Underwater: The Silent Luna novel Chapter 132

Chapter 132

Three days had passed since the attack, and Joseph still had nothing solid in his hands. Nothing that made sense. Nothing he could

take to Ethan with confidence. Nothing he could even lay before himself and say, yes, this is it, this is where the wolves came from,

this is who sent them, this is why they came. It sat badly in him, worse with every passing hour. The whole thing had happened too

fast, too clean, too strangely. An attack had come to Primewood borders, shaken the pack, raised fear, drawn blood, and then

somehow it had left almost nothing behind that could be properly followed. No clean trail. No convincing scent. No clear reason.

Just tension hanging over all of them like smoke after a fire. Joseph hated that most of all. He hated things that moved through his

home and left no shape. He hated danger when it could not be pinned down and named. He hated the feeling that something had

happened right in front of them, and yet it was slipping away like water through his fingers.

Adam had searched. Brian had searched. Joseph had searched. The three of them had pushed and circled and asked the same questions until the questions themselves had become tiring, but there was still nothing. It was as though the attack had appeared

out of nowhere and then dissolved back into it. It made no sense, and because it made no sense, it made him angrier than he wanted to admit. They all wondered why they still could not trace where the wolves had come from. They all wondered if the answer was closer than it looked, if it was standing in front of them in plain sight and they were somehow missing it. But wondering did not change anything. They were still not ready to confront Malcolm. Not yet. Not without proof. Not without something stronger than suspicion. Malcolm was not a man you approached with half-made accusations and loose theories. If they went to him and failed to back their claims, they could worsen things in ways that would take far longer to repair. So they had held back, and every

hour that they held back made the dead end feel more insulting.

Joseph had carried that frustration into everything. Into his meals, or rather into his absence from them. Into his work. Into the way he sat in his office for too long staring at the same page without really seeing it. Into the way his shoulders stayed hard, as though even when he was still, his body had not accepted that the danger had passed. Because maybe it had not passed. Maybe that was the part digging under his skin. He did not trust the quiet that had followed. He did not trust that a thing like that would happen and

then simply stop mattering.

He had avoided Ashley since that night. Deliberately. Quietly. Without explanation. It had made her nervous, and Joseph knew it had. He had seen it in the way her eyes watched him when they crossed paths, in the way she tried to act normal and failed by trying too hard. But he could not bring himself to care about her discomfort. Something in him had shifted where Ashley was concerned. He could not shake the feeling that she was up to no good. It sat ugly in his chest, persistent and cold. He did not have proof there either, and that only worsened his temper. Too much in his life lately seemed to be built on suspicion without evidence, instinct without conclusion. Still, his instinct about Ashley would not ease. He kept turning the question over in his mind: why did

she want to be Luna so badly?

It was a question that annoyed him because he could not understand it from any honest angle. Being Alpha and Luna was not some grand, soft life wrapped in honour and admiration. It was work. It was sacrifice. It was endless responsibility. It was waking and sleeping with the pack in your mind. It was never belonging to yourself fully again. Joseph lived that truth more deeply now than ever before, and the longer he carried Ethan’s duties on top of his own, the less appealing power seemed. If anyone had offered him a quiet life away from all of it, he might have taken it without hesitation. He would have chosen a lite where his time belonged to him. A life where he could stay close to his wife and children without interruption. A life where he could travel if he pleased, disappear for a little while, breathe without first considering what the pack might need from him before sundown. Instead, he was saddled with pack matters from morning till night. And he did it because he had to, because he would not let the family fall, because Ethan needed the space he had taken. But wanting it? No. Joseph did not want this the way Ashley seemed to want status. That was what he could not respect. He could understand duty. He could understand love. He could understand sacrifice. But

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Chapter 132

wanting the title badly enough to chase it, to hunger for it, to twist yourself around it? That unsettled him.

That morning, or perhaps by then it was closer to noon, Joseph sat in his office with Cynthia’s file open among a disorderly spread of papers, reports, letters, and notes that had been piling up faster than he could clear them. His office reflected his state of mind Documents in uneven stacks. One drawer left open. A pen near the edge of the desk. Several pages marked, others half-read. He had been looking over what had been gathered on Cynthia, but his focus kept shifting. One part of him was in the file. Another parti was with the border attack. Another part was with Ethan. Another was with Ashley. His head felt crowded, and he had no patience left

for people who complicated things unnecessarily.

That was why Levi entering without an invitation rubbed him the wrong way at once.

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Underwater: The Silent Luna