DESPERATE MEASURES
1373 Words
Chapter 20
The Anderson mansion had never been so alive, yet never so suffocating.
On the eve of the engagement that would bind two dynasties, the estate no longer felt like a home but a fortress under siege. The front gates, tall and iron-wrought, were locked and guarded by armed men in shifts, their boots crunching against gravel as they patrolled with the restless energy of soldiers awaiting battle. Surveillance cameras blinked red in every corner; drones hovered quietly above the gardens, capturing every angle as though preparing for an enemy no one could name.
Inside, the atmosphere was equally taut. Brooks Anderson was relentless, issuing commands with the clipped precision of a general. His baritone carried down the long, chandelier-lit corridors, each order sharper than the last. Guards were reassigned, patrol routes redrawn. No room for error. No door left unchecked.
“Double the men at the east wing. If she so much as breathes near a window, I want it reported.” Brooks’s voice cut through the air.
Mirabel and her mother Emily lingered in the corner of the great hall, their jeweled gowns whispering against polished marble. They smiled—smug, triumphant smiles—but beneath the surface, unease gnawed at them. Alexa’s eerie calmness in recent days had unsettled them both. A girl who had once wept, resisted, lashed out in frustration now sat in silence, her defiance evaporated like mist.
Emily leaned close to her daughter, her eyes narrowing. “I don’t like it,” she whispered. “That girl isn’t broken. She’s plotting.”
Mirabel’s lips curved in a mocking smirk. “Let her plot. By tomorrow, she’ll be paraded like a lamb, tied to a man who can’t even lift his head. That’s all she’s worth.”
Yet the sharpness in her gaze betrayed her bravado. They wanted Alexa humiliated, subdued—but not clever. Not scheming. The stillness of her demeanor felt like the silence before a storm.
Mr. Pablo, head of security, moved among the men with measured precision. His face betrayed nothing of his thoughts, but his eyes lingered often on Alexa’s locked door. He had overseen many nights at this estate, but none had ever weighed as heavily on his chest. The air itself seemed charged, like a wire stretched to its breaking point.
The Anderson mansion was prepared for rebellion. Prepared for escape. Prepared for anything—except the possibility that the true threat was not outside its gates at all.
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Alexa sat alone in her room, the world outside her door a hive of movement, while hers was a cage of stillness.
Her hands shook where they rested on her lap. The pale silk of her nightdress clung to her skin, damp with sweat, though the room was cool. On the opposite wall, her engagement gown hung on a mannequin—an ivory creation dripping with crystals and lace, a dress fit for royalty.
She could not look at it for long. Each glance was a knife. That dress meant chains, meant the end of herself.
“In a few hours,” she whispered into the silence, her voice trembling, “I’ll be his. Lucas Blackwood’s wife.”
The words clanged in her ears, foreign and absurd. Wife. To a man who could not stand. Could not speak. Could not even look at her with awareness. A vegetable.
Her stomach turned at the thought. It wasn’t even marriage—it was entombment. She was being sealed into a life that wasn’t a life at all.
Her thoughts clawed at the edges of escape. Could she bribe a guard? Impossible—Brooks’s men were loyal, and those who weren’t feared him more than they loved money. Could she climb the mansion’s walls? The cameras would catch her within seconds. Could she fake illness? Emily would sneer and drag her to the altar half-conscious if she had to.
Every plan collapsed in her mind before it could take shape. Every possibility ended in humiliation—or worse.
Her nails dug into her palms until crescents of pain bloomed. “There’s no way out,” she choked. “No way.”
Her reflection in the mirror startled her: wide eyes rimmed red from sleeplessness, hair tangled at her shoulders, lips pale. She looked less like a bride and more like a ghost haunting her own life.
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But then—like a whisper through the cracks of her despair—another thought crept in.
Him.
The being from her dreams.
At first, Alexa resisted even thinking of him. She told herself it was only a dream. Madness born of exhaustion and fear. But the memory pressed against her, insistent: the silver hair that flowed like moonlight, the eyes that burned with otherworldly intensity, the voice that commanded with such terrible authority it still rang in her bones.
It was too vivid. Too real. Dreams didn’t cling like this. Dreams didn’t leave her waking body trembling as though she had stood before a storm.
“No,” she whispered, shaking her head, but her chest tightened with desperate hope. “No dream could feel like that.”
Her thoughts spun, fevered. If he was real, then what was he? A demon? A god? Something older than either? Every memory of him terrified her—and yet, against her will, comforted her too. Because if he existed… then perhaps he could save her.
The idea flared, dangerous and wild.
“Save me,” she whispered into the dark. “Please… save me.”
But how? How could she find him? She had only ever met him in dreams, swept there by fear or fate. How could she call him now, when dawn was so close, when her life was about to be sealed forever?
Her mind raced with half-mad ideas. Should she pray? Should she scream his name into the night? Did he even have a name? Or had she only seen the shadow of something far beyond her understanding?
Her breath hitched. “If you exist… if you’re real… come. Please. I don’t have anywhere else to turn.”
The words tasted like a summoning, like blasphemy. A forbidden ritual made of tears and desperation.
She pressed her face into her pillow, sobbing quietly, clutching the sheets as though they could anchor her to the earth. Her tears burned until exhaustion dragged them away.
Her body gave in before her mind did. Her eyes slipped shut, her whisper fading with her breath.
“Find me… before it’s too late…”
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When she opened her eyes again, the world was no longer her own.
Wind howled, sharp and cold, tearing through her hair. The stars above were not the stars of Country Y—they were sharp, vast, endless, flaring like dying suns. She stood barefoot on the silvery transparent stone, the summit of that impossible mountain she had seen once before. The air vibrated with power so dense it pressed against her lungs, stealing her breath.
Alexa gasped, clutching her chest. “No… no, this can’t…” But her words froze. This wasn’t a dream. Not like before. The air itself pulsed with reality, with weight. Every grain of stone beneath her feet was solid. Every lash of wind was cold against her skin.
She was here. Truly here.
And then, across the expanse of the summit, something shifted.
Lucian.
He sat upon his obsidian throne, his long silver hair spilling like a river of moonlight over his shoulders. His eyes snapped open.
In that instant, he felt her.
His head lifted sharply, and power surged through him like wildfire. His aura ignited, fierce and terrible, crackling into the heavens. The black sky split with light, thunder rolling in waves across realms.
Alexa staggered backward as the ground itself shuddered beneath her feet.
He was furious.
The whole of the heavens trembled with his wrath, as though her mere presence was an offense so great that the cosmos itself reeled.
His voice, when it came, was not spoken aloud but carved through the fabric of existence: a roar of anger, of disbelief.
And Alexa, standing small and trembling on the summit, knew she had crossed a line she could never retreat from.
- Writer
