Underwater: The Silent Luna novel Chapter 144

Chapter 144

Then there was Meadow.

That part troubled her in a different way.

If someone had gone through the trouble of burying their secrets like that in the Luna’s mind, it meant the secret mattered deeply. Deeply enough to be protected over years. Deeply enough to damage a child for life. Camila kept returning to the same question no matter how hard she tried to move past it. Why compel Meadow instead of just killing her?

The answer should have been simple and brutal. Dead people do not see, hear, or talk. Dead people carry secrets cleanly into the

ground. Dead people do not suddenly remember. So why had the person responsible chosen compulsion instead? Why silence her

and cripple her life while still letting her live? Was it sentiment? Was it guilt? Was it fear of drawing too much suspicion with a

dead child? Was it some twisted desire to punish her rather than erase her? Camila did not know. She only knew the choice itself

was strange, and strange meant danger. Strange meant there was a logic at work she did not yet understand.

There were too many questions.

Too many dark corners.

Too few answers.

And very limited resources to get any.

She looked out the window during the drive and prayed under her breath to the goddess that she would not fall victim while simply trying to do her job. Because the people who had done these things, if Camila’s fears were right, were ruthless. Not harsh. Not merely selfish. Ruthless. They had destroyed pieces of Ethan and Meadow without hesitation. If they found out she was the one helping them, the one trying to peel back those layers and expose what had been hidden, why would they spare her? Why would they spare Brad? The thought of her husband being dragged into this because of her made her chest hurt.

She did not want to be part of it.

Not really.

If she were honest, there was a part of her that wanted to disappear entirely, To tell Ethan she was sorry. To say she was not equipped for this. To step back and let someone else take over. Someone braver. Someone harder. Someone whose life was not so

ordinary and fragile.

But she could not.

She knew she could not.

For one thing, Ethan had placed too much hope in her already. She had seen it in his eyes. In the way he looked at her after Meadow broke through that barrier. In the way his voice changed when he spoke of getting to the bottom of what had been done to his wife. He had faith in her, more than she felt she deserved, and that faith sat heavy on her shoulders. Letting her Alpha down

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Chapter 144

now would be wrong. It would also be dangerous. Camila knew enough about Ethan to understand that a man like him, especially a

man like him after what he had suffered, would not take abandonment well. If she walked away now, she might save herself from

one threat only to step directly into another.

So she was trapped between duty and fear, between conscience and self-preservation, and both directions looked awful

That truth finally broke something in her.

As much as she tried to hide her tears, they began to fall anyway when she sat in the passenger seat of Ethan’s van. She turned her face slightly, hoping maybe the driver would not notice, but tears did not care about dignity once fear got large enough. They came hot and humiliating and steady. She wiped at them once, then again, then gave up because wiping only made her more aware of

how frightened she really was.

She knew she was in trouble.

There was no doubt left in that.

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Underwater: The Silent Luna