The Nameless Luna – Book Three: For Her, He Falls

My father wraps his arms around the Alpha’s neck and snaps it in a single, brutal motion. Marco’s red eyes are wide and wild. His breathing is ragged, and his fine black suit is filthy and torn from the fight. I can only pray most of the blood on him is not his as Viktor watches my father slay the other Alpha and prepares to pounce on him.
I barely have time to look at the crumpled figure of the unconscious woman lying on the ground.
In his wolf form, Viktor is even more imposing than he usually is, with a pitch-black coat and icy eyes. There’s no grey, no brown, no varying hues on his fur whatsoever, as if his soul had sucked away any light and color. His blue eyes are cold and hard, and I don’t have the time to wonder if they bear any resemblance to my mother’s.
My uncle lunges toward the Night King, but I hurl myself between them, shifting in midair. I feel myself burn from the inside out as the power courses through me, transforming me as I smash headfirst into Viktor before he can reach my father. We tangle in each other, rolling from the momentum of my impact as dozens of silvery wings flutter and cluster into a single shape, remaking me into my wolf form. Viktor grunts as we finally come to a stop, shoving me off of him with a vicious kick, and I slide back from the blow but manage to land on my feet, my claws sinking into the gravel on the stone surface of the bridge.
‘Ungrateful bitch,’ Viktor growls at me, and I can’t help the shiver than runs down my spine at the sound of his voice in my head. I spent so much time wishing I could manifest a wolf and mindlink with others, but not him. ‘I should’ve killed you when you were still a child.’
But he didn’t. Now I’m going to make him regret it.
I glance over my shoulder at my father, who’s usually so composed and refined. He looks like a mess, and there are hideous gashes along his chest where the wolves’ claws sliced into his porcelain pale skin.
He throws the Alpha’s dead body off of him with a hiss and then leaps toward Vanessa.
My mother.
I’ll find a way to believe it later. Right now, I need to find a way for us to get out of here in one piece.
Vannesa’s strawberry blonde hair is tattered, and it clings to her to the filth on her face. Her eyes are closed, and she’s not moving. But as my father desperately falls to his knees and reaches for her, relief washes over his features.
Still breathing.
‘How touching,’ Viktor coos, his lips curling back to reveal glinting fangs in a smile that’s more of a snarl on his ferocious features.
I ignore him, reaching for my father’s mind so Viktor won’t hear. ‘Get her out of here.’
There are too many of them, and while we’re still under cover of clouds, the sun has gotten brighter by the hour. I don’t know how long the battle has been going, but we can’t count on the mist. Marco needs to get inside the keep, and he needs to take my mother with him.
Viktor’s voice draws my attention back to him before my father can reply. ‘Such a moving family reunion,’ he taunts.
I look back at my uncle, anger unlike anything I’ve ever known boiling the blood in my veins. I force myself to swallow it down and look at him evenly.
‘I won’t leave you, child,’ Marco says, his voice urgent, but I do not turn to face him when I reply.
‘I’ll be right behind you. Trust me; just go.’
I need him to leave first. He’s injured, but he can use his shadows to carry Vanessa away with him to safety. I just have to distract Viktor long enough for my father to shift and get off this bridge.
‘So, you know who I really am,’ I tell Viktor, and it’s not a question. He knows where I come from, there’s no doubt of that left.
‘Stupid girl. I’ve always known.’
Well… I didn’t see that coming.
My breath catches in my throat as I look at my uncle in horror. How did he know? When did he find out exactly? What was his plan?
‘I realized it the moment you were born. When I saw your eyes, I knew what you were. My sister had brought a half-breed mutt into the world. As you grew older, it only became more obvious. The ethereal pale skin, the unnatural quiet way in which you moved, the way you survived in hunger and darkness. Everything about you was wrong. I thought I’d be rid of you, but when I received reports that you were taken in by the vampires, I knew my time had come to set things right once and for all.’
His villainous monologue is interrupted by a ruffling sound behind me. Viktor’s eyes shift away from me as shadows unfurl around my father like black ink seeping into the air around him. My mother hangs limply in his arms, and suddenly, they’re no longer solid but rather a cloud of bats and blackness.
‘No!’ Viktor yells. He moves to pounce on them as my parents dematerialize into a haze of wings and blackness. The Night King will take Vanessa away from here just as he did with me that fateful night by the lake.
He can get her out. I can save them both.
I leap in between Viktor and my parents, and we topple over one another once again as I knock him off balance. He snarls and snaps at me in a rage, but it’s too late.
They’re already gone.
‘You think you’re so brave, but you’re a fool! Such a noble sacrifice to save your mother, but in the end, it won’t matter. You’ll never get to meet her anyway.
I duck his bite, slipping between his legs to try and put some distance between his teeth and my neck.
‘She’s your sister!’ I cry, my thoughts broken with sorrow. ‘You were supposed to be family. How could you?’
‘My sister died the moment she dirtied herself by sharing her bed with a filthy bloodsucker. She was broken. The only reason I didn’t put her out of her misery is because losing her mind after fucking a vampire was punishment enough. I locked her away to live out the rest of her miserable days in secret. Letting the world think she died of natural causes was a kindness.’
So he doesn’t know everything. He believes my mother actually lost her mind.
Vanessa’s act of insanity may not have allowed her to escape the Banes as she’d hoped, but it kept her alive.
Still, sparing her had not been a mercy. If she was just crazy instead of in love, Viktor must have believed he could still control her. Besides, wolves look after their own. If the pack found out their Alpha had killed his own sister for loving a vampire, it could lead them to question his morality and authority. Locking her up while claiming she went insane and passed away had been the best way to preserve his reputation. The coward couldn’t handle her blood on his hands, and so long as Vanessa acted crazy enough to not be a threat, she wasn’t worth killing.
‘Kindness?’ I scoff. He doesn’t know the meaning of the word.
Dozens of Banes have gathered around us, watching and waiting for a command from their Alpha. My uncle always loved an audience.
I need to get off this bridge and back to the keep. But Viktor won’t take his eyes on me. The second I lower my guard enough to focus on transforming, he’ll attack.
Panic begins to build as I realize I was barely able to shift into bats the first time. I don’t have control over my powers to escape like my father did, and there’s no one else here to create a distraction to buy me enough time to try. Viktor will kill me before I even leave the ground.
Somewhere in the quiet corners of my soul, something whispers within me. I sense it rather than hear it; not a message but a feeling.
Tristan is coming for me. I don’t know how or when, but I’m sure of it.
But how can I wait for him when time is exactly what I don’t have? I’m completely surrounded, and the only reason Viktor hasn’t killed me yet is that he enjoys the sound of his own voice too much. I have to keep him talking.
My life just might depend on it.