All Chapters of TOO FAT TO BE LUNA: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

ARIA’S POV Marcus didn’t ask. He told. “Training starts in twenty minutes,” he said from the doorway of Kael’s quarters, arms crossed, expression leaving zero room for argument. “Get dressed.” I sat up slowly, every bruised muscle protesting. “I can barely walk.” “Good thing we’re not running then.” He tossed a set of black training clothes onto the bed. “Twenty minutes, Aria. Your enemies can’t wait to end you. You have less time than that to learn how not to die.” He left before I could argue. Kael, standing by the window with his morning coffee, watched me reach for the clothes. “You don’t have to,” he said quietly. “Yes I do.” I met his eyes. “You know I do.” Something flickered in his silver gaze — something that looked almost like pride. The training yard was nothing like I expected. I’d imagined something isolated. Private. A space where I could embarrass myself without an audience. Instead, thirty Lycan warriors stopped what they were doing the moment I stepped thr

KAEL’S POV I was still smiling. That was the problem. I’d showered, dressed, laced my boots, reviewed three tactical reports about Vivian’s coven movements, and eaten half an apple standing over my desk — and the entire time, I was smiling. Like an idiot. Like a man who hadn’t slept properly in five years and had somehow forgotten how his own face worked. Because Aria Winters had walked into my bathroom, taken one look at me, covered her eyes with both hands, and then attempted to hold a coherent conversation with a wall. I’m not looking. My Lycan rumbled with satisfaction deep in my chest. She looked, he said smugly. “She absolutely looked,” I agreed out loud, to no one. We should smile at her more. She turns pink when we smile at her. “That’s manipulative.” Yes, my Lycan agreed, completely unbothered. Do it anyway. I set down the tactical report and pressed two fingers to my mouth, physically attempting to neutralize the expression. It didn’t work. The smil

VIVIAN’S POV The jar shattered against the wall and I felt nothing. Wolf’s bane and broken glass rained across the stone floor, the sharp medicinal stench cutting through the heavier smell of old blood and burned candle wax that permanently lived down here. I pressed both palms flat against my altar and breathed. In. Out. Controlled. I needed to be controlled. The spy’s message sat in front of me, written in disappearing ink that was already fading at the edges. I’d read it four times. Each time, the words rearranged themselves into the same impossible sentence. Royal Wolf awakening. Curse failing. Bond accelerating. She destroyed six shadow wolves without trying. I picked it up and fed it to the nearest candle flame. I watched it burn. Twenty-three years. That was how long I’d been careful. How long I’d planned and maintained and tended this curse like a garden, pruning it back whenever Aria showed the slightest flicker of something real. The weight gain. The wolf suppress

ARIA’S POV The next hour moved like a nightmare — too fast and too slow at once. Kael’s voice cut through the mansion the moment Marcus finished speaking, sharp and absolute, carrying the particular authority of someone whose commands had never once gone unheeded. “Warriors to defensive positions. Perimeter teams fall back to secondary lines and hold. Get the civilians to the bunker — children first, then elderly, then pregnant. Move.” The mansion transformed around me in minutes. What had been quiet corridors became controlled chaos — warriors streaming past in both directions, barking coordinates, checking weapons. I pressed myself against the wall and watched pack members I’d known for barely a week move with the kind of practiced efficiency that only came from training for exactly this. They’d known this day might come. They’d been ready. Dr. Chen appeared at my elbow, medical bag already over her shoulder, her expression stripped down to pure function. “I’m setting up tr

ARIA’S POV “Choose, Lycan King.” Vivian’s voice was almost pleasant despite the white light chains burning into her wrists, her throat, her dark magic sputtering and hissing where my power touched it. She was bleeding from three places. One eye was swollen shut from where Kael had thrown her into the wall. She was still smiling. “Kill me now, while she has me trapped.” She tilted her head toward the east corridor, where the smell of smoke was thickening. “Or save the children in your bunker before the fire I set reaches them.” Her smile widened. “You can’t do both.” The silence that followed lasted maybe two seconds. It felt like a year. I felt Kael’s hesitation through the mate bond before I saw it on his face — that terrible split-second calculation, the Alpha in him doing math that had no good answer. His silver eyes moved between Vivian and the corridor. Back to me. To the corridor again. The bunker. Twenty-three pack children, the youngest barely three years old, locked