Wolf Dominion Volume 2

Ryder’s [Luna] POV

The sun sets the next day, and this time I’m focused on the crater from far away – because Hades isn’t waiting for me at dusk as we’ve planned.

But Ryder is.

It hurts my heart that he looks just like Skye, but far younger, more naïve, never experiencing real war. He has no scars. Only determination and light in his eyes.

All I have to do is approach him but I’m apprehensive.

I stand out of sight and I wait for Hades to come out – because I can’t do this alone.

In all honesty this could be a set up anyway, bait. Did Hades actually listen to me about getting Ryder out here for me? Or did Skye see me in Xrat’s head, did he interrogate Hades today and potentially find out I was alive? Would Opular betray me for the right price? So many excuses, so I don’t have to move forward into the clearing.

I can’t move toward my son, even though every part of me wants to. So I just stare at him from my cover, and take him in; trying to work up a kind of maternal courage I’ve never had before. It’s something that I have no idea how it will work.

I have no idea how to be a mother.

Where is my courage now?

Ryder’s [Alpha] POV

Fyre was acting weird, telling me to head to the crater and just wait there for a woman to appear. She wouldn’t say who or why. I trusted and loved her, so I listened and here I was.

I feel like a bit of a fool, wondering if this is a set up to a surprise party or something? Was I missing a special date?

I lean back against a piece of junk and cross my arms over my chest as I wait, while the sun continues to set over a cloudless sky, basking everything in a deep clear orange.

At some point, I feel like I’m not the only one here and that I’m being watched – so I keep my guard up and look around, but… so far? Nothing. No one comes out.

Fyre’s POV

I was going to lure the bitch out. I had to kill her somehow.

The moment Ryder fell for it and walked out to meet her son – before she could say a word, I’d put a laser through her head and end her before anyone found out she was still alive.

I had tried last night and came so close. Until Raygar had to interfere!

But I couldn’t let anyone know I had killed her, so that is why I let her live last night.

At least, no one that knew her could know. Which is why Ryder, her son, was the perfect bait, and the perfect choice.

I couldn’t have her around – not if I wanted to be Luna one day. She would get in my fucking way, and steal my future from me. I was all grown up and this was my time.

She should have stayed dead.

I stay crouched behind a boulder, up a steep incline, with a good view and a good shot.

The only problem was my instincts – I’m being watched.

I have to keep lowering the gun to scan around me.

I think it’s probably humans – but they had no weapons and even if they had any remaining bullets they wouldn’t waste it on a single rouge like me.

“Whoever’s lurking…” I hiss quietly to my surroundings, getting darker with every second, “…I’ll eat you while you’re still alive if you dare get closer… do you hear me?” I shake off my annoyance and aim once more, keeping my eye on the crater.

Ryder is leaning against a hunk of junk, unaware of my plan. But at least he listened to me.

I hear a distinct mocking and loud cough, unafraid, and my nostrils flare as a familiar scent hits my nose. The Banished One.

I lower my gun to look right in the direction of the sound.

“Why are you out here all alone?” Hades asks casually, unaware of what he’s interrupting. I glare at him as he waltzes over out of the dark to come closer to me, “Fyre… you hunting birds? Bats? There’s none out here. I bet you’re very hungry.”

“Don’t talk to me,” I shrug him off, as I look through my gun again, “Talk to me again, and I’ll tell Skye.”

“You’ll tell on me?” Hades barks laughter, as he still gets closer, “He’s my younger brother, you lil’ shit –”

I turn the gun on him instead, as he keeps getting closer, what did he want? “Stay back Banished One.”

Hades holds up his hands, clearly without any weapons. Skinny now. He’s lost almost all his muscle.

He stops approaching, finally.

I grit my teeth and exhale a frustrated breath as I decide not to lose my aim again.

When I aim at the crater – I see a tall skinny figure coming out of the trees with a glinting foot, she’s heading toward the rise in the crater, coming for her son.

