THE FABULOUS DOCTOR LUNA HE THREW AWAY?

CHAPTER 10

DIMITRI

Someone was inside my compound.

The realization hit me like a fist to the throat. My compound. My territory. The one place in this world that was supposed to be untouchable. And the Zanettis had eyes inside it.

I grabbed the phone from Sera's hand and looked at the photo. The angle was clear. Whoever took it was standing outside the east wing window, less than thirty feet from where we stood. They were here. Right now. On my land.

My wolf exploded.

Not a slow rise. Not a gradual shift. He detonated inside my chest, slamming against my bones, flooding my veins with heat and rage. My vision sharpened. My teeth lengthened. The room smelled like fear and adrenaline and Sera's skin, which I shoved out of my mind because now was not the damn time.

"Viktor!" I roared.

He appeared in the doorway in seconds, gun drawn, eyes scanning. "What happened?"

I showed him the phone. His face went white. Then red. Then something beyond both.

"Lock it down," I ordered. "Every gate. Every door. Every window. No one enters, no one leaves. I want every guard on patrol and I want the east wing perimeter searched. Now."

Viktor was already moving, his phone pressed to his ear, barking orders in Russian. I heard boots hitting the floor. Doors slamming. The compound was waking up, shifting from a home into a fortress.

I turned to Sera. She was standing exactly where I left her, arms wrapped around herself, staring at the window. She wasn't shaking anymore. She wasn't panicking. She was still. Completely, perfectly still.

That scared me more than the photo.

"Sera."

"They were right there," she said softly, not looking at me. "Right outside the window. Watching us. Watching me."

"I know."

"This is your compound, Dimitri. Your territory. If they can get in here, they can get in anywhere."

She wasn't wrong. And that truth burned through me like acid.

I had two hundred wolves on this property. Trained fighters. Killers. Men who would die for me without hesitation. And somehow, the Zanettis walked through all of them like ghosts.

Either they were better than I thought, or someone let them in.

That second option made my blood run cold.

"Come with me," I said, reaching for her arm, then stopping myself. "Please."

She looked at me. Those brown eyes, still faintly rimmed with gold from her wolf's awakening, searched my face. Then she nodded and followed me out of the room.

I took her to the inner wing. The safest part of the compound. No windows. One entrance. Steel reinforced walls that could take a direct hit from a rocket launcher and hold. My father built it during the last war, when the Volkov pack was on the edge of extinction.

We survived then. We would survive now.

I opened the door and Sera stepped inside, looking around the sparse room. A bed. A desk. A bathroom. Nothing else.

"Cozy," she muttered.

"It's safe."

"Those two things never go together in your world."

She sat on the edge of the bed, her shoulders dropping. The adrenaline was fading and exhaustion was taking its place. She looked small. Not weak. Sera was never weak. But small. Like the weight pressing down on her was too much for her body to carry.

"I need to ask you something," I said, standing by the door. Keeping distance. Always keeping distance.

She looked up.

"Your father's house. The old house. Where exactly is it?"

She was quiet for a moment. "Why?"

"Because if the Zanettis already have people there, we need to move fast. Before they tear the place apart."

"You said it was a trap."

"It is a trap. But we don't have a choice anymore." I held up her phone. "They're inside my walls, Sera. They have someone on the inside feeding them information. Every hour we wait, they get closer to finding what your father hid."

Her jaw tightened. She stared at the floor for a long time. I let her think. I let her process. Pushing Sera never worked. She moved at her own pace or she didn't move at all.

"The village is called Volchya Balka," she said finally. "It's three hours outside Moscow. There's nothing there anymore. Just empty houses and dead fields."

"And your father's house?"

"End of the main road. You can't miss it. It's the one that looks like it was swallowed by fire." Her voice cracked on the last word. Just barely. If I wasn't listening so hard, I would have missed it.

"I'll send a team tonight," I said.

"No." She stood up. "I go. Myself. My father left that message for me. Not your men. Not Viktor. Me."

"Sera, it's too dangerous."

"Everything about this is dangerous." She stepped toward me, and I could feel the heat coming off her skin. Her wolf was still close to the surface, still restless, still burning. "You dragged me back into this world. You showed up at my apartment and told me people want me dead. Fine. But if I'm going to risk my life, I'm going to do it on my terms. Not yours."

We were close now. Closer than we had been in two years. I could count the flecks of gold in her brown eyes. I could smell her shampoo, something floral, something soft that didn't match the steel in her voice.

My wolf whimpered. Actually whimpered. Like a damn puppy.

"Together," I said, repeating the word she used earlier. "We go together."

She held my stare. "Together doesn't mean you're in charge."

"Understood."

A ghost of something crossed her lips. Not quite a smile. But close.

My phone buzzed. Viktor.

I answered. "What did you find?"

Viktor's voice was tight. Controlled. But underneath it, I heard something I rarely heard from him.

Fury.

"We found the breach point," Viktor said. "East perimeter fence. Cut clean. Professional job."

"And the person who took the photo?"

"Gone. But they left something behind." A pause. "Dimitri, you need to come see this."

"What is it?"

Another pause. Longer this time.

"It's a body," Viktor said. "One of ours. Throat cut. And there's a message carved into his chest."

My hand tightened on the phone. "What message?"

Viktor exhaled slowly.

"It says, 'The clock is ticking, Volkov. Sixty-nine hours.'"