The Luna They Used Chapter 08

The Luna They Used Chapter 08

The potion hit faster than I expected. Before long, it felt like something was pulling my bones apart one by

one and putting them back wrong.

Not sharp – nothing that clean. It was deep and blunt, radiating from the marrow outward, like my skeleton

was trying to reject itself.

Adrian carried me to a cabin in the mountains behind the Northern Territory Pack. My mother had lived here

before she died. Dense forest closed in on every side, and the nearest pack settlement was miles away.

Adrian laid me down and pulled the blankets up to my chin. “I’ve got two of my best guards standing outside,”

he said.

“I’ll come check on you every day.”

“Don’t.” I ground my teeth against the pain. “A few days. I can handle a few days.”

Adrian looked at me for a long time. Then he leaned down and pressed his lips to my forehead.

“You’re not going to die,” he said. “I’m not allowing it.”

Then he was gone. The second the door shut, I stopped pretending. I curled in on myself like I was

collapsing.

The pain was unreal. Worse than the wolfbane whip.

Worse than the vitality drain. Worse than losing the pup.

I shoved the blanket between my teeth and bit down to keep from screaming. The world blurred at the edges.

Memories flooded in, uninvited. Noah, the first time I saw him – standing in the Silver Moon garden with the

sun behind him, smiling, reaching for my hand.

Our wedding night – his arms around me, his mouth against my ear. “I’m going to take care of you forever.”

The meals he cooked. The bread he baked himself. The coat he’d drape over my shoulders without being

asked.

And then the other memories – the real ones.

[You think I’d fall for someone else’s leftovers?]

[She won’t have a choice.]

[Once she’s showing, I’ll throw it in her face, claim the pup is a bastard.]

The memories splintered. I opened my eyes, and my cheeks were wet.

Tears ran down into the pillow, silent and steady. I wiped them off. They came right back.

I lost track of time after that. Sleep and tears bled into each other until I couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.

At some point, Adrian came in. He tipped water into my mouth, spooned porridge past my lips. Most of it I couldn’t keep down – fever dreams swallowed the details. But I remembered his hand around mine, and I remembered his voice.

“You remember when you were five? You wouldn’t stop begging to ride my wolf. I let you up, and you lasted barely a heartbeat before you went flying.” A quiet laugh. “Knocked out both your front teeth.”

“You were bawling – ‘I’m never doing that again. The next morning, you were climbing right back on.”

“You’ve been stubborn your whole life. Once you decide something, nothing on earth can move you.”

“That’s not a bad thing. Stubborn people don’t break.”

“I’ll be right outside. You wake up, Ashley. That’s an order.”

His hand was warm. I held on to his fingers and wouldn’t let go.

Later, he left. I fell into darkness again.

On the third day, I opened my eyes, and sunlight was falling across my face.

It was warm. I sat up. Every inch of me was drenched sheets, hair, skin – like I’d been pulled from a river.

–

But the pain was gone. And something else had gone with it something I couldn’t name, only feel the absence of.

–

The thread between Noah and me – the one that had held on through everything was gone. I stared at my hands and started to laugh.

The laughter turned to tears somewhere in the middle, but these were different. These were warm.

The door swung open. Adrian stepped in, saw me upright, and stopped dead.

Then he was across the room in two steps, pulling me off the bed and crushing me against his chest.

“You scared me half to death.” His voice was shaking. “Your fever was dangerously high. Days of it – I was this close to dragging you to the hospital. I don’t care what the witch said ”

“Adrian.” I cut him off. My voice was scraped down to nothing – I barely recognized it. “I want your roast lamb.”

Adrian pulled back to look at me. His eyes were red. His nose too.

“Done,” he said. “I’ll have the kitchen start on it. How much do you want?”

“A whole one.”

“Done.” He started for the door, then stopped. “Ashley.”

“Yeah?”

“The bond – is it gone?”

I closed my eyes and searched inside myself. Empty. Clean. Nothing in me that wasn’t mine.

“It’s gone,” I said.

Adrian smiled. It was the first time I’d seen him smile without something heavy behind it.

“Thank the Goddess,” he said.

“Come on. Let’s go home.”