Adrenaline shoots through me as I quickly aim to her head, and try to steady the shot before I press the trigger.

I steady my breaths, I focus, focus, ready, 3, 2, 1 – trigger.

The laser shoots off – into the ground.

I’m fucking body slammed into the boulder at my right side.

I hear my ribs crack and I cry out as I crumple to the side and then to the ground, to see Hades yank the heavy gun out of my hand and take it from me, turning it around on me instead.

This time I put up my hands – and seal my lips shut.

What the hell was he doing? He would die for this.

Wait…did he know she lived?

“Listen to me,” Hades takes one step closer and raises his leg to press his boot against my fingers, digging in the heel until my fingers almost break. He presses the barrel of the gun to my head, “This is the last time you pull this shit. You want to know how it feels to be a traitor?” he waits for my answer but it’s a rhetorical question, “You have no choice now – you’re double crossing Skye for Ryder. Here by from this moment unless you wish to die?” A trade. I had to flip sides, or he would kill me right now. I show my compliance with a small nod. Hades keeps the gun there and slightly presses the trigger, so it heats against my head. “Good,” then he releases me, takes his foot off my hand and the gun from my head, “You’ll say nothing.”

I jump to my feet, holding my broken ribs and bruised fingers, feeling the damage.

“That’s all?” I ask, huskily and breathless with my mellowing rage.

“If you want to stand even a chance at being a Luna one day, you’ll obey the Alpha without question,” oh, Hades does have a sense of humour for someone exiled forever from Wolf Dominion. He refers to himself as an Alpha. He smirks and keeps the gun focused on me so I won’t run just yet, he points it up and down my figure, “…you’re not made for it anyway… even though you were made for it by Vastian… you were second best… didn’t you know?” he’s rubbing it in.

“Shut up,” I hiss, furious.

Hades aims the gun up high, “Huh? You don’t like the truth. How do you think Ryder will take the truth?”

“She doesn’t care about –”

“Not her,” Hades loses his smile and glares at me. He’s talking about – “How do you think Ryder will feel when I tell him you tried to kill his mother?” I pale at the thought, “That’s what I thought… go home to Destor and cry about it…”

“Please don’t –” I choke on the words, because I know if he does tell Ryder, it will end our relationship forever. He would never forgive me. Fucking Hades had to interrupt this.

“Please don’t,” Hades repeats me, “Alpha.”

“Alpha… so you have plans to…?” I ask.

“Don’t try and change the subject, Fyre,” Hades’ lips twitch back up into a half smile, “Say nothing and neither will I.”

“How can you trust me?” I ask, “By word alone?”

“How much do you love him?” Hades asks blatantly, “Oh, don’t answer it, it’s written all over your face.”

“I won’t say anything, asshole.”

“Neither will you try to do again what you tried to do tonight,” Hades keeps the gun and nods to Destor, “Go.”

“Can I ask you one more question?” I wonder, “…do you really think she can –”

“To all your questions, yes, yes and yes,” Hades cuts me off, “Happy?”

I turn and run.

So he can’t see me cry from jealousy.

“Fyre,” he snarls my name and I stop to hear him say, but I don’t turn around, “Don’t be afraid.”

Fuck him. Fuck you. You weren’t the Alpha. You’d never be the Alpha. Fucking Shade.

I keep running, while feeling… not very torn.

Between what I should do – and what I had to do to survive.

Ryder’s [Luna] POV

I finally approach my son, and I’ll tell you what – I’ve had my limb sawn off, had a baby stolen from my womb, him, murdered and almost been murdered countless times, been a slave, a prisoner and a traitor… but this is the single most confronting thing I’ve ever had to do.

I walk over the hill and I clench my hands just behind me, hoping he talks first.

We lock eyes.

Ryder does talk, looking up from the wreckage, he seems unsurprised as he says, “You again,” I walk a little bit down the hill, as he looks me over, a little confused, a little bored, a little hesitant to speak to me further, “…what do you want?” he asks.

