Lost Russian Luna

Chapter Three

So when the elevator doors open again, I hear it first: the hydraulic hiss, the hush, the pause before the monster walks in.

He doesn’t smell like the other three. He doesn’t smell like anyone I’ve ever met.

His footsteps are loud, intentional, clacking across marble in a perfect, predatory rhythm. Shiny black shoes, the kind that never scuff. A suit so dark it’s a shade right before black, tailored over muscle that moves like a trick of the light. His hair is dark too, with one lock always threatening to fall in his eyes, but his eyes themselves, they’re what stop the world.

Green and gold, wolf eyes in human form. Not a trick of glass, not a contact lens. Alive, hungry, impossible. I don’t look directly, but every time his gaze cuts my way, I feel it, hot and cold, drilling through the skin at my spine—an Alpha.

He stands in the doorway, surveying the room like a general about to order a m******e. The other three had left, leaving only us, the housekeeping staff, to deal with him, unarmed and ill-prepared. He was not pleased to find two women in ill-fitting, ill-colored uniforms waiting to leave his domain. The air goes hard and still.

I didn’t know the names of the Alphas of America. I had no idea who this was and wished I had been a true Luna before my “death.” I might know what to do with him, walking slowly, deliberately towards us.

I keep my head down, the only safe thing. If I don’t move, remind him we are humans leaving his rooms. Maybe he will pass us, allow us to go. It’s worked before, with men like him. With wolves like him.

He doesn’t. It fails, he sniffs the cleaning cart, and then worse, me. And looks, no stares at me.

“Who are you?” His voice is low, but it shakes the molecules in the air.

I say nothing. I am nothing. I am bleach and blood and a name that isn’t mine. My hands shake, traitor nerves buzzing under the skin.

He c***s his head, birdlike. “Do you know what this is?” He points at the shadow of the stain.

I nod, but it’s a lie. It could be anything that bleeds.

He leans closer. “Tell me. Who sent you?”

My stomach lurches. I want to vomit or run or maybe both.

He waits. Patient. It’s as if he has all the time in the world to watch me squirm.

Rosa comes in with the last of the used towels and a small trash bag. “I got them, chica, we can get out of here…” She sees him. Freezes.

He turns to stare at her with a hardness reserved for the humans that softens enough to be able to pass for human.

“Housekeeping,” Rosa manages. She tries to smile, but it wilts halfway.

Duncan’s face softens, almost. “Thank you. For cleaning this mess, I appreciate your services.” He reaches for his wallet. The bills he peels off are fifties, thick and crisp. “For your trouble.”

Rosa takes the money, her eyes wide. “Wow, thank you, sir. We’ll, um, get out of your hair.”

She grabs the mop, but I don’t move. My hands are locked. I’m stuck on the floor, knees numb, staring at the last drop of missed blood in the carpet.

Duncan turns to me again. He stands close to me. I can smell him, and his suit never wrinkles. He’s closer than before, close enough to see the flecks of gold in his irises. His scent is wrong. Not cologne, not even wolf, it’s the charge before lightning hits. Danger, it screams, danger, run.

He doesn’t touch me. He doesn’t have to.

“Who are you?” he asks again, quieter now, just for me. “You’re not local.”

Then my legs give out.

Rosa is at my elbow. “Val, let’s go, okay?” Her voice is gentle, but her hands are shaking too. “Come on.”

But I can’t move. The monster’s stare pins me to the spot. The world tunnels down to a point: his face, the single drop of blood, my heartbeat hammering traitor messages up my neck.

He shifts, enough for me to notice, and the air stirs. It’s like the wind off a Siberian graveyard. It strips the skin off my nerves, leaves me raw.

“Tell me,” he whispers. “Now.”

My mouth opens. Sound comes out, but it isn’t English. It’s the old language, the one from the bloody snowfields, the one I swore I’d never speak again.

“Ne ubivai menya, pozhaluysta. Ne ubivai.” Don’t kill me. Please don’t.

I don’t know if he understands, but the words hang in the air like a curse. I knelt before him, begging against the carpet, begging for my life. I kept my tears close. I didn’t want to die here.

Duncan’s eyes flicker, once. His expression changes, but I can’t read it. I’m too busy trying not to die.

My collar slides down, and the scar at my throat catches the light. I heard the deep snarl from the Alpha above me. I tried to curl down. I wanted to become one with the carpet, disappear into it.

There’s a silence that lasts forever.

My vision goes gray at the edges. I curl in on myself, small and smaller, hands over my ears, the cleaning bottle rolling away across the tiles. I don’t hear anything. I don’t see anything except the flash of green and gold and a world where I die again, like all the times before.

I black out, or maybe I close my eyes.

When I open them, the room is empty except for Duncan and me. It is a world of wolf eyes in human form. Once wolf eyes were a comfort. Now, panic.

He’s kneeling beside me. Not a threat. Not even a question.

Just watching, his head tilted, as if I’m something he’s never seen before.