The Hidden Luna

Safe House

The corridor swallowed us. The lights hummed. A laundry cart, a stack of folded gowns, a mop bucket—details burned into my sight like safety markers. We hit the elevator. Down. The doors shut on the enforcers’ voices, loud and close. We didn’t breathe until the doors opened into stale air and oil on concrete.

The loading dock yawned. Cold night. A truck idling somewhere. The city beyond, vast and indifferent.

“No van,” I said, eyes scanning. I didnt even know why I expected there to me one. Except that this felt like a movie escape. Where's my conviently wait escape van?

“Yet,” Ash said.

We crossed the dock, took the ramp, and slid into the alley’s shadow. My lungs drew deeper breaths. My legs felt light the way they do when you jump and haven’t landed yet. The reality of the situation hadn’t landed yet. Five years I’d been werewolf drama free. Five normal years. Five boring years. Loveless years.

We cleared the alley and slipped into the city’s noise. Neon. Music bleeding from a bar. A woman laughing too loud. Phones to faces. Heads down. No one looking.

“Left,” I said. “Crowds are cover.”

We matched the rhythm of Silverpine at midnight and let it hide us. A hard task with an injured werewolf attached to my side. Three blocks east, a shuttered bodega. A white door that looked like it led nowhere. I keyed in a code I hadn’t used in years. Green light. Click.

We climbed the narrow staircase to a small, clean apartment with white walls and no personality. A safehouse. A thing you keep for when you have no one you trust. And I just revealed it t o this stranger. Burned it.

“In,” I said. “Bathroom. Sit.”

He obeyed without the kind of argument men like him usually enjoy. I ignored the slight smile quirking his lips and cut away the blood-stuck shirt edge, cleaned the wound, retaped the dressing. Up close, his scars mapped years I didn’t know. His eyes stayed on my face while I worked. It should have been unnerving. It wasn’t. It felt like being seen. And I hadn't felt that way in a long time. Somehow he felt safe.

He cleared his throat. “He might feel it,” he said.

He might.

I didn’t look up, instead I played dumb, “Who? Feel what?”

“You know who. The alpha.” His voice didn’t sharpen on the word Alpha. It softened, weirdly. Like he pitied a man he had reasons to hate. “Real bonds pull, even through blocks.”

My chest tightened and eased. Constricted again. “Don’t.”

“I won’t say his name,” he said. “But I won’t pretend he doesn’t exist.”

“I’ve been doing just fine pretending,” I said. And I had. Really.

He tipped his head. “You’ve been surviving. It’s not the same as fine.”

No, it’s not. I felt abandoned, wronged. But still, I was healthy, safe- or I was until this complication showed up-, I was financially independent. That’s fine.

I taped the last corner and stripped off my gloves. No point playing dumb any longer. “How long have you been looking for me?”

“Since the coronation,” he said. “I wasn’t invited inside. I stood on the steps with the others who wanted to feel important by proximity. When she came out, she was beautiful and bright and wrong. Everyone cheered. I knew better. I went home and started pulling strings.”

“Because you loved her,” I said, more statement than question. I knew that that meant.

His mouth flattened. “Because she was mine. Because I was hers. Because she chose a crown over a her fated mate and stole your destiny to make it fit.” He blinked once, slow. “You asked why I knew your name. That’s why.”

Silence stretched. Strangely, it didn’t feel empty. It felt comfortable.

“You should sleep,” I said. “You’ll heal faster.”

“You should take the bed,” he replied.

Idiot.

“You’re injured. We’ll split it,” I said. “Pillows down the middle.”

He smiled with half his mouth. “Fine. But I get the door side. If someone comes, I’m the first one they’ll see.”

“You are not a shield,” I said. I may not know him, but I knew me. And I am not the kind of person to throw an injured man at danger to protect myself.

“I am whatever keeps them off you long enough for you to decide,” he said, and somehow that was more dangerous than anything else he'd said so far. Because I felt a stirring in my chest. It had been a long time since anyone had been protective of me.

We made the bed with the stiff safehouse sheets. Well, I did, him bumbling around was more annoying than anything. We lay down on our sides, backs to each other, the pillows between us like a treaty. The city murmured through the thin glass. My body finally remembered how to shake, I couldn’t contain it. I tried, jaw tight, breaths slow.

“Rowan,” he said into the dark.

“What?”

“If they find us before morning, I’ll go with them if it keeps you free.”

I wanted to ask why. Instead I stared at the wall. “They’re not taking me. And they are not taking you from me. You’re my patient, my responsibility.”

“I believe you,” he said.

I fell asleep fast and hard. It wasn’t the numb sleep of exhaustion. I was plauged with color and teeth. A throne room. A woman with my scent braided into her hair. A man turning his head like he’d heard me from across an ocean. I woke with my hand on my chest and the sound of careful footsteps on the stairs.