Luna In the Enemy's Den

Luna In the Enemy's Den
Ayla

The hatch opened with a scream of rusted metal that made me wince.
I held it halfway and listened, but nothing answered from below. Cold, damp air pushed through the opening instead, carrying old chemicals beneath the smell of wet stone and rot.
“This was a bad idea,” I whispered.
Aramana agreed immediately, which was irritating considering she had been pulling me toward it for the last twenty minutes.
The shaft beneath the hatch was narrow, with an old ladder bolted straight into the stone. My light caught rust, bent rungs, and then nothing once the darkness swallowed the beam. The pups shifted when I leaned over the opening.
“I know.”
Another small movement pressed against my side.
“Still going.”
Aramana’s disapproval sharpened, but so did the pull inside me.
I lowered myself onto the ladder.
The climb down was awkward enough with my stomach in the way that I stopped pretending I could move like I normally would. I tested the worst-looking rungs before trusting them and took my time until my boots finally hit the small concrete landing below.
My arms hurt. I ignored them.
The tunnel ahead smelled worse.
The chemical stink was faint, but my body recognized it before I had time to decide whether I wanted to. Aramana pressed closer as I moved forward, and the pups settled into an uneasy quiet that I liked even less than the kicking.
The passage sloped downward through cracked concrete and standing water. Old conduit ran along one wall, long dead, and dark stains disappeared beneath newer layers of grime. I kept my light ahead of me and followed the pull when the corridor bent.
The farther I went, the stronger it became.
Something in the mountain wanted me in a very specific place.
I wasn't sure whether that was reassuring.
The tunnel forked, and the answer came almost immediately from the right. Aramana felt it too, so I followed without wasting time pretending I might choose differently.
The first thing my light found was a gurney.
I stopped.
It lay half on its side against the wall, one wheel twisted beneath it and a restraint still hanging from the frame. The leather had cracked with age, but it was intact enough that I knew exactly how it would have felt around a wrist.
Mine ached anyway.
Aramana crowded close.
“I’m fine.”
She didn’t believe me.
Neither did I, really, but that was different from not being able to keep moving.
A broken IV stand leaned nearby, yellowed tubing hardened against the floor. There was an old dark smear along the concrete beyond it, but I didn’t follow it with the light. I already knew enough about what kind of place this had been.
My power had started to stir beneath my skin.
It was subtle at first, a gathering warmth under my sternum that slowly moved into my arms. I curled my fingers before the pressure could reach my palms.
“Not yet.”
Aramana would have preferred now.
The corridor opened into a larger room lined with metal doors.
Cells.
Most of them stood open. The floors inside were scarred, and restraints had been fixed directly into the walls.
I stepped into the nearest doorway before I could talk myself out of it.
The concrete was cold under my palm. My power reacted the instant I touched it, a faint pulse of blue beneath my skin and something older underneath that I wished I hadn’t felt.
Fear had lived here.
Not the quick kind.
The kind that stayed long enough to become part of the room.
I pulled my hand back.
For one second I saw my father there.
Not because I knew Mikhail had ever stood in this exact cell. I didn’t. But I knew what wolves like these had done to him. I knew what they had done to Raven. I knew what they had done to me.
Different rooms didn’t make much difference after a while.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
I wasn’t sure who I meant, and I didn’t try to sort it out.
Something shifted deeper in the tunnel.
Aramana reacted before I did. Her attention snapped forward, then down toward the pups so quickly that I felt the change through my whole body.
“He knows we’re here.”
She wanted me to leave.
That almost made me laugh.
“You sound like Thane.”
The offense that came back was immediate.
“Fine. Worse than Thane.”
That earned me even more.
I left the cells behind.
The next passage dropped more steeply and warmed as I went. The air turned damp and sour, with something almost sweet beneath the chemical smell. I didn’t know what it was and had no intention of getting curious.
Something small moved at the edge of my light.
Claws scraped over stone and disappeared into the dark.
I kept walking.
The pups shifted again a few minutes later, one of them pressing hard against my side until I stopped and rubbed the spot.
“Okay, okay.”
My back had started aching too, and I hated that Aramana noticed.
She pushed at me again.
“I said I know.”
She had never been subtle about thinking I was stubborn.
Neither had anyone else.
The concrete finally gave way to raw stone, and the pull inside me grew strong enough that I stopped noticing the ache in my back.
