Underwater: The Silent Luna novel Chapter 184

Chapter 184

As things stood, roughly ten of Joseph’s side were fighting about thirty trained wolves. Three to one. Those were terrible odds, and everybody in that battle knew it. Still, they kept going.

“We must not surrender!” Levi linked.

Levi’s link hit Joseph hard through the noise of the fight, and Joseph pushed harder because there was no other choice left in him but forward. The battle wore them down fast. No matter how hard they fought, numbers told their own story. Joseph’s loyal warriors began to fall one after another. Some wounded too badly to rise. Some dead. Some dragged down under bodies that outnumbered and overwhelmed them. Each loss struck Joseph like a fresh insult, but there was no time to mourn anybody while breathing

enemies still moved around him.

Gradually the number narrowed until only six of them remained. Adam. Brian. Joseph. Levi. And two loyal warriors. That was it. The

attackers and the traitors tightened around them, forming a ring with Joseph and his team trapped in the middle. Rex stood livid

and snarling, blood on his muzzle, fury shaking through every inch of him. But even he could see the confidence in the eyes

surrounding them. The enemy believed they had already won.

Then a familiar voice spoke.

“Yield, and I will let you live. You don’t all have to die today,” Cynthia said.

Rex looked around, searching for the speaker, already prepared to rip out a throat. Then he saw her. Cynthia. Smiling. Walking

toward them. The sight of her there, in the centre of this, with that expression on her face, made something murderous flare

through Joseph so violently he almost lost hold of thought entirely. The bitch had been in it all along.

Rex growled low and hard.

“We could have done this easily, but you chose this path,” Cynthia said.

She said it with an evil grin that made Joseph understand, all at once, how deeply they had underestimated her. The ring parted for

her. That detail mattered too. They moved for her. Respected her enough or feared her enough to let her pass. This was no desperate

woman lingering around the edges of power hoping to be chosen. She was involved. Protected. Positioned. She kept coming forward.

Then everything shifted again. Before Rex could fully react to Cynthia, he saw another wolf fly out of the mansion itself and attack

her. Fast. Furious. Grey and white movement smashing straight into Cynthia before she could finish walking her smug little victory

across the ground. Ashley. Or rather Claire, Ashley’s wolf.

The shock of it almost threw Joseph off for a second. Ashley had come out. Ashley had chosen to fight. Not hide in the house. Not

save herself. Fight. Cynthia fell and shifted in the same instant, her grey wolf, Medly, coming out to meet Claire’s attack. The two

wolves clashed immediately, and the fight between them was wild and personal, full of a hatred that had clearly been building

before tonight.

Rex was genuinely surprised. Ashley, of all people, had joined the battle. But before he could make sense of that, another body hit

the fight. His mother. Hazel. Amber’s brown wolf launched herself into the chaos, and then the entire battle exploded back open.

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Chapter 184

Whatever line had been holding had shattered. Now everybody was in it.

Joseph saw, even in the middle of his own fight, that Enzo was protecting Hazel at all costs. That detail cut through him. Levi was not only fighting for the estate. He was fighting for Amber. Guarding her with the kind of instinct and desperation that left no room

for doubt about where his loyalties truly lived.

He also saw Medly and Claire locked together, all teeth and claws and old spite, and in that second Joseph knew the whole house

had joined the fight. Whatever little illusions of safety remained inside had burned off.

The fight was hot. Brutal. Close. They began killing more of the attackers than the enemy expected: For a brief, bloody stretch of

time, it looked as though they might actually break through. Joseph and the others were fighting like wolves with nothing left to

lose, and that kind of desperation could do terrible damage.

They killed most of the first wave. Just when the balance started to tilt in a way that felt almost hopeful, another swarm of/

attackers flooded the grounds. More wolves. Too many. Joseph felt the truth of it immediately. They might die here.

Then he heard a whimper. The sound cut through all the rest. He turned toward it and saw something that burned itself into him

instantly. Sebastien was there. Human. Stabbing Claire before she could close her jaws fully around Medly’s throat.

How had he gotten in?

Joseph had not sensed him. That shocked him more than the sight itself for one savage second. Then the answer came with the

delayed scent that broke through too late. False rogue scent. Sebastien had masked himself. And suddenly everything aligned. The

attack at the border. The false trails. The hidden movements. The man was not only involved. He had planned more than they

realised.

Joseph’s rage doubled. Cynthia was a mole all along. The whole pathetic performance about wanting Ethan back, the crying, the

pretending, the sneaking around, it had all been a lie meant to throw them off balance. And while Joseph absorbed that, he saw

Claire bleeding out on the ground and knew Ashley might die if someone did not help her soon.

Then Ashley linked him.

“Do not stop on my account,” Ashley linked.

There was anger in her voice. Real anger. No games in it. No pleading. In that moment she wanted one thing only: for Joseph to

finish them. For Cynthia to die for all the lies and manipulation and destruction she had brought. They kept fighting.

Hazel was getting tired too. Amber’s health had not been right for a while, and even in wolf form that weakness was now showing.

One partially shifted wolf saw it. Saw the opening, Came at her from behind with a silver knife.

Joseph saw it too late to reach her in time. Enzo did not. Levi’s wolf moved on instinct, throwing himself between Amber and the knife. The blade buried itself in Enzo’s stomach, and the hilt was yanked off. The injury forced Levi back into human form at once,

and he was unconscious before he could even pull it free.

Hazel howled. The sound tore through the battle so sharply it made something in Joseph almost crack. Amber’s wolf tried with teeth and paws to get the blade out of Levi. Then, against every sensible instinct, Amber shifted back to human form and used her claws

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Chapter 184

to pull the blade free herself.

Levi remained unconscious. All Amber could see in that moment was Cain, because that was how Cain died.

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Underwater: The Silent Luna