Not Your Luna Anymore: Claimed by the Rival Alpha

A Cry in The Dark

I didn't scream.

Later I'd wonder why not. In the moment there wasn't room for wondering. There was only the shape in front of me, broad shoulders blocking the gap between two trees, and my body deciding on its own that running would be worse than standing still.

"Hey."

His voice came low, even, not loud enough to startle a bird off a branch. Nothing about it matched the fear crawling up my spine.

I didn't answer.

He didn't move closer.

"You're shaking," he said. "You okay?"

Under the thin moonlight I could finally see him properly. Dark hair, damp like he'd walked through the same wind I had. A jaw that looked carved rather than grown. Broad through the chest in a way that should have scared me more than it did, and eyes that, even in the dark, felt like they were actually looking at me. Not through me. Not past me toward someone more interesting.

At me.

"I'm fine," I said, and my voice cracked right down the middle of the word, betraying me completely.

He tilted his head slightly, like he was listening to something underneath what I'd said.

"You don't sound fine."

"It's none of your business."

"No," he agreed easily. "It's not."

That should have been the end of it. He should have walked past me, or I should have walked past him, two strangers passing on a dark path, forgetting each other by morning.

Neither of us moved.

The wind cut through my dress again and I flinched, arms tightening around myself, and something in his face shifted. Not pity. I would have hated pity. Something closer to recognition, like he knew exactly what cold like this felt like and didn't need me to explain it.

He shrugged out of his jacket without a word and held it out.

I stared at it.

"I'm not going to bite," he said, and there was the faintest curve at the corner of his mouth, like the joke cost him something to make. "Take it. You're turning blue."

"I don't even know you."

"Vinai," he said simply, like that fixed the problem.

I hesitated another second, then took the jacket, because my arms were actually starting to hurt from the cold and because something about the way he'd offered it, easy, no expectation behind it, made my chest loosen just slightly for the first time all night.

It smelled like cedar and something warmer underneath, and it was heavier than it looked, like it had been made for someone twice my size.

"Thank you," I said quietly.

"You want to tell me why you're walking alone in the dark in a dress like that?" he asked. "Or you want me to guess?"

"I'd rather you didn't guess."

"Fair enough."

We stood there a moment, the wind moving through the trees above us, and I realized he wasn't pushing. Wasn't waiting for the story so he could fix it, or worse, use it. He just stood there, patient, like he had nowhere else to be and no interest in being anywhere else even if he did.

That undid something in me faster than any question could have.

The tears came back, quieter this time, sliding down my face without the sobbing that had carried me halfway across campus. I wiped at them with the sleeve of his jacket, too big, swallowing my hand whole.

"Sorry," I mumbled. "You didn't sign up for this."

"I walked into it," he said. "That's different."

A small, wet laugh escaped me before I could stop it.

He didn't smile wider at that, didn't preen over getting a reaction out of me. He just watched, steady, like my laugh mattered as much as my tears had.

"Someone hurt you tonight," he said. Not a question.

I looked down at the jacket sleeves instead of his face. "Someone reminded me I wasn't as important as I thought I was."

"That's usually not true," he said. "The someone part. Usually just means they weren't paying attention."

I didn't know what to do with that, so I didn't say anything at all.

We started walking, not fast, not toward anywhere in particular, just moving because standing still in the cold wasn't an option and neither of us seemed ready to end whatever this was yet. He kept a careful distance, close enough that I could feel the warmth radiating off him, far enough that it never once felt like a threat.

At the edge of the athletic fields, he stopped.

"This is as far as I go tonight," he said. "But you're safe from here. Streetlights the rest of the way."

I hadn't realized how far we'd walked until I looked up and saw the dorms in the distance, lit windows, normal Tuesday-night noise drifting faint on the wind.

"Will I see you again?" I asked, before I could think better of it.

Something flickered behind his eyes, there and gone too fast to name.

"Maybe," he said. "If the campus is smaller than it looks."

I held his jacket out to give it back.

He shook his head. "Keep it tonight. Return it whenever."

"I don't even know your last name."

"Good," he said, and there was that almost-smile again, sharper this time, like it belonged to a version of him I hadn't met yet. "Keeps things interesting."

He turned to go, and for one second, just one, the moonlight caught something in his eyes that didn't look human at all. Gold, deep and burning, gone the instant I blinked.

My breath caught.

By the time I opened my mouth to say something, anything, he was already gone, swallowed back into the tree line like he'd never been standing there at all.

I stood alone at the edge of the field, his jacket wrapped around me, my heart pounding for reasons that had nothing to do with Ryan anymore.

Who are you?

I didn't have an answer.

But some part of me, quiet and certain, already knew I wanted one.