Then I stepped into the cavern.
It was enormous.
My light barely reached far enough to show the nearest platforms bolted into the rock. Rusted catwalks connected them overhead, and broken equipment lay scattered across the cavern floor around a cracked concrete work area.
This place was older than the labs I remembered.
That was obvious immediately.
Cruder equipment. Rougher construction. Restraints built into whatever space happened to be available instead of hidden behind polished walls and clean floors.
They had gotten better at making it look respectable later.
That didn’t make the work any different.
My light passed over drains cut into the concrete and an old observation opening carved into the far wall. The glass had been shattered outward.
I didn’t go closer.
The pull inside me surged.
Blue light flickered over my fingertips before I could stop it. Dust shifted across the ground around my boots, and water trembled where it clung to the stone.
Aramana went completely still inside me.
“Ayla.”
His voice came from the darkness.
Rougher than I remembered.
Still Eric.
“I was wondering how long it would take you to find me.”
I swept my light toward the sound.
It crossed empty cages, bent railing, broken equipment.
Then he stepped into the edge of the beam.
I had expected damage.
I had not expected his body to look like it had been repaired too many times by something that didn’t care how the pieces fit back together.
One arm was heavier than the other, the muscles thick and uneven. His spine curved oddly beneath his clothes before straightening again. Scar tissue covered one side of his face in layers, and several places along his body looked like skin had healed around fabric instead of over it.
His left leg dragged slightly when he moved.
His eyes were clear.
That bothered me more than the rest.
He knew exactly where he was.
He knew exactly why I had come.
And judging by the way he looked at me, he had known I would.
“You shouldn’t have come down here,” he said. “But I knew you would.”
I tightened my grip on the flashlight.
“I don’t think you get to decide where I go.”
One side of his mouth lifted slower than the other.
“No. But I do get to decide what happens when you arrive.”
He stepped farther into the light, favoring the damaged leg without seeming to notice he was doing it.
“You remember the work,” he said. “Maybe not this room. Raven would.”
Raven’s name wiped everything else out of my head.
“I remember enough. And you will never go near her.”
His gaze dropped to my stomach.
Aramana slammed forward inside me.
I wanted to cover the pups. I didn’t.
He already knew they were there. I wasn’t going to show him how much I hated the way he looked at them.
“How does it feel,” he asked, “walking into the foundation of everything your mate destroyed?”
I looked around at what was left.
The drains.
The cages.
The restraints.
“Like taking out the trash.”
He laughed, but the sound broke apart when something in his chest went wrong.
Eric pressed a hand against his sternum. Beneath it, something shifted visibly under the skin.
I watched.
His body drew inward for a few seconds while he waited for it to stop. There was pain in his face, but no surprise. Whatever this was, he knew it well.
When he could breathe normally again, he looked back at me.
“See? Still alive. Still his failure.”
“You’re not Thane’s failure.”
I held his gaze.
“You’re your father’s.”
That got through.
Only for a second, but I saw it.
“My father gave me a future,” Eric said. “Thane took it.”
My power gathered harder in my hands.
Whatever his father had done to him was still active. Still healing. Still changing things it shouldn’t.
My gift hated it.
So did Aramana.
Eric looked at my stomach again.
This time Aramana’s aggression changed.
Wait.
The word came through clearly enough that I listened.
“Sneaking away from your mate is dangerous,” Eric said.
I almost laughed at that.
If Eric had any idea how dangerous Thane was going to be when he realized where I had gone, he might have been more worried about himself.
Then his eyes dropped again.
“And you still came. Even like that.”
There was nothing curious in the way he looked at me.
He was calculating.
I knew that look.
I had spent too much of my life around wolves who could look at another person and immediately start deciding which part of them could be used.
The pups moved beneath my ribs.
My hand went to them before I stopped it.
Eric noticed.
Of course he did.
“I didn’t come for your approval.”
“I know. You came because you think this ends me.”
“I came because you keep making yourself everyone else’s problem.”
The little bit of humor left his face.
Aramana paced beneath my skin, furious with him and not much happier with me. She would fight with me. I knew that as surely as I knew my own name.
But now there were pups to protect too.
That changed the shape of everything.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” Eric said.
My power burned hotter beneath my palms.
I held it there.
For now.
And far above us, the world continues turning, totally unaware that it's Luna has just walked into the very heart of her enemy’s den.