The Secret Oracle: His Defiant Luna

a P

Tow

me, Chloe, went pale. The cheap fluorescent lights of my office kit

le, perfect tear traced a

ven, a tool, like the cards themselves. Emotion had no place here. "He isn't

nging to her aura like cheap perfume, a cloying sweetness hidi

oman?" she whispered

me. Maybe even another family. The connection you thought

table. My violet eyes watched her, not with pity, but with the detached weariness of a surgeon observing

oubled as my office. Once she was gone, a familiar throb started behind my eyes. I pressed the heels of my palms

round myself.

mind-link. The sacred connection between an Alpha and his Luna. It pulsed faintly in the b

rt

le

im being busy. This was a dead silence

. A cold fist clen

s toward him with more force. Bar

ay street, ending in a solid

una without warning. It was the ultimate alarm

ing my windowpane, seeped into my bones. It was a familiar cold, the one I felt in my darkest

leather jacket. My purse was still on the table,

here he

ing music was a physical assault, the flashing lights designed to disorient. It was a playground for the pack's elite, a pl

, two hulking warriors, saw me and immediately looked uncomfortable, but they stepped asi

ction. My wolf, a presence usually so quiet within me it was almost non-existent, stirred with a low growl of anxiety. She had al

Marcus, Barth's Beta. He was standing guard outside

s widened in panic. He

loud over the distant thud of the bass

d giveaway. His scent spiked with anxiety, a sour,

oak door. It was slightly ajar. From the crack,

n, I sm

r scent. Not just Barth's signature cedar and winter frost, but something else woven th

ake everyone forget the daughter they had lost. When I came home at six years old, broken and strange and unable to fit into the perfect mold she had already filled, they looke

keening whimper, a sound of pure be

ce was quiet, but it h

, I c

I pushed past him, my hand hitt

e was a perfect

legs wrapped around his waist, was Elna. My adoptive sister. The girl who had already taken my parents, my home, my place in the family. And now she had taken my husband too.

as resting possessively on her slim waist, his thumb tracing slow, lazy circles against the bare skin wher

lna's throat. Their he

h of pure, unadulterated annoyance. His wolf surged behind those eyes-

panic, but underneath it, in the slight curl of her lips, I saw a flicker of triumphant provocation. She

ing like my own heart failing. The air in my lungs turned to ice. I coul

n ye

ng the responsibilities, of managing the pack's welfare, of smili

being a place

t, a fuc

ing her scent on my husband's clothes and telling myself I was imagining things.

fought for every single day, tremble violently. It was fraying, threatenin

cream. I d

at him. At the man the Goddess

a cold mask, I felt the last bit of warmth in my vi

oing here?" His voice was ice. But beneath it, I caught the fainte

le touched my lips. I

't ans

, each step on the plush carpet soun