Underwater: The Silent Luna novel Chapter 103

Chapter 103

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The laughter was not polished or controlled. It came out rough and cracked and almost helpless with relief. Tears slipped from the corners of his closed eyes and ran toward his temples. He could not stop it. He did not want to. There was too much in him all at once. Shock. Joy. Hope. Gratitude. Fear too, maybe, but smaller than the rest.

Beside him Meadow pushed herself up, alarm and confusion flashing over her face.

To her, it must have looked strange. They had just been wrapped up in each other, just come down from that closeness, and now Ethan was lying there laughing with tears slipping from his eyes. She stared at him, worried, uncertain whether something was wrong or whether she had missed something entirely.

Ethan barely noticed her confusion at first.

His eyes remained shut as he held onto the fragile presence of his wolf. He did not know if Echo was truly back or only surfacing because of something Meadow had stirred in him. He did not know whether this would last. He did not know whether the sensation in his thigh, the claws, the voice, all of it meant recovery or simply a cruel glimpse of what used to be. But even if it was only a glimpse, it was more than he had had in seven years.

“She is ours, Echo.”

He said it softly, the words shaped by wonder and fierce affection at once. He knew exactly what his wolf had meant. Mine. Not in the childish sense. Not in the cruel sense. In the deep pack sense. The claiming sense. The sense that recognised what Meadow had become to him long before he had found the courage to name it.

Echo’s presence wavered after that. Slipped back like water moving through his fingers. Ethan felt it going and braced for panic, for the old empty drop he had known too well. But it did not come. Not this time. Because now there had been proof. Now he knew the silence

was not total. The bond was not entirely dead. Something in him still answered. Something still lived.

He opened his eyes and looked at Meadow.

She was still watching him with concern, her brows drawn, her body angled toward him. Ethan reached for her with so much joy in him

that the movement was almost desperate. He pulled her close and kissed her, not calmly, not casually, but with gratitude thick in every

touch.

[

“Echo spoke.”

He said it against her, then pulled back enough for her to understand. His eyes were shining in a way Meadow had not seen before.

The confusion on her face softened at once into understanding.

Then hope.

Meadow smiled, and the expression held more than simple happiness, She knew what this meant to him. Even if the pack only whispered

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Chapter 103

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about it, even if nobody said it plainly, she knew the truth Ethan had been living with. People suspected he could no longer shift. They sensed something was wrong with his wolf even if nobody had the courage to say it aloud in front of him. Meadow knew more than most because she knew how his injuries had weighed on him, how the loss of control over his body had fed the deeper fear that some vital part of him was slipping away too.

If Echo had spoken, then Echo was still there.

The thought flooded Meadow with relief almost as sharp as his own. She had worried for him more than she ever said. Wished for him more than she could explain. He had built walls around his pain, around his pride, around all the places he refused pity, but Meadow had seen enough to know how much being broken in those ways had cost him. Hearing that his wolf had surfaced, even faintly, made something inside her bloom with hope.

This could mean healing.

Maybe not all at once. Maybe not soon. But one day.

She thought of his therapy sessions and found herself wanting them now, really wanting them, not just because they were necessary but because there might truly be something waiting at the end of them. Not just strength. Not just recovery of body. Something deeper. Something that belonged to him.

Ethan kissed her again, then looked into her eyes with a softness that nearly made her heart hurt.

He wondered where she had been all his life.

The thought came quietly, almost painfully. How had he gone so many years without her? How had he endured bitterness, silence, regret, and loneliness only to discover this woman later, when he was already convinced some of the best parts of him were gone? He had never told her he loved her. Not in words. He had circled around it, hidden behind care, behind protection, behind the ways he looked at her and reached for her and kept choosing her. But the truth was there now, impossible to deny even to himself.

He had fallen for her completely.

“Thank you.”

Meadow tilted her head, confused by the words, but she did not ask. She could see too much in his face to interrupt the moment with questions. Maybe he meant thank you for the way she had loved him tonight. Maybe for the way she had welcomed this place. Maybe for bringing back a part of him he thought was gone forever. Maybe for all of it. She only nodded and stayed close.

They remained in bed for a long while after that.

The room had gone soft with evening. The earlier heat between them slowly gave way to a quieter kind of intimacy. Ethan put on a film, though neither of them paid much attention to it at first. They lay tangled together beneath the hush of their new room, the huge frame above the headboard watching over them like proof of something settled. Meadow rested against him, calmer now, her earlier impatience replaced by the lazy contentment that comes after being deeply held. Ethan kept one arm around her and let himself simply exist in the peace of it.

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Chapter 103

At some point Rashel brought their food in.

She was professional enough to keep her face composed, but surprise flashed through her eyes all the same before she hid it. Meadow noticed. Ethan did too, though he said nothing. It was not hard to guess what had shocked her. The crippled Alpha was not merely lying in bed with his wife like some sad decorative husband. He was with her. Truly with her. The thought pleased Ethan in some quiet, petty part of himself more than it should have.

II

Rashel left quickly after setting the tray down.

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Underwater: The Silent Luna