Underwater: The Silent Luna novel Chapter 140

Chapter 140

The answer Meadow gave did not surprise him. It only frustrated him. Not at her. Never at her. At the faceless thing that had been done to her. Meadow had been asked this question too many times by too many people. It showed in the tired sadness that moved across her expression. Every doctor her mother had taken her to had wanted the same thing. They had all wanted her to remember

what happened when she was four, as if memory could simply be pulled up when asked often enough.

Then she signed carefully, trying to reach for what little she had.

“All I remembered was that it was nighttime. I saw a cat by my window, and I went outside to get it, but it ran away, and I think I

followed it.”

And that was it. Blankness after that. A hole where the rest should have been.

Ethan nodded and absorbed it. A cat by the window. Nighttime. A child following something small and harmless-looking into darkness. The kind of thing a little girl would do without suspicion. The kind of thing someone wicked could count on.

“What about when you got your wolf?”

That memory did not vanish from her face the way the childhood one had. No. That one was still alive in her. Still near enough to touch. Meadow moved to sit on her chair, and Ethan watched the change in her eyes. Fear. Sadness. Something haunted. The brown

wolf still lived in her dreams, then. He could see it.

“We were asked to go into the woods on the full moon to wait for our first shift,” she began.

He listened carefully. Every detail mattered now.

“Nightshade came, and we were about to run when we faced a huge brown wolf. He stared at us, and that was it.”

That was enough to make something settle sharply in Ethan’s mind. Not because it gave him a name. It did not. There were many brown wolves. Too many. But it was something. Something solid enough to hand to Camila. Something tied to the fear still living in Meadow’s body. A direction. A shape. Maybe not a face, but a shape.

He wheeled himself closer again and touched her hand. Then, softer than he had intended, he pulled her gently toward him and pressed a kiss to her neck. It was not only affection. It was reassurance. A promise wrapped in touch because words did not always feel enough for things like this.

“Do not trouble yourself about it. We will get to the bottom of the matter. I promise you. I do not care if you speak, but I am willing to try to free you from the mental prison.”

That mattered. He needed her to know that. He was not doing this because her silence made her lesser. He was doing it because she had been violated. Because she deserved freedom even if she never spoke a single word aloud for the rest of her life. Because what had been done to her should not remain unchallenged.

Meadow wrapped her arms around him then and breathed him in, clinging just enough to tell him she needed the comfort. Ethan

WED

1/3

|||

O

<

Chapter 140

closed his eyes for a second and let himself stay there. In her scent. In the warmth of her. In the strange tenderness of a moment standing right beside so much ugliness.

Then she gasped and pulled away so suddenly that Ethan’s eyes opened at once.

Something had changed in her face.

All this while Nightshade had communicated with Meadow through feelings and impressions, through instinct and emotion, through that private closeness wolves often had with their humans. Meadow usually understood her wolf without words. It had always been more like shared awareness than actual speech. But now that was gone. Replaced.

She had heard Nightshade’s voice.

It shook her. Ethan could see it. The shock. The confusion. The wonder. It all moved across her face too quickly to hide. Nightshade

had not brushed against her mind this time. She had spoken.

“Mate.”

The word came again, clear inside Meadow’s head, and she froze under it.

Ethan leaned forward slightly.

“Meadow, is everything okay?”

Her eyes were turning purple.

That was all the warning he got before Nightshade took over.

The shift in presence was immediate. Subtle if a man did not know what to look for. Obvious if he did. Meadow’s body was still Meadow’s, but the one looking out through her eyes was not fully her anymore. Nightshade stood there inside her skin, purple-eyed

and alert.

“Mate,” Nightshade linked him.

Ethan went absolutely still.

For one second he thought he had imagined it. That his want, his worry, his confusion had all twisted together and produced nonsense. But no. The link had been real. Meadow’s wolf had just linked him directly.

“Mate?” he asked back, stunned.

Nightshade nodded once.

Then she receded and gave control back to Meadow. And Meadow, the moment she understood what had happened, looked just as

shocked as he felt.

2/3

:::

WED

ศ

|||

O

Г

12:2

Wed, Jun 17

Chapter 140

“Meadow, link me.”

He heard the eagerness in his own voice and did not care. This mattered too much to hide behind restraint. If Meadow could link

him now, then something had truly changed. Something real had broken open in her.

She looked uncertain. Not unwilling. Just uncertain. She knew the process in theory. She had always known it. She had tried before.

many times, only for nothing to happen. That kind of failure taught its own kind of hopelessness.

“Just try to connect with me and tell me something by saying it in your mind.”

He spoke gently, but he could not stop the urgency under it. Meadow closed her eyes briefly, as though gathering herself. As though

reaching inward with care.

Then he heard it.

“Can you hear me?”

Ethan laughed.

He could not help it. The sound tore out of him bright and full and almost boyish with relief. Happiness hit him so hard it made his chest ache. After all these years of silence, after all this pain, after all the impossibility that had hung over Meadow’s life, he could

hear her.

“I can hear you.”

He linked her back and watched her gasp without sound, her whole face coming apart under the force of it. Tears spilled immediately, quick and helpless and full. Joy. Relief. Shock. Everything she could not say aloud ran down her face instead. She looked overwhelmed by it, and Ethan understood. Linking someone was ordinary for most wolves. Simple. Casual even. But for Meadow this was enormous. It was another door opening in a life where too many had been shut.

She was crying, and he wanted to gather her up again, but another thought had already risen in him.

Nightshade had called him mate.

Comments

1

Write Comments

< SHARE

WED

|||

O

3/3

12:21 Wed, Jun 17 MD

Underwater: The Silent Luna