Lost Russian Luna

Chapter Twelve

The next morning, the air in the conference suite is different. It’s thicker, as if the walls have started sweating fear and adrenaline in equal measure. The windows show nothing but sky and the blinding glare of the Strip. I stare at the glare and see, in the reflection, the way every wolf in the room keeps their gaze just a hair off me.

The table is set for war, the water pitcher half empty and already sweating through a ring onto the lacquer. Duncan sits at the end, hands steepled, his voice low and quiet. Tyler and Eric flank him, both worn thin from lack of sleep and too many late-night strategy calls. Across, the New Englanders are different men this time, leaner, younger, but every one of them stares through me as if I am the weakness in the chain.

The Alpha, still the same one as yesterday, wears a different suit, darker, but the effect is the same: predator in a zoo, waiting for the glass to shatter.

They go straight into the agenda; the corridor truce is only one of a dozen fault lines between the packs. There’s talk of supply routes, shipments, and something about a casino deal that goes south every season. The words mean nothing, but the violence underneath them is thick enough to taste.

I keep my hands under the table, pressed between my knees. The tremor is smaller today, but it’s still present. I pretend I’m not listening, but every word lands and is filed away, because that is what survivors do.

The argument moves to something called “the eastern fence,” a boundary neither side admits to drawing but both claim is real. The Alpha from New England leans forward, knuckles white on the glass. “You’re encroaching,” he says. “Call it what you like, but your boys are poaching territory.”

Duncan smiles, not the real one, just a flash of teeth. “Maybe if you controlled your own, we wouldn’t have to babysit.”

Eric and Tyler bristle, both sets of hands curling on the table. On the other side, I see the first hint of fangs in the Alpha’s second. The room is a stick of dynamite, one spark away from tearing itself apart.

I want to disappear, but my lungs are stone. I count each inhale, each exhale, and try to steady the room with the friction of my own bones.

When the shouting starts, it’s not the humans in the wolves anymore. It’s the old world, the one from before, voices pitched too low, too wild, a sound I have not heard since I was a child in the Russian snow, and it brings back every memory I have spent years scrubbing out. I flinch, and that’s when the Alpha’s eyes lock on me, hard.

He laughs, and it’s not a good sound. “You bring a Luna into this, Duncan, and expect us to believe you don’t mean business?”

The room stutters to silence. I stare at my lap, hands gripping the fabric of the jeans so tight I could rip them if I were anything more than the ghost they say.

Duncan’s voice is a stone. “She’s here to keep us from turning this place into a graveyard. If you can’t control your Pack, that’s your problem.”

The Alpha’s gaze never wavers. “We don’t need a Luna to do our thinking for us. Maybe you do.”

Tyler snorts, and the tension snaps back, harder this time.

I don’t know why I do it, but I look up and meet the Alpha’s eyes. “If you keep at it, you’ll both lose. The fence will be nothing but bones by the end of the year.”

The Alpha’s head tilts, wolfish. “What do you know about loss?”

I almost laugh, but I don’t. “Enough to say that if you keep this up, you’ll have nothing left to fight for.”

Eric leans in, eyes flicking to Duncan as if waiting for permission. He gets none, but speaks anyway. “She’s right. Last time there was an open war in the corridor, we lost a quarter of our Pack. You lost more. The fence is nothing if nobody’s left to claim it.”

Duncan says nothing, but his gaze is on me now, burning through layers. I feel a spark in my gut, some old ember of the Luna that I never wanted, and suddenly the words come easier.

“Your pack values tradition,” I say to the Alpha, “but you’re not in the old country anymore. Here, everything changes. If you don’t adapt, you die. And Duncan’s Pack—” I nod to him, “—they don’t care about bloodlines or legacy. They care about what works. You could both learn something from each other.”

Nobody moves. The Alpha stares at me, then at Duncan, then back. He laughs again, but this time it sounds less like a threat and more like a man who’s just seen his own grave. “She’s got a tongue, I’ll give her that.”

Duncan shrugs. “Better than a muzzle.”

The table is silent for a long time.

Finally, the Alpha nods, slowly. “We split the fence. North to us, south to you. But you get nothing past the old riverbed, not one inch.”

Duncan looks at me, a question in his eyes. I nod. He answers, “Deal.”

A scribe wolf from the New England side scribbles it all down, and then both sides sign, one after the other, pen slicing across paper with the finality of a knife.

The meeting ends not with a handshake, but with a nod—a single, sharp movement from the Alpha to Duncan, and then to me.

“Your Luna’s wasted on you,” he says as he leaves, but there is something in his tone I can’t name—respect, maybe, or a warning.

The New Englanders file out, leaving us alone. Tyler and Eric relax for the first time in days. Eric pours himself a glass of water and drains it. Tyler is already scrolling through his phone, the adrenaline gone. Only Duncan stays tense, watching me with a look that is not quite admiration, not quite suspicion.

“You did more in two sentences than I could have done in a week,” he says, not quite a compliment.

“I wasn’t trying to.”

He nods. “That’s the point. You’re not trying, but it’s happening anyway.”

I pull the sleeves over my hands, hiding the scars, the bones. “It won’t last. They’ll find another reason to fight.”

“Maybe,” Duncan says. “Or maybe you just bought us enough time to fix the rest.”

He stands, stretches. The room suddenly seems too small for both of us.

“Let’s go,” he says. “You earned breakfast.”

We leave the hotel, taking the stairs instead of the elevator. Duncan doesn’t look back, but I know he’s thinking. I can feel it, the way wolves always see the weather before it comes.

At the bottom, in the shadow of the Strip, he stops and faces me. His eyes are as green as the forests I will never see again.

“I want to know your story,” he says, and it is not a threat. It is a promise.

I think of snow and blood and the way the world looks when you’re the only thing left alive. I think of the Luna power I never asked for, and the new war I have just started.

“I’ll tell you,” I say.