Underwater: The Silent Luna novel Chapter 111

Chapter 111

Joseph found what his mother told him baffling, and the feeling did not pass after she left his office. It stayed there, lodged in his chest

and mind, refusing to move. Ashley knew better. That was the part he could not get over. She was not some stranger who had wandered

into the house and accidentally stepped on a sore place in the family. She knew the history. She knew how Ethan had suffered. She knew

how Cynthia left. She knew what that abandonment had done to his brother at the worst possible time in his life. So why would she go

near that woman? Why would she ride around with her like none of it mattered? Why would she act as if she did not understand how

dangerous it was to pull old ghosts back toward a family that had barely started breathing again?

It made no sense to him, and the more he thought about it, the more irritated he became. Ashley was meant to be smarter than this.

More careful. Even if she admired Cynthia, admiration should have ended where loyalty began. There were lines decent people did not

cross. In Joseph’s mind, this was one of them.

He had once told Ashley how cruel Cynthia had been.

He remembered that conversation clearly now, and remembering it only made things worse. He had told Ashley about the woman who left

the man she claimed to love, the man she claimed she wanted forever, the moment life became hard and ugly and inconvenient. She

walked away when Ethan needed her most. Not when he was strong. Not when he was desirable and whole in the eyes of the world. No.

She walked when he was wounded. When he was helpless. When he was struggling to understand the shape of his own new life. Joseph

had always found that kind of betrayal disgusting. There was something especially vile about claiming love and then disappearing the

second love required sacrifice.

There was nothing worse than that type of betrayal.

Joseph sat at his desk, jaw tight, staring at the papers in front of him without really seeing them. A part of him wanted to call Ashley

immediately and demand an explanation. He wanted to hear her voice and listen to her try to defend the indefensible. He wanted to ask

her what game she thought she was playing, because surely she could not be foolish enough to think he would not find out. But he

stopped himself. No. He would wait until she came home. Some conversations needed to happen face to face. Some lies were easier to

detect when you could look into a person’s eyes while they told them.

He was still sitting with that anger when Adam walked into his office a few minutes later, and one look at the man’s face made Joseph

know this was not a casual interruption. Something was wrong. Adam moved with urgency, and his scent carried tension. It hit Joseph all

at once.

*Alpha, there is an ongoing attack at the border that separates us from Primewood territory. I do not have the full details, but I suspect

they might be rogue wolves. We are needed there.”

Joseph felt irritation at Ashley vanish beneath something colder.

This was the part of being Alpha he hated,

Not the planning. Not the oversight. Not the responsibility. He could handle those things. He was good at them, maybe better than most.

But this? The blood side of leadership? The running toward violence because others were already bleeding? The need to step into chaos

and kill or be killed? That never came naturally to him. Joseph was not weak. He had never been weak. But he was not one of those men

who felt alive in battle. He did not enjoy the thought of ripping another wolf apart. He did not crave the taste of war the way some

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Chapter 111

Alphas seemed to. He wished, sometimes stupidly, that the world could function without all of this. That men could leave land lines

where they were. That wolves could live without testing each other’s strength every few years like animals too stupid to evolve beyond

death.

But the world did not function that way.

It was either fight or die.

He stood immediately, leaving the document he had been working on spread across the desk. There was no time to gather his thoughts neatly. No time to keep brooding over Ashley’s betrayal or his mother’s warning. Battle did not care about timing. It only came when it

wanted.

“Do you know how many they are?” he asked Adam as they headed out.

Adam shook his head, and that answer made Joseph dislike the situation even more.

“It seems they are much. Gamma Brian is holding the forte, but he needs our help.”

Joseph exhaled once, short and hard.

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He did not like incomplete information. As a strategist, he liked numbers. Clear ones. He liked knowing the size of a problem before he engaged it. He liked patterns, reports, data he could use to build a plan and forecast outcomes. This kind of urgency without detail grated against the way his mind worked. Still, there was no room for preference now. Brian was already at the border. Men were already fighting.

Joseph had to move.

A truck was waiting outside to transport them, engine running, tension thick in the air around the men gathering there. Joseph climbed in with Adam, and the vehicle lurched forward almost as soon as the doors shut. Before they got far, Joseph linked his mother to tell her where he was headed. He did it quickly. Calmly. He did not want to alarm her more than necessary, but he also knew she would hear

something soon enough. Better from him than from a rumour running through the mansion.

As the truck sped toward the border, Joseph stared ahead and felt the weight of the road pressing into his nerves.

He prayed, quietly and without ceremony, that this would not be his last day.

The thought came to him without pride. Without shame. Just truth. Every Alpha knew there were days that looked ordinary until they

didn’t. Days that began in offices and ended in blood, Days that asked questions no man could answer beforehand. Joseph did not dramatise it, but he did not lie to himself either. He knew very well that men went to borders and sometimes never returned from them.

The drive took thirty minutes.

By the time they got there, the place looked like a massacre,

The smell hit first. Blood. Fear, Sweat, Wet earth torn up by claws and bodies. Then the sound. Growls, snapping jaws, pain. Men yelling through their links. Wolves colliding hard enough to make the ground itself feel unstable. It was chaos, but not the kind of chaos Joseph had only heard stories about. No. This was immediate, Raw. Violent in a way that dragged instinct out of every wolf present whether they

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Chapter 111

wanted it or not.

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The only good thing he noticed at once was that Brian was still holding his ground.

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12:00 Wed, Jun 17

Underwater: The Silent Luna