“To introduce myself –” I start with a shaky voice – but I see a loud flash and Ryder and I both snap our heads to look up hill into the near distance, on a sheer cliff edge topped with boulders.

“Fyre,” Ryder hisses and sprints off into the forest.

He is so fast, I barely have time to react.

I watch him disappear into the trees, out of reach.

I myself, take a second to compose myself – realising I’m out in the open and my son was used as bait.

I quickly retreat into cover, walking backwards, while anger floods into me.

Everyone used my son against me.

Everyone!

And I still hadn’t introduced myself!

My frustration overwhelms me – I can’t help it.

I scream bloody murder into the forest, turning into a tree and punching it repeatedly until the bark falls off.

I finally turn around. Falling to the dirt and leaves. My hands bloody as I place them on my knees.

I look up into the sky – and through the branches and leaves, I see Wolf Dominion’s ship in the last ray of dusk. I see the Dominator on the balcony, a perfect shadow – looking right at me.

“Ryder.”

I blink. When I look again at the podium jutting out of Skye’s residence, the balcony – the empty balcony, I see no one. It was a shadow from the setting sun.

So now I’m imagining things.

“Ryder.”

I jump up and turn around, right into Hades.

He’s scared me so much I’ve spun and punched him in the face. For a second I thought it was Skye again. Their voices were so similar.

Hades doesn’t avoid it, and gets a bloody nose from it.

“I’m –” sorry.

I want to apologise but Hades is laughing his ass off.

“Only you would welcome me like that,” Hades wipes the blood away and waits for me summary, “So how did it go?”

“Ryder ran off into the forest to save Fyre – from you I’d bet.”

“I didn’t hurt her,” Hades shrugs, hands out, before reaching behind him and pulling out a stolen laser gun from his belt, “Another one for your small army,” he tosses it at me and I catch it, nodding.

“Thanks.”

“No need to thank me – ” Hades looks me over, up and down, before backing up a little forcibly, making himself keep his distance and lean back against a tree trunk.

“So tell me about all your new serpent girlfriends,” I pester him, feeling like being annoying.

“Tell me about your bloody hands, luny,” Hades motions to my knuckles, pulverised into the tree and his face, “You really need to take a break from the universe of the Luna for one night… you should come spend the night with me…” his voice is dropping an octave as he gets a certain look in his eye.

But my ears – and his, have picked up a new kind of rumble.

A… tank?

Before we can even respond, well – Hades does respond, by shoving me into a tree, and standing back as a spotlight suddenly shines on him.

I’m hidden by a trunk, while Hades is blinded by white light.

The engine gets louder.

A speaker amplifies a voice.

“HADES, YOU’VE VIOLATED AN ORDER OF EXILE FROM THE ALLIANCE,” Raygar’s voice comes through, “YOU THREATENED OUR LUNA AND STOLE HER WEAPON.”

So now they were going to what, imprison him?

Hades doesn’t get a moment to speak.

“YOU KNEW MY FINAL STANCE AND DISOBEYED ANYWAY,” Skye takes over now, “YOUR FINAL SENTENCE IS DEATH.”

Hades still doesn’t get a single moment more.

Not even a word.

I see a blinding light mess with my vision.

I can’t see anything for a split moment – then when it dies, my eyes adjust to the darkness, no more spotlight – and a slumped body.

It takes me a second.

It just takes a damn second.

I hear the rumble of their vehicles take off back to Destor, leaving his body behind.

I walk forward emotionless, and I see a burned hole in his chest, right through the middle.

His mouth is open – no breath goes in or out.

I kneel and hold Hades’ cold face and I don’t think he can even see me.

I stand up, spin, in denial, as I walk out into the crater.

I can’t let this overwhelm me.

I go straight into the debris, looking for his old human form, knowing he was incinerated, but looking for anything anyway to give me hope.

Glass, metal, dirt, grass. Plastic. I touch everything.

