She lifted her chin, a stubborn tilt that made something twist deep inside of me. “You don’t need to say anything,” she replied, her voice low, almost hollow. She stood from the chair by the window, her eyes locked on the floor as she moved closer. Her movements were stiff, like she was forcing herself to remain composed.
“I do need to say something,” I pressed, my voice rough, each word a struggle. “You saved me. And I didn’t ask for it.”
Her gaze flicked to mine briefly, sharp, as though she was studying me. “I didn’t do it for you,” she said, her voice flat, a shield she had put up in front of herself. “I did it for me. Because I couldn’t just stand there while you died.”
There it was, the truth between us. It wasn’t about some twisted sense of duty or love. It was about survival. Her survival. And maybe, for the first time in a long time, I understood that. I wasn’t just the man she clung to anymore. She was the one who made the choice to survive.
I knew then that we weren’t the same anymore.
I was breathing, but I wasn’t alive the way she was.
“You’re different,” I said, my voice quieter now. “You’ve changed.”
Luna hesitated. Her shoulders tensed as she looked at me again, and I saw the flicker of something behind her eyes—something I couldn’t quite place.
“I had to,” she replied. “If I didn’t, I would’ve lost myself too. And I’m not about to let that happen.”
I watched her, the woman I thought I knew, now entirely untouchable. And I knew, with the weight of everything in me, that the world we were walking into was different now. I had seen it in her eyes, in the way she fought.
And I couldn’t control her anymore.
Not the way I thought I could.
The realization hit harder than any blade.
“I won’t let you go,” I said, my voice low, full of determination.
Her lips parted slightly, and for a heartbeat, I saw something softer in her eyes—something I hadn’t seen since before the violence. But just as quickly, it was gone.
“I don’t need you to let me go,” she said, her voice almost a whisper. “I need you to let me be.”
And that was the moment everything between us shifted. No longer would I be the man who saved her. She had saved me, in a way I hadn’t even known I needed.
And now, the question was, could we survive this new dynamic between us?
Would we even want to?
Two weeks had passed since Luna dragged me out of that hell. Since I crawled through blood and metal, since I looked death in the face and chose her instead.
Recovery was slow. My right hand still trembled when I held a pen too long. I couldn’t lift my left arm past my shoulder without pain spiking up my neck. But pain was nothing new. Neither was the silence in this estate, now that the worst of the noise had been silenced.
Alexei was dead. Lev too. As for Chernov himself? The coward ran. Disappeared across a border with forged papers andno name. He’d been legally implicated, enough that his arrest would be instant on Russian soil. Exile was mercy.
He was nothing now. A ghost with no empire, no family. Forgotten.
And I should have felt victorious.
But Luna had been vomiting in the mornings.
And refusing to tell me why.
I’d asked. Once. She’d lied. Once. I didn’t ask again. But I watched her from the doorway every morning, bent over the bathroom sink with shaking hands and pale cheeks. I knew. And it scared me more than any knife.
I had no time to dwell. Being Pakhan meant no hours off, no room for doubt. Yakutsk was fire and teeth. Every man wanted something from me. The city’s veins ran thick with bribes, contracts, and blood. The legal side alone took a full team—permits, logistics, laundering. Then came the war meetings, the territories that needed my voice, my signature, my wrath.
Even now, I was buried in maps, reports, phones ringing every other minute—when the door opened without a knock.
Luna.
