Underwater: The Silent Luna novel Chapter 174

Chapter 174

There was such finality in his tone that Amber knew immediately there was no point pressing. He would not change his mind because she asked. The decision had already settled in him. Amber moved to another thought.

“I think we should pick that Cynthia up and find out what she wants with Meadow,” Amber said.

Joseph shook his head.

“She cannot pull off what we experienced last night,” Joseph said.

That answer made Amber pause. Now she was curious for real.

“There were men. Three of them. They would rather die than give up the name of the person that sent them. I was running out of

patience, so I killed them,” Joseph said.

Amber stared at him in genuine shock. For a second she saw Joseph not as the son sitting before her in tired clothes and with a

headache brewing, but as an Alpha’s son shaped by too many dark things too early. If what he was saying was true, then this was no

petty female rivalry and no simple revenge scheme. Men had died rather than speak. That meant discipline. Fear. Compulsion

maybe. Something stronger than money alone. Amber’s mind moved immediately to power. To dangerous Alphas. To people with the

force to own obedience in that brutal, unnatural way.

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She began to wonder why such a person would be after Meadow.

“They could be trying to use her to get to Ethan,” Amber said.

Joseph shook his head again.

“I doubt it, Mother,” Joseph replied.

That was where his instincts landed, and he trusted them. Not because he had evidence yet, but because too many things pointed in

another direction. Meadow did not feel like collateral in this. She felt central to it in some way nobody fully understood yet.

“That girl has a voice. We all heard her scream. I think it is much deeper than that. Only Meadow can tell us what happened and why she became mute because she wasn’t born that way,” Joseph said.

Amber stilled. Joseph kept going, and now his voice changed. Less guarded. More thoughtful. More like a man sorting through old memories while he spoke,

“We all remember how she was when she was a child. She was adorable, and everyone liked her. Curious and playful. Father had taken her home twice before when he caught her roaming in the park at night looking for her imaginary friends. I remember him scolding her father for it,” Joseph said.

Amber remembered too. Little Meadow. Big eyes. Too much imagination. Always wandering. The kind of child people laughed at fondly until something about it became concerning. Joseph’s voice lowered further.

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12:26 Wed, Jun 17

Chapter 174

“Then all of a sudden, she stopped talking, and that was it. It wasn’t like she fell ill or something, Mother. She just stopped taking.

She has been mute for so long that we all forget she wasn’t born that way,” Joseph added.

That truth sat heavily between them. Because it was true. Time had worn the sharp edges off the memory. Meadow’s silence had

lasted so long that people began to think of it as her natural state, not something that arrived one day and stayed. But Joseph

remembered. Amber remembered. There had been a before. And now that before mattered.

“I think something happened to her and that is why she can’t speak. Maybe a trauma or shock or something psychological. I just

hope Camila can get through to her wolf,” Joseph said.

Amber thought of that too. Harder now. More seriously. There was a possibility that Joseph was right, and she knew it. The girl had not been born mute. Something had happened. Something ugly enough to bury a child’s voice for years. And now, if dangerous people were watching her therapy that closely, then whatever happened back then had never truly been buried at all.

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Underwater: The Silent Luna