Ten Thousand Reasons I Refuse To Be Your Luna

CHAPTER 7: Reason #7

I read the message three times.

*Stay away from the Alpha, or die.*

The words refused to disappear no matter how many times I blinked at them, as though blinking alone could rewrite a threat into something less terrifying.

My fingers tightened around my phone until my knuckles turned white. Alpha? Again.

This was the second time I had heard that word. The first had been in the underground parking garage, muttered by a stranger I never got a good look at. Now it had found its way into my home, which felt considerably more personal, and considerably less forgivable.

I immediately called the number back. “This number is unavailable,” the automated voice said. I tried again, just in case the universe felt generous. It did not.

“The same answer,” I muttered to no one, tossing the phone onto the couch as though it had personally betrayed me.

I enlarged the photograph attached to the message. Someone had taken it from across the street outside Morrette’s garage. The angle was too perfect. The timing was too perfect. Whoever sent it had not been following me for a single day. They had been watching me for far longer. Much longer, in fact, which was not a comforting thought at eleven at night in an otherwise empty penthouse.

I suddenly looked around my apartment with new eyes. The curtains were open. The lights were on. Anyone outside could see me standing there, phone in hand, looking exactly as frightened as I felt.

Without thinking, I rushed across the room and shut every curtain, one after another, my hands trembling the entire time. Only then did I finally breathe.

The next morning, I arrived at Star Global much earlier than usual, mostly because sleep had abandoned me sometime around three in the morning and never returned.

Clara was surprised to see me. “You have been here since six?” she asked, eyebrows raised. “I could not sleep,” I admitted.

She noticed the dark circles beneath my eyes but, being the excellent assistant she was, did not ask questions. Instead, she handed me the schedule for the day.

“Ten o’clock, interview,” she said. “Eleven-thirty, product campaign. One o’clock, lunch with Chairman Lucien.”

“Three o’clock,” she continued, then paused in a way that immediately put me on edge. “Someone requested a private meeting.”

“Who?” I asked. “He would not give his full name,” she said. I frowned. “Cancel it,” I said flatly. “He insisted you would want to hear what he has to say,” Clara replied. “I doubt that very much,” I said.

Clara hesitated, which was unlike her. “He only left one message,” she said quietly. “What message?” I asked, my patience thinning by the second. She looked directly at me. “He said,” she began, choosing her words carefully, “ask Melissa Star why her father trusted the Shadow Riders.”

The folder slipped from my hand and hit the floor with a slap that seemed far too loud for the room. My father? How did a complete stranger know anything about my father? And what, in heaven’s name, were the Shadow Riders?

By noon, I sat across from Lucien Blackwood inside his office, my mind still spinning from Clara’s message. He noticed my expression immediately. “You look troubled,” he said.

Without a word, I handed him my phone. He read the anonymous threat in silence, his face unreadable. Then I handed him the note Clara had received. His calm expression remained frustratingly steady, as though nothing in the world could rattle him.

“Chairman,” I said, leaning forward, “did my father know someone called Morrette Mitchell?” Lucien looked out the window rather than at me. “Why would you ask that?” he said.

“Please answer me,” I said. He remained silent. “My father,” I pressed. “The Shadow Riders. The Alpha. What do all of these mean?”

Lucien slowly folded his hands on the desk. “Melissa,” he said gently, “there are some promises that even I cannot break.”

“I deserve to know,” I said. “You deserve to live peacefully,” he replied. His answer only frustrated me further. “I do not want peace,” I said. “I want the truth.”

For the first time, his voice became firm. “The truth has a price,” he said. The room fell silent after that, and neither of us spoke again for the rest of the meal, though I barely tasted a bite of it.

That afternoon, against every ounce of good sense I possessed, I decided to attend the private meeting anyway. If someone truly knew something about my father, I needed answers, whatever the risk.

The meeting was arranged inside a quiet café several blocks away from Star Global. When I entered, only one customer remained. A man in his sixties, gray hair, simple clothes, nothing remarkable about him at all except for the way his eyes tracked me the moment I stepped through the door.

