Luna, Who No Longer Recognized Him Chapter 08

Luna, Who No Longer Recognized Him Chapter 08

To bring me back, to coax even a flicker of human feeling out of me, Declan did everything he could.

He personally submitted evidence to the Pack council, reporting Evans Marine Park for illegally capturing wild marine animals, falsifying rescue records, and long-term abuse of captive animals.

He also confessed to everything. The fabricated Rogue fever quarantine. The misuse of Pack funds. The imprisonment of his own Luna.

Isolde’s marine consultant credentials were revoked.

Evans Marine Park was seized by the animal welfare board.

The kindness she’d worn like a costume was shredded to pieces, and every Pack media outlet called

her what she was: a fraud.

Declan brought me to watch the day she was escorted out of the council hall.

“Aurora, Isolde used dirty tactics to frame you.”

“Now I’ve made sure she got what she deserved.”

“Does seeing this make you feel even a little better?”

I looked ahead, calm and empty.

A person with no love and no hate doesn’t feel anything when their enemy

Pain flickered behind Declan’s eyes.

He forced a smile almost immediately.

“That’s okay.”

“You love the ocean, right?”

“I bought you a villa by the sea.”

“You can watch the ocean every morning. Every night.”

“We have a whole lifetime.”

But his dream didn’t last long.

Isolde, with nothing left to lose, handed over every piece of evidence: Declan’s fabricated quarantine, his deception of the council, his misuse of Pack funds, the unauthorized silver wards.

Darkwater Pack’s treasury was frozen by the council.

Declan’s Alpha authority was suspended by the elder tribunal.

The seaside villa was seized.

The Alpha heir who once stood above everyone was forced to move us into an abandoned stone cottage by the shore.

The kind of place where the wind came through the walls and made them moan.

Declan cleaned it out with his own hands.

This was a man who’d never even poured his own coffee. Now he was learning to patch a leaking roof, learning to light a furnace, learning to make a halfway warm bed on a damp stone floor.

“Aurora, I was too selfish before.”

“The love I gave you was wrong. It wasn’t enough.”

“But no matter how far I fall, I’ll keep trying to give you something better.”

He was drenched in sweat, but there was a fragile, almost humble happiness on his face.

“This is the only time I feel like your being sick isn’t the worst thing in the world.”

“Because no matter what I become, you’re still here with me.”

I didn’t answer.

But my body grew weaker by the day.

No Pack healer. No expensive medicine. No stable nutrition.

And no beluga swimming through the waves each morning to bring me food.

I was a flower cut off from the sea wind, wilting petal by petal.

Declan finally started to be afraid.

He knelt beside the bed, gripping my hand, his voice shaking so badly it barely sounded like him.

“Aurora, let me take you to the council medical center. Please.”

“I’ll beg them.”

“I’don’t need anything anymore. Not the Alpha title. Nothing.”

“Just stay alive. Please.”

I gazed at the gray-blue ocean through the window.

My heart was quiet.

In those final, fading moments, I thought I heard the waves again.

There was no moonlight outside the cottage window, but the entire room filled with a blue-white

glow.

A familiar cry drifted in from far away.

My wolf, silent for so long, finally lifted her head inside my chest.

Not for Declan.

Not for the mate bond.

For the sea.

I saw the moon-white beluga swimming toward me through the waves.

Its wounds were gone.

It waited in the near distance, still and patient, just like every morning before.

Tears streamed down my face as I reached toward it with everything I had left.

“You finally came for me.”

“I’m so tired of waiting.”

Declan seized my hand, shaking his head, falling apart.

“Aurora, don’t.”

“Don’t leave me.”

“I know I was wrong.”

“I really know I was wrong.”

But his voice was getting farther and farther away.

As far as an entire ocean.

I saw myself in the soaked wedding gown again.

This time, there were no silver wards. No wolfsbane suppressant. No severed mate bond.

My wolf leaped from my chest and ran toward the waves.

The beluga touched its forehead to mine.

Just like before.

I smiled.

“This life was so short.”

“And so, so long.”

The sea wind swept through, and from beyond the cottage walls came a single, quiet whale song.

Declan held my body as it grew cold, and he finally understood.

He had believed that as long as he kept me by his side, I would always be his Luna.

But he was the one who pushed my heart, my wolf, my soul into that ocean with his own hands.

And the sea would never give me back.

– END-