Underwater: The Silent Luna novel Chapter 177

Chapter 177

Meadow followed Ethan to the room quietly. She did not trust herself to speak through the link right away because she already knew too much of what would come out if she did. Fear had risen too sharply inside her, and she did not want to pour it over him the second they crossed the bedroom door. She knew him now. Knew the set of his shoulders when he had decided something. Knew

the stillness in him when he was trying not to bend. If she panicked publicly, if she cried in front of the others, if she made the fear

bigger than it already was, he would only harden further out of guilt and determination. So she kept it inside while they walked in.

But holding it inside did not make it smaller. The bedroom felt too quiet the moment they entered, Too private. Too safe for the kind of conversation waiting there. Meadow sat on the bed with her head bowed, her hands gathered in her lap, trying to steady herself before the tears came. She could feel Ethan watching her. Could feel his own tension moving in the room with him. There was nothing easy about what had just been decided. Nothing light. The others might have spoken calmly in the living room, might,

have used practical words and careful plans, but underneath all of it was the truth neither of them could escape.

He was about to risk his life. For a chance. For a possibility. For hope.

Ethan wheeled his chair to her and held her hands. His touch was gentle, almost cautious, like he already knew she was close to

breaking and did not want to be the thing that pushed her over the edge. Meadow let him take her hands. By the time she finally

lifted her face to look at him, tears were already streaming down it. She had tried to stop them. She had tried to swallow them back.

But once she looked at him properly, once she saw the seriousness in his eyes and the strain he was trying to hide, the tears came

anyway.

Ethan did not know what to do with that. It touched his heart in a way that hurt. There was something about Meadow crying for

him that unsettled him more deeply than anything else. He had seen plenty of tears in his life. Some manipulative. Some angry.

Some born out of self-pity or fear or pain. But Meadow’s tears never felt like performance. Never felt like pressure. They came from

somewhere so honest that they made him feel both loved and guilty at once. He hated that he was the reason for them now.

“I am doing this for us, Meadow,” Ethan said.

She shook her head at once and wiped at her tears as if trying to keep the words from sinking too deep before she answered. Her

heart was pounding too hard. She loved him too much to let him wrap this in softhess that did not fully belong to it.

“No, Ethan, you are doing this for you and the pack, but not us,” Meadow said through the link.

The words went through the link with painful clarity. Even while crying, she did not send them cruelly. There was no accusation in

them. Only hurt and fear and the desperate need to make him see what she saw. She hurried to add more because she did not want

him to mistake her meaning.

“I am not complaining, Ethan. I am okay with this,” Meadow added through the link.

He shook his head.

“I am not,” Ethan replied.

That answer surprised her enough to slow her tears for a second. Ethan looked at her as if he was fighting something difficult inside

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Chapter 177

himself. She could feel it too. His emotions were never as easy to read aloud as his actions were, but in moments like this, with his hands around hers and his eyes stripped of every shield, she could see more than he probably meant to show.

“I am not okay with this, Meadow. I am not okay because you deserve better. You deserve a complete man, not this,” Ethan said.

The words hurt her instantly. She touched his thighs as if she could physically reject what he had just called himself. That old wound in him, the one that made him measure his manhood by what he could not currently do, was still there. Maybe deeper now because he had finally found someone to love and suddenly every limitation had become more personal.

“You are complete,” Meadow said through the link.

He shook his head again, more firmly this time.

“I am not, Meadow. I can’t do a lot of things. I can’t shift or protect myself, let alone my family and pack. I can’t claim you; cant love you how I want. There are so many things that I want to do with you and to you, but I can’t,” Ethan said.

A lone tear rolled down his cheek after that confession. That hurt Meadow almost more than her own crying. Because Ethan rarely let himself say these things out loud. He swallowed them. Buried them. Covered them under coldness and sarcasm and hard edges so that nobody could step too close to the truth of how much his body’s betrayal had wounded him. But here, in front of her, he was

laying it bare.

“Ever since this misfortune befell me, I have been a shadow of my old self. I hid away and put on a mean facade so no one would dare mock me or challenge my authority. Inside, I was broken and alone, Meadow. I was useless. I felt hopeless,” Ethan said.

The words came slowly, as if he had carried them for years and they were only now finding a path out of him. Meadow listened with tears falling harder because she could hear the loneliness in them. The long years. The humiliation. The isolation he had built around himself because it was easier to become feared than pitied.

“Before you, I had been rejected several times. That was why I did not want the wedding. It wasn’t because you were mute; I could

not give you the life you deserve. I did not want anyone to be saddled with me. I did not want to be a burden. But my mother went

ahead anyway and brought you into my life, so I had to make it work,” Ethan said.

He paused and looked up, catching his breath before continuing.

“I wanted to let you go. I wanted to find a way to let you go, and I would have, had you not said you wanted me,” Ethan admitted.

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Underwater: The Silent Luna