He slowly stood when he saw me. “Miss Star,” he said. “You asked to see me,” I said. “I did,” he replied. “Who are you?” I asked. “My name is Harold Benson,” he said. “I worked for your father.”

Every muscle in my body went tense at once. “My father never mentioned you,” I said. “He could not,” Harold said. “Why not?” I asked. “Because if he did,” Harold said, his voice lowering, “I would have died years ago.”

I frowned, more confused than afraid, at least for the moment. “What are you talking about?” I asked.

Harold reached into his coat and carefully placed an old photograph on the table between us. It showed my father, several unfamiliar men, and a much younger Morrette. He could not have been older than sixteen in that picture, standing at the very edge of the group with a motorcycle beside him, looking every bit as broody as the grown version I now knew.

I stared at the photograph. “What is this?” I asked. “History,” Harold said simply. “My father knew him,” I said, more to myself than to Harold. He nodded. “Long before you did,” he said.

Before I could ask another question, the café windows suddenly shattered. Glass exploded across the room, and everyone inside began screaming at once. A black SUV crashed straight through the front entrance, and masked men rushed inside carrying weapons like this was the most ordinary Tuesday of their lives.

“Take the old man!” one of them shouted. “Kill anyone who interferes!” another added, which was, in my opinion, an unnecessarily specific instruction. Harold immediately grabbed my wrist. “Run!” he said.

People scattered in every direction. Tables overturned. Coffee cups shattered across the floor. I followed Harold through the kitchen toward the back exit, my heartbeat thundering so loudly inside my chest that I could barely hear anything else. Another gunshot echoed behind us.

The back door burst open. Fresh air. Freedom. Almost. A masked attacker blocked the alley ahead of us, smiling beneath his mask as though he had been waiting for this exact moment all day.

“Going somewhere?” he asked. Harold shoved me backward. “Run, Melissa!” he shouted.

The attacker struck Harold across the head with the butt of his weapon, and the old man collapsed instantly onto the pavement. “No!” I screamed, trying to reach him. The attacker stepped between us. “You should have minded your own business,” he said.

He raised his weapon toward me, and for one terrible second I truly believed that was the end of the story.

Before he could pull the trigger, a motorcycle roared into the alley. The attacker turned, but far too late. The motorcycle slammed straight into him, throwing him against a dumpster with a crash that rattled the entire alley.

The rider jumped off before the bike had fully stopped rolling. Black jacket. Dark jeans. Grease-stained boots. Morrette.

He did not even look at me first. “Can you stand?” he asked Harold, crouching beside him. The old man shook his head weakly. Morrette cursed under his breath, and more engines echoed from the street beyond. Not one. Not two. Several.

Motorcycles. They stopped at both ends of the alley, boxing us in completely. One after another, men and women climbed off their bikes. Business suits. Mechanic uniforms. Leather jackets. Even one woman dressed like a nurse, of all things, which struck me as a strange detail to notice while half convinced I was about to die.

Each of them wore the same black tattoo on the inside of their forearm, a wolf surrounded by broken chains.

They were not ordinary bikers. That much was obvious. They moved like people who had trained together for years, coordinated in a way that street gangs simply did not manage.

One of them looked toward Morrette. “What are your orders?” he asked, then stopped himself the moment he noticed me watching.

Morrette answered quietly. “Get them out of here,” he said. The group nodded without a single moment of hesitation. I looked from one face to another, and the truth settled over me slowly, like cold water finding its way through fabric. They all respected him.

No. They obeyed him. I slowly turned toward Morrette, and the question escaped before I could stop myself. “Who are you, really?” I asked.

Morrette looked at me for several long seconds without answering. Then he glanced down at his own forearm, where his rolled-up sleeve had shifted during the fight, revealing the same wolf tattoo I had just seen on every single person standing in that alley.

He quickly pulled the sleeve back down. But I had already seen it. And I knew, with a certainty that settled somewhere deep in my chest, that the man who kept insisting he was just a mechanic had been lying to me from the very beginning.