Underwater: The Silent Luna novel Chapter 21

Chapter 21

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Meadow’s hands trembled so badly that she could barely tap the screen. Ethan’s phone felt heavier than it should, as though the weight of

her entire world sat behind the glass. It was absurd, it was only a message, but after three months of silence, three months without a

single familiar voice or comforting word, being able to reach Victoria felt like she was finally being allowed to breathe.

Her fingers fumbled, shaking with every letter she typed. Before she finished the message, tears blurred her vision. She tried to blink

them away quickly, embarrassed, but Ethan had already noticed.

Her quiet emotions, her shaking breath, the way she bowed her head to hide her tears, made something twist inside him. He looked away abruptly, wheeled himself out of the dining space, and headed to the cabin’s living area where the large television hung over the fireplace.

He needed distance.

Her gratitude, her fragility, her pain….

He didn’t know what to do with any of it.

The living area felt safer. More neutral. Less… emotional.

He settled in front of the news channel, not because he cared about the headlines, but because he needed something loud enough to drown out the things he didn’t want to feel. Keith would be arriving soon with his mate, and Ethan preferred to compose himself before

his friend saw him like this.

The cabin suddenly felt too small, too full of memories. Cynthia’s framed photos haunted the space like ghosts, reminders of a life he had once touched but could no longer claim. Though he could endure seeing her photograph in the living area, he could not stomach being in the bedroom where she had last stood in front of him.

Where she had shattered him.

It had been in that very room, the same walls, the same quiet air, when Cynthia told him he was “a has-been.”

That he was “useless to himself and everyone around him.”

That she “deserved better than playing nursemaid to a cripple.”

She said it all with a calm cruelty that felt rehearsed.

Then she delivered the final blow:

“If you cared about me at all, you’d let me go.”

He didn’t speak.

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Chapter 21

Didn’t argue.

Didn’t beg.

He simply let her walk out of the door, and out of his life, without looking back.

She became the first of many.

A pattern he came to recognise.

Rejection after rejection until his heart grew numb and bitter.

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While he stared blankly at the television now, his mind replayed Meadow earlier, quietly cleaning his shattered picture frame without a

word of judgement.

The girl was too perfect in the most painful ways.

Too soft.

Too thoughtful.

Too gentle.

She knew how to move around him without making noise.

How to breathe without disturbing him.

How to exist without demanding space or affection.

It was a shame neither of them chose this life.

A shame she was trapped with someone who didn’t know how to love anymore, someone who wasn’t even sure he deserved to.

His mother would eventually get her way, and Ethan hated himself for being powerless to stop her. But he also knew this truth with a frightening clarity:

He had nothing left inside him to give Meadow.

Not affection.

Not tenderness.

Not a future.

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Chapter 21

It would be cruel to pretend otherwise.

He believed, truly, that she would be better off without him.

Better off without his darkness.

Without his broken body.

Without the hollow shell he’d become.

Eight relationships after Cynthia.

Eight women who’d confirmed that he was now too much burden and too little man.

With every heartbreak, a piece of him died until nothing remained but the bitterness.

The news report changed segments, and he barely noticed until the reporter said the words he dreaded hearing:

“Tragic car crash…”

Ethan’s eyes snapped to the screen.

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A split second was all it took for memories to explode back into his mind.

He’d been the Alpha, the strongest of his generation. A man people said rivalled his grandfather, the greatest Alpha their lineage had ever produced. He had everything: respect, loyalty, power, purpose.

? Then the brakes failed.

On a mountainside road.

With him and Joseph inside.

The drop off the edge was lethal, one wrong turn, and the car would plummet.

He’d had two choices.

Jump with Joseph and let fate decide whether either of them survived…

Or stay at the wheel and hold the car steady long enough for Joseph to jump out safely.

The choice wasn’t a choice.

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Chapter 21

He was the Alpha.

The protector.

The older brother.

The one whose life was worth less if it meant saving someone else.

He ordered Joseph to jump.

Joseph refused at first, Ethan’s command was too strong to dismiss, but in the end, his brother obeyed.

Ethan saw Joseph hit the ground and roll to safety.

Then Ethan tried to jump.

But his foot slipped on the metal.

The world tipped.

Gravity seized him.

And the car fell.

He remembered the sound of tearing metal.

The violent spinning.

The crushing impact.

Then nothing.

He woke months later in the hospital with his mother’s sobs filling the room. Silver had been embedded into his spine from the crash. They removed it, but the damage remained.

Permanent.

A life sentence.

And that was the end of it for him.

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Underwater: The Silent Luna