Chapter 21: Terrifed Luna
Vivian Grey’s POV
"What?" I blinked at him, unsure I’d heard right.
We were idling at a red light when he turned toward me, his sharp profile cast in shadows, but his expression was steady, tired, but serious. The kind of serious that pulled every ounce of focus out of me.
"You said you had questions," he said quietly, his voice lacking the usual cold bite. "Now’s your chance."
I thought he’d brushed me off earlier. Guess not. That meant I had to make this count.
"Okay," I hesitated, gathering my thoughts before blurting out, "Why do the wolves in your pack have silver eyes when they shift? I’ve never seen that before, not in any pack."
I gestured toward my own eyes as if that would help explain. Then I turned fully to face him, watching every twitch in his face. Every clue. His jaw tensed before he schooled his features into that impassive, frosty look he wore like armor.
"No other pack is led by a god," he said simply. "My wolves channel my strength during combat, on missions, or even just to show reverence."
I blinked. "They channel you? Wouldn’t that weaken you, especially if a lot of them are doing it at the same time? Is that why no one’s seen you in years? Are you drained or something?"
His lips twitched faintly, not into a smile, but something close to it. "No. If anything, it strengthens me. They borrow, but I retain. I actually feed off—"
He stopped abruptly, pressing his lips into a hard line.
I tilted my head at him, trying to coax the rest out without saying a word. Feed off what? His pack? Their devotion? Something else entirely? The sentence just sat there between us, unfinished, and I had a feeling whatever he’d been about to say was something he’d decided I wasn’t ready for yet. Or something he hadn’t planned on admitting at all.
I filed it away. I’d circle back to that later, when he was in a more giving mood.
"Alright," I said instead. "What about those Latin commands you use? How do they even work? And why can I understand them?"
His eyes flicked to me briefly, then back to the road. He answered in Latin first. The words slid off his tongue with effortless authority, unhurried and precise. Even though I didn’t know the literal meaning, I knew what he meant. My wolf perked up instantly, like she’d been called to attention without her permission.
That, right there, was the part that unsettled me.
"It’s a direct command," he said in English again. "Stronger than an alpha’s sacred binding. When I give an order in Latin, it bypasses everything, goes straight to the wolf. And the wolf obeys. No hesitation. No room for interpretation."
I sat with that for a moment.
I knew what alpha command felt like. It was like having your body and soul yanked in a direction you didn’t choose, your own instincts overridden by someone else’s will. But what he was describing was something deeper. More invasive. More absolute. It didn’t just override the person, it bypassed them entirely, went straight to the animal underneath like the human part didn’t even factor in.
Every time he’d commanded me in Latin and I’d obeyed before I’d even decided to, that was what had been happening. Not my wolf responding to an alpha. My wolf responding to a god, directly, with nothing in between.
"Direct command," I murmured quietly, more to myself than to him.
"How it works," he muttered, gripping the wheel tighter, his knuckles turning stark white, "that’s a longer story. As for how you understand it..."
His voice trailed off. He looked torn, his frustration sharp and unhidden. "I’m not completely sure," he finally admitted.
So even he didn’t know. That was oddly reassuring. And even more terrifying.
I let a beat of silence pass before speaking again. "What about that thing you did to me? In my head. Still not okay, by the way," I added sharply, folding my arms.
He chuckled, not the least bit apologetic. "I said I’m sorry, didn’t I? That should count for something."
I gave him a dry look.
"It was necessary," he continued, glancing sideways at me. "I had to know what you knew. Had to see if I could trust you."
I pounced on that. "Know what?"
"Next question," he said, finality laced in those two words.
Figures.
I chewed on my bottom lip, debating how far I could push before he shut down entirely. Zaliver wasn’t going to spill all his secrets, at least not yet. Maybe not ever. But I had a feeling he wasn’t lying either. Just editing.
Still, this was only our second full day together. We were hardly the fairy tale version of mates. If anything, we were stuck in the prologue of a very complicated story.
Time to dial it down a notch.
"Back where I’m from, you’re more of a legend than a real person," I said quietly. "We’ve only heard of places your wolves have attacked, raided in your name. No one’s actually seen you in years. Why is that?"
He frowned, not in offense, more like confusion, so I clarified. "I mean, why stay hidden?"
Realization settled into his features, and his mouth curved slightly, more sardonic than amused.
"I don’t bother with minor problems when my pack can handle them for me," he said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "I used to go out there, walk among them. But when I lived in the human territories, I got tired of arrogant wolves showing up just to try and challenge me."
I raised a brow. "Seriously?"
"Every few decades, without fail," he said, his tone somewhere between bored and irritated, like he was recalling a particularly tedious pattern. "Some young alpha hears the name Lupus Deus and decides that taking me down is how he proves himself. They never last long. But after a few centuries of it," he paused, jaw ticking, "it got old. So I stopped making myself available."
I stared at him. "You withdrew from the entire world because wolves kept picking fights with you?"
"I withdrew," he said evenly, "because killing them was starting to feel like maintenance."
The car went quiet after that. I turned back to face the road, processing the casual, devastating weight of what he’d just said. Six hundred years of being the most powerful thing in the room, and the solution he’d landed on was simply to stop showing up.
I wasn’t sure if that made him sad or terrifying. Probably both.
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