Underwater: The Silent Luna novel Chapter 234

Chapter 234

After breakfast, Ethan and Meadow got ready to visit the hospital. The room carried that quiet kind of tension that came before

stepping back into a world that had changed overnight. Nothing about the morning felt simple. Even getting dressed felt like preparation for battle, though there would be no open fight yet. At least, not if they could help it. Ethan had to keep his progress

hidden. Meadow had to keep her own progress hidden too. Everyone had to behave as if the McClouds were wounded shaken, and

reduced to waiting for whatever their enemies decided to do next.

Victoria joined them, and they left in a van. Ethan sat there in the controlled space made for him, and the reality of it irritated him more than it should have. He had spent years needing special arrangements, special movement, special patience/from everyone

around him. He had learned to live with it because anger could only take a man so far before it turned inward and destroyed whatever pride remained. But now, after surgery, after feeling Echo stir, after knowing the silver had been removed, the van felt

temporary in a way that made him restless.

Ethan hoped he would soon ride with his wife in a car with him behind the steering wheel. He knew that option was technically open to him even though his legs were not working. There were ways around things. Modifications. Controls. Adjustments. But he did not want a car that made room for his brokenness. He wanted to drive a car where he could use his legs. He wanted his feet on the pedals, his hands on the wheel, Meadow beside him, and nothing beneath him reminding him of the seven years stolen from his body. The van would have to do for now, but he refused to believe it would remain that way forever.

Victoria sat quietly in the van with Meadow. She had never been the kind of person who needed to fill every silence, and this silence had too much weight in it anyway. There was nothing to be happy about, not properly. Their pack had been taken over by a packless Alpha, and it was only a matter of time before they found out what the new owners had in store for them. The word owners made Victoria’s stomach twist. Whitewood had owners now, according to paper and force. Not leaders. Not rightful Alphas. Owners. It

sounded ugly because it was ugly.

She was with Meadow to offer moral support because she knew her friend would need it. Meadow had been through enough already. Too much. Now she was walking back into a mansion that might not even be fully safe, standing beside a husband still recovering from secret surgery, visiting a Luna in a coma, and dealing with the knowledge that enemies had entered their world deeply enough to poison, betray, and attack without warning. The change would affect Meadow most because of her condition, or at least because of the condition Victoria believed she still had. Victoria feared the situation might overcome her friend. Meadow had survived silence for so long, but survival did not mean someone could keep carrying more and more without bending.

Meadow had not shared her progress with Victoria, and she was not planning to do so for now, so sign language would have to do. It was not that Meadow did not trust Victoria. She did. Victoria had been one of the few people whose concern did not feel like pity. One of the few who had stood close to Meadow when the rest of the world made her feel small. But there was no way to explain the mind-link breakthrough without telling her about the layers of compulsion placed on her. And once Victoria knew that, she would panic in the way only Victoria could. Loudly, protectively, fearfully, and with every worst possibility already arranged in her head.

Victoria was overprotective of her friend and a pessimist too. Meadow loved her for it, but she did not have the strength to deal with that in her current state. She needed calm. She needed quiet. She needed to protect the little progress she had made without other people crowding it with fear. So this would have to do for now. Hands. Signs. Expressions. Old familiar communication. The

safer version of the truth.

They arrived at the hospital and joined Joseph and Keith at the entrance. Keith was heading out while Joseph was going in. Ethan

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Chapter 234

thanked Keith for watching his mother before they entered the hospital. The words were simple, but the gratitude behind them was heavy. Keith had left his own rest, his own wife, his own worry, and gone to stand guard over Amber because Ethan had asked. In a world where loyalty had become uncertain, that kind of obedience mattered. It mattered more than Ethan could say in front of

everyone.

Even though people knew the pack had been taken, they still gave their Alphas the respect due to them. Heads bowed/ Voices lowered. Eyes followed Ethan and Joseph not with mockery, but with worry and expectation. That touched something inside Joseph as they moved through the hospital. He had expected fear, maybe even hesitation. He had wondered if the pack members would begin to look at them like fallen men already, like former rulers waiting to be removed. But they did not. Not yet.

They hoped the McClouds would not stay down for long. Joseph could see it in them. The pack members knew of the deserters, and they knew if the warriors had not betrayed Alpha Joseph, the McClouds would not have been overpowered so easily. That mattered. The story was not that Joseph had failed. The story was that betrayal had opened the gate. There was pain in that, yes, but there was also hope. If the loyal ones still believed in them, Whitewood was not lost. Not completely.

Joseph could see the pack members’ respect for them and was happy that all hope was not lost. It gave him something to hold on to, even if it was small. A pack did not only exist in documents. It existed in loyalty. In memory. In people who still lowered their heads to the right Alpha even when another man claimed control. Sebastien might have the surface, but he did not yet have

Whitewood’s heart.

“How is she now?” Ethan asked Joseph, believing he had reached the hospital before him.

“I just got here too,” Joseph said.

Ethan nodded.

They moved quietly to the private ward where Luna Amber was kept. Ashley was also in that ward, but Joseph had not gone to see her yet, and he doubted he would. The thought of her room somewhere nearby made his chest tighten in a way he hated. He had told her he would check on her again because they had been friends before everything, but part of him knew distance was safer. He wanted a clean break and knew she would remain hopeful if he kept visiting her. Ashley’s hope had already made enough mess. He could not allow kindness to become another rope around both of them.

Luna Amber was on the bed, still in a coma. She looked peaceful, and her pale skin had improved a little. Ethan wheeled closer without thinking, his gaze fixed on her face. The sight of her like that hollowed something out of him. Amber had never looked peaceful in the passive way unconscious people did. Her peace had always been chosen, controlled, or false. Even when resting, she carried a sense of command, like she could wake and correct everyone in the room for breathing wrongly. Now she was still. Too still. The machine beside her made quiet sounds, and Ethan hated every one of them because they were proof she needed help

breathing through this fight.

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Underwater: The Silent Luna