Luna Who Stopped Giving In Chapter 06

Luna Who Stopped Giving In Chapter 06

“Caleb, what’s wrong?”

Marcus walked over with two empty water bottles.

Caleb locked his phone, irritated.

“Amelia blocked me.’

Marcus blinked, then scoffed.

“She’s actually giving us attitude now?”

“Don’t worry about it. She’s probably off somewhere crying.”

“Once she runs out of money, she’ll come crawling back to Mom.”

Caleb said nothing. The tension in his face didn’t ease.

He knew me too well for that.

No matter how badly I’d been hurt before, the worst I’d ever done was go quiet. I had never cut him

off.

“Did Mrs. Caldwell get through to her?”

Marcus shook his head.

“Blocked too. Mom’s losing it. Says she’s going to set Amelia straight when she gets back.”

Lily came running out of the dorm building.

“Caleb! Marcus! Amelia never showed up to help me with my desk.”

Her lower lip jutted out.

“I had to carry everything myself. I almost sprained my wrist.”

Caleb was at her side in a second, steadying her.

“You’re not hurt, are you? I’ll get the RA to help.”

“But where’s Amelia? Didn’t she enroll at Blackthorn too?”

Lily blinked.

The unease in Caleb’s chest kept building.

He made sure Lily was settled, then headed for the freshman registration tent.

“Hey, can you look up a freshman for me? Amelia Caldwell, Physics Department.”

The upperclassman at the desk typed it in.

“Physics? There’s no one by that name.”

Caleb froze.

“What about other departments? Maybe I got it wrong.”

The guy ran a search across the entire freshman class.

“No. There’s no Amelia registered anywhere in this school.”

“You sure you’ve got the right school?”

The color drained from Caleb’s face.

“Impossible.”

He braced one hand on the desk.

“She was supposed to be here. She said she’d be here.”

The guy leaned back, caught off guard.

“She’s really not in the system, man. Try the admissions office.”

Half an hour later, Caleb pulled rank as the future Alpha and got a meeting with the admissions

director.

“Amelia Caldwell?”

The director adjusted his glasses and pulled up the internal database.

“Oh, I remember her.”

“This year’s valedictorian out of the Blackthorn high school. We tried to recruit her.”

Caleb stopped breathing.

“Valedictorian?”

“Near-perfect SAT score. National Merit Scholar.”

The director shook his head.

“She listed Royal Warrior University as her first choice. She committed to them months ago.

Nothing we could do.”

Caleb didn’t move. His ears rang.

Royal Warrior University.

Near-perfect SAT score.

Valedictorian.

He saw her in his mind, hunched over problem sets in that dim hallway, night after night.

And her face when he handed that desk lamp to Lily. Not angry. Not hurt. Just still.

“She went to Boston…”

His voice came out as barely more than a whisper. His hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

Caleb couldn’t remember how he’d walked out of the admissions office.

The late summer sun was blazing outside, but he couldn’t stop shivering.

He was gripping a printout of the Royal Warrior enrollment confirmation so hard the paper creased.

He drove straight back to the Alpha estate, blowing through every speed limit on the way.

In the living room, Mom was on the couch with a sheet mask on. Dad sat reading the paper.

“Oh, Caleb’s here.”

Mom didn’t bother opening her eyes.

“Is Lily all set? And where the hell is Amelia? Did you find her?”

Caleb didn’t answer.

He walked to the coffee table and slammed the printout down on the glass.

The smack echoed.

Dad frowned and looked up.

“What’s going on? Why are you so upset?”

“See for yourselves.”

Caleb’s voice was raw.

Mom peeled off her mask and picked up the paper, annoyed.

“What is this… Royal Warrior University enrollment confirmation?”

She read it out loud like the words weren’t real.

Then her eyes hit the name.

Amelia.

Her hands started to shake.

“This… what does this mean?”

“It’s got to be a different Amelia. There’s no way she got into Royal Warrior. She didn’t even take an

Caleb looked at her, and his voice was flat.

“Amelia is this year’s valedictorian of the Blackthorn high school.”

“Near-perfect SAT score. Royal Warrior gave her a full ride.”

Nobody spoke.

Dad shot to his feet, knocking his mug off the side table.

Hot coffee pooled across the hardwood floor. He didn’t notice.

“Valedictorian? Full scholarship?”

He grabbed the paper out of Mom’s hands, eyes bulging.

“This is impossible. She told us she was staying at Blackthorn. She said it to our faces!”

“She lied to us.”

Caleb shut his eyes. They were burning.

“She never planned to stay at Blackthorn. Not from the start.”

He thought of yesterday, at the front door.

Her, holding a trash bag, turning down his lanyard without blinking.

She’d said, “Don’t worry about it. You guys go on without me.”

She hadn’t been throwing a tantrum.

She was saying goodbye.

Marcus had been coming down the stairs. He stopped cold on the last step.

“Impossible…”

He came the rest of the way down and pulled out his phone.

A minute later, a post from the Pack Council’s community page filled his screen.

[Congratulations to Amelia Caldwell, Blackthorn High School Valedictorian and Full-Scholarship

Recipient to Royal Warrior University.]

The photo attached was a blurry ID headshot.

Heavy black-framed glasses. No smile. Eyes like stone.

Marcus dropped onto the couch like his legs gave out.

Every academic achievement he’d ever bragged about suddenly meant nothing.

He remembered what he’d said to her at the mall.

“You always have to one-up her. Your eyes are already shot anyway. What difference does a lamp

make?”

Mom’s voice pitched into a shriek.

“How dare she keep this from us? Something this big, and she doesn’t even think of this family?

She grabbed her phone and dialed my number over and over.

“Your call has been forwarded to an automated voice messaging system…”

The automated voice played on loop through the living room.

“She blocked all of us.”

Caleb’s voice was barely there.

Dad was shaking.

“She gets into Royal Warrior and suddenly we’re nobody to her?”

“We raised her. Fed her, clothed her. And this is how she repays us?”

“Find out what department she’s in. Find out where she’s living.”

“She can’t run from this Pack forever.”

Caleb stumbled out of the estate.

He sat in his car and opened iMessage. The chat was dead, just an empty text field under her name.

He typed anyway.

[Amelia, why didn’t you tell me?]

[Do you know how worried I am?]

[How are you supposed to survive out there alone? Do you even have enough money?]

Every message bounced back. The same red exclamation mark, over and over.

Caleb pressed his forehead against the steering wheel. His wolf whimpered, pacing restlessly

beneath his skin.