The Alpha's blind Luna: Desired by Rival Alphas

No doll

Diego's POV

"The eastern shift is the problem," Klaus said. "If Crest moves another two miles we lose the river access entirely."

"Mm."

"Diego."

"I heard you. River access."

Klaus looked at me.

I wasn't looking at the report anymore.

I didn't decide to stop. It just happened, the way things happen when your body stops taking instructions. My eyes had drifted across the table to where Lyra sat, her burned hand cradled in her lap, her head tipped slightly downward. The way she held herself was careful.Like someone who had learned a long time ago that taking up space came with consequences.

The mark on her cheek had settled into something darker.

My lips were slightly parted and I couldn't help but noticed how her lashes were low, her mouth slightly pressed together. The The morning light came through the window behind her and caught the edge of her jaw, the curve of her shoulder, the way her fingers curled gently around her own wrist like she was holding herself together from the outside.

She wasn't crying.

That was the thing that kept snagging in my chest. She wasn't crying. She was just sitting there, very still, very quiet, like pain was simply another room she knew how to be in.

Klaus cleared his throat.

I looked back at the report.

"River access," I said again.

"You said that already."

I closed the folder. Slid it back toward him without looking up. Then I turned to Lyra, and I kept my voice flat and even and completely unaffected, because that was the only register I trusted myself to use right now.

"Go to the clinic. Get the hand looked at." I picked up my coffee. "You're off today. The rest of the week too. Come back Monday."

A pause.

"Thank you," she said quietly.

She didn't sound grateful or relieved, she just said those words way someone says them when they've learned not to read too much into kindness. She rose from the chair slowly, her head still angled toward the floor, and she walked out of the dining room without looking at either of us.

I listened to her footsteps until they disappeared.

Klaus said nothing for a moment. The nothing had a shape to it.

"Friday," I said, pushing back from the table and standing. "We finish this at the bar tonight."

"Fine." He gathered the folder. "Leave Mandy."

I looked at him. "How exactly am I supposed to entertain myself?"

"You've never once run short of a doll." He picked up his jacket from the back of the chair. "Figure it out." He walked out.

I stood there in the quiet of the dining room and I grinned at nothing in particular.

The day passed the way days pass when you're not really in them. Meetings. Calls. Two hours in the east wing going over territory maps with men whose names I kept confusing. I signed things. I nodded at things. I stood at the window of my office at some point in the afternoon and looked out at the tree line without seeing it, and when my phone buzzed I looked at it for a long moment before answering.

By the time I went upstairs to dress it was past ten.

I was dressed in dark suit, black shirt and no tie. I was standing at the mirror doing the last button when the bedroom door opened behind me.

Mandy leaned in the doorway. She'd changed into something red and form-fitting, her hair loose, her eyes moving over me with that particular look she had. The look that was half invitation and half claim.

"What's the dress code tonight?"

I glanced at her in the mirror. "Smart casual."

"So I should…"

"Stay home."

She went still.

I adjusted my collar. Turned from the mirror. She was watching me with something careful moving behind her eyes, something she was working to keep off her face.

"Okay," she said finally.

One word. Perfectly controlled. I almost respected it.

I walked past her and down the stairs and out the front door into the cold night air, and I did not look back.

The bar was called Concave and it deserved the name.

It curved inward from the entrance like something architectural had made a decision to swallow you slowly. Dark wood everywhere, panels floor to ceiling, the lighting low and amber and deliberately unkind to no one. The bar itself ran the full length of the far wall, bottles stacked three rows deep against a mirror that doubled everything. Leather booths lined the outer curve, private enough to have a conversation, open enough to be seen having it. A jazz trio was doing something slow and unrushed in the far corner. The floor was dark stone, polished to a dull gleam, and the whole room smelled like aged whiskey and expensive perfume and the particular kind of money that doesn't need to announce itself.

I walked in and the room adjusted. It always did.Just a slight reorientation, the way a compass settles when north walks in. Two women at the bar caught my eye and held it. A third, seated in a booth near the entrance, looked up from her drink and smiled slowly.

I did not stop walking.

Klaus was already at a table near the back, jacket off, sleeves rolled, a glass of something dark in front of him. He looked up when I sat down and gestured to the bottle already waiting.

I poured, leaned back and looked around the room once.

"Where's my doll for the night?"

"No doll."

I looked at him. "Klaus."

"Not tonight." His voice had shifted. It had that particular flatness it got when he was about to say something I wasn't going to enjoy. He turned his glass slowly on the table. "I need to talk to you."

I drank. "About what."

He didn't answer immediately. He looked at his glass, then at me, and the directness of it was almost annoying because Klaus didn't do theatrics. When he took his time it was because he meant to.

"When are you going to tell her?"

I poured another drink. "Tell who what."

"Don't."

"Klaus."

"When are you going to tell her." His voice didn't rise. It never rose. It just got heavier, like something settling into the ground. "That you're in love with her."

The jazz trio moved into something softer in the corner.

I looked at him for a long moment. Then I looked at my glass. Then I looked across the bar at nothing and I took a slow, even breath through my nose, and the word he'd just said sat in the middle of the table between us like something neither of us could put back.

I said nothing.

Which was, of course, its own kind of answer.