I pull aside things one at a time, barely breathing myself, just looking for anything to fix this.

God knows how much time passes as I refuse to think about what just happened.

“What are you doing?”

I pause.

Ryder came back.

I look up, and in a moment of fury I almost want to kill him, just to get back at Skye.

I stand still and stare at my son Ryder, in his formal cloak, another Alpha, without any idea who I was, just curious now to learn.

“No one knows I’m here,” he tells me, as I turn back to the wreckage, “You really know how to fly under the radar, huh?”

“I’m looking for – something, maybe you can help,” I keep tossing things aside, borrowing deeper into the wreckage.

“You’ll need to give me something more than ‘something’… food? There’s no food in there –”

“I’m not looking for food,” I hiss, “I’m looking for anything.”

“Anything,” Ryder scoffs, just like Skye, almost freaking identical, “Anything could be –”

“Yes. Anything of interest, Ryder, besides junk,” I say, finding what could almost be considered an opening to a crumbled hall way, smashed into the ground.

Finally. Something of interest.

I start throwing stuff back, until a huge piece of hull, slips over the very place I want to go. I pick up a metal pipe to try and shift it, but it’s too heavy, even for me.

“Fuck,” I could almost cry.

Ryder hesitates, but then he comes forward.

He finds two bigger pieces of metal pipe, he hands me one and we both wedge the pipes into the gap, to heave and pull back.

Together, we move the hull out of the way, but only partially, we have to keep the pressure on.

“You found a new entry,” Ryder says, “Part of the ship sunk into the ground?”

“Yes,” I whisper, as soon as the gap is wide enough, I let go to see if he can hold it – he can. I drop down to squeeze myself through to the other side. As soon as I’m in, I look back at my son and tell him, “When I come back, open it again for me…” I wait to see if he’ll agree.

Ryder kind of seems confused why I would expect him to listen.

But I don’t have time to explain.

His expression might be blank and unreadable, but I turn around and start to head down straight away into the ship buried beneath.

I just need some of the cloning area to have survived.

That’s all I need.

Not many rooms have survived.

Well – a couple.

First of all, it’s clear the cloning room is on the wrong side of the ship – the area that got blasted out instead, which is how I got out of the furnace in the first place.

But I do find storage, and when I open the doors – I find purple light, from a separate battery – growing plants out of seeds.

I have to do a double take.

Did I just walk into a seed bank?

Am I really reading ‘SEED BANK’ on the wall?

So I did find food – and I’ve never been so disappointed.

“Ha,” the one thing I would have died to find an hour ago, for all inhabitants on earth, but it doesn’t regrow a man, does it?

It’s time to leave, with crushing disappointment.

I walk back out of the room, into the hall, and look up.

I start to climb, when I have the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

Look back.

All my instincts say to look back – in the SEED BANK. Look again.

I go back to the door, and I slam it open again, properly walking in this time.

Everything is on it’s side, and there are a few more doors to open.

“You’re fucking crazy,” I murmur to myself, as I slam open more doors, pretending I’ll find Hades.

Yeah, I’ll fucking find him in a food storage, away from everyone else – wouldn’t I?

I’d like to.

And I’m fucking insane for even trying to believe it.

But he was the outcast who hated following orders. He had awoken to be cloned before. If he had worked it out before I did… he wouldn’t be in the clone room with the others like sheep.

He’s be relocated somewhere else. Right? Right? Maybe?

Please.

Please.

Every door is full of random shit.

But no man.

I look at the last storage door, a restricted door.

Without a thought I walk over and kick it in. Last try.

Inside is the single cell battery, keeping the SEED BANK alive.

Next to the battery, hooked up, is a pod – with the human Hades. With memories of me marrying his brother, Vastian. Still clad in his biker leather, the same outfit he arrived in when he decided to join last minute, the space adventure to Genesis.

Emotionless with joy I can’t even feel, I can’t help but think – Hades was going to be happy there were still motorbikes left on Earth.