Vladimir's Marked Luna

Chapter 99: Right By You

𓆩𝐕𝐥𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐦𝐢𝐫𓆪

Of course they didn’t.

Because I’d created a perfect storm of impossible circumstances.

"Keep looking," I said. "There has to be something."

"I will. But High Alpha—" He hesitated. "You need to prepare for the possibility that there isn’t. That you’ll have to make a choice. Soon."

The line went dead.

I stood there, phone still clenched in my hand, staring at nothing.

Three choices. All of them unacceptable.

Complete the bond: Break the Luna Duel laws, hand Kustav ammunition, potentially force myself on her when she doesn’t truly want me—only the bond wants me.

Separate: Watch her wither from the incomplete bond while I fight the rut alone, possibly for months, possibly forever.

Do nothing: Lose control completely and take away her choice, her agency, everything—become the monster she already thinks I am.

Days. Maybe a week.

The rut pulsed through me, patient and hungry.

Waiting for me to break.

Waiting to make the choice for me.

I looked down at my hands—one flesh, one metal—and wondered which would be the one to destroy her. 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

I shut my eyes, moving to the drawer of damnation and pulling it open.

Lust and hunger outweighed the shame that bubbled as I opened my eyes to her stolen panties placed carefully within.

I needed release—I picked them up.

---

I found myself at her door after dark. My temporary release was like a bandaid over a gaping wound, but for now it was enough to be this close—since I couldn’t simply keep away.

I touched her door, the distance between us so little yet so large.

I had replayed the gutting hurt on her face from that day so many times, it was imprinted like ink on my brain. The way her shoulders quaked as she tried to hold herself together, and I could do nothing but watch her leave.

The bond pulsing so loudly between us I could feel the exact moment my words crashed into her and snuffed out her hope.

I ran my hand over the obstructing door, trying to make sense of the chaos coursing within me like a vengeful river.

And the thing was—even if I did give her this, give us this—our road ahead would be nothing but torture until the very end.

There was so much she didn’t know. About me. My plans. My life and what would become my end.

I had nothing to offer her other than heartache and regret.

She wouldn’t have cared about me if not for the bond that hung incomplete, trying to reach out to finish what had been started by all means necessary.

She was being driven to feelings not of her own choice, twisted by biology and magic into something that looked like want but was really just... programming.

The bond wasn’t love.

It was compulsion dressed in desire’s clothes.

And I refused to be the one who stole her agency while pretending it was destiny.

Even if it killed me.

Even if it killed us both.

I pressed my forehead against her door, close enough to feel her presence on the other side, close enough that the bond sang with relief at the proximity.

But not close enough to hurt her more than I already had.

"I’m sorry, moya," I whispered to the wood between us. Words she’d never hear. Words I’d never have the courage to say to her face.

Because if I opened this door, if I let myself be weak—

I’d take everything from her.

And call it love.

She deserved warmth that I could not give or afford to, my gaze fell on my arm.

So I stayed on my side of the door.

In the cold.

Where I belonged.

—

🌙𝐋𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐡

Snow and steel wafted through the air—a draught, I was sure—but it didn’t stop my eyes from pricking with tears.

He was everywhere and nowhere at once. The incessant aching in my chest and between my legs made it impossible to think, to breathe, to exist without feeling like I was being pulled apart at the seams.

I curled tighter under the covers, pressing my thighs together against the throbbing need that had become constant over the past few days.

Three days.

Three days since he’d told me to stop speaking.

Three days since I’d seen that look in his eyes—like I was hurting him just by existing.

Three days of training where I moved through the motions like a puppet, never once looking up at the observation deck where I knew he watched.

Three days of this bond screaming in my chest, demanding something I couldn’t name and wasn’t allowed to have.

The scent grew stronger—snow and steel and something underneath that was purely him—and I sat up abruptly, heart pounding.

Was he—?

No. Impossible. He’d made it clear he wanted distance. That I was driving him to the edge of something terrible just by speaking, by existing in his space.

I was imagining things—imagining him down to his scent.

I groaned, turning to the urn. "Mum, I just never learn, do I?" I whispered, knowing I would get no reply back but still wishing for one nonetheless.

I just needed, craved a voice that would talk me out of this painful place, listen to me attempt to unknot the wild tangle of feelings that were ripping me apart. To tell me my hurt was justified, that even though I was a thing bought, I still had a right to feel hurt.

Ever since I got here, this was the most alone I felt.

Dmitri and I were not close enough to speak as intensely as I wanted to. He seemed like the aloof kind juggling a thousand things in his head. It would be foolish to talk to yet another impenetrable wall.

I had no friends in this place and everyone I had met here had been hostile, every single one, Veronique, the woman who had clawed me, Olya, Sylvanna—

My phone pinged, drawing me out of my spiral.

Confused and hopeful, I reached for the phone to see a message request.

"Hello, it’s Sylvanna,"