it.

And beyond that — beyond every practical calculation — she is standing in my office calling me a cripple to my face, and I am done being gracious.

I reach under the desk.

The gun fits my hand the way it always has — Logan's gift, two years back, because he said a Luna without a wolf still needed a way to defend herself. I raise it and level it at her.

Eileen goes very still.

The smile disappears.

Then she laughs again — but it's thinner this time, the edges fraying. "You actually think you'd pull that trigger?"

"I already told you." My voice stays even. "Your presence in this room is a act of war. That is the threshold. If I fired right now and stood in front of any werewolf court in this state, I would walk out without a single charge." I pull the hammer back. The click is very loud in the office. "Do you want to find out if I mean it?"

Three seconds.

She stands.

She's a daughter of an Alpha, so she knows how serious it is.

Both hands go up, palms out, away from her body — and that face, that composed, contemptuous face, finally shows something real fear. She backs toward the door without turning around, her heels stumbling once, twice, and then she's through it and gone — the clatter of her steps retreating fast down the stairs.

The maid beside me exhales like she's been holding it for five minutes straight. "Luna," she breathes. "With a b***h like that, you really can't afford to be polite."

I set the gun down and lock the office door behind us.

***

Noah and I eat breakfast at the small table by the window. Then he piled blueberry jam, peanut butter, three swirls of whipped cream, M&M's, two slices of cheese...and a dash of black pepper onto his waffle—all in one glorious mess.

He looked ridiculously pleased with himself.

Part of me wanted to tell him not to waste food, but a bigger part of me just wanted to savor the sight of him smiling.

I spend the rest of the day with him. We chase each other around the garden until he declares himself exhausted, then immediately starts again. I laugh when he looks up to check if I'm watching.

But the day keeps slipping. Every quiet moment pulls me back to the same dead end — the same walls, no door. The gun this morning was one moment. Moments end. Eileen will come back with something worse, and Logan will stand exactly where he stood at the banquet, and I will be out of ground.

Until night, after Noah falls asleep, I lie there for an hour, then give up.

The grounds between the pack house and the pack hall are quiet and dark. I cross them without thinking, nod to the night guards at the hall entrance, and take the stairs to the second floor.

I put my key in the lock.

It doesn't turn.

I try again. Nothing. I pull it out, look at it — same key I've carried for three years — and try once more. The lock gives nothing.

I lower my hand.

Eileen came back.

After everything this morning. After the gun in her face and her own hands raised above her head. She came back, walked into my office, and changed the lock.

I look down the corridor and spot the trash can near the end of the hall.

Something catches the low light at the bottom of it — a pale edge, ragged where the cut was made, colors I recognize before I understand what I'm seeing.

I cross to it and reach in.

The broken glass from the frame finds my finger on the second piece, and again on the fourth, and twice more after that. I don't stop. I pull out every fragment I can find, cupping them in both palms while the blood from my fingers spreads slowly across the edges of the image.

My mother's face, severed at the jaw. My father's shoulder. My own face, split cleanly down the middle.

This is the only photograph I have left of my parents and me.

I stand in the hallway and I don't move for a long time.

Not just the lock. Not just the office. She took this too — the one thing in this pack that had nothing to do with politics, with power, with mate, and with any of it. Just my parents' faces.

I close both fists around the pieces and walk back across the grounds.

I moved fast, almost breaking into a run. Anger blazed inside me, driving me forward.

The light is on under the Alpha suite door.

I don't knock. I had barged straight into the Alpha's room, that wasn't allowed.

Logan is on his feet instantly, spinning toward me — and then he sees my face and goes very still.

I all but roared, "Why did you let her into my office?"