Page 5 of The Red Moon

“Viktor,” the man says in a low gruff, earning a few nods from his smaller counterpart.

I place the bucket to the cement, and in an instant, every captive begins inching toward it with discernable unease. They might be afraid of these two men in front of me, but I’m sure as hell not. I know something they don’t. Both of these wolves are on Viktor’s orders, his payroll, and if Sergei can’t even talk to me, I have little doubt either would survive the night if they put a hand—or claw on me.

My smile wanes, replaced by a glare of pure malice at the one hurling out orders. He matches my scowl, and even snarls in my direction. His eyes, a pointed gray, start at my feet, trail up the clothes I woke up in, and finally land on my face.

“Viktor is not your alpha,” I say, vitriol dripping off each syllable. Slowly, my smirk returns, especially when I see this wolf’s hardened features twitch. “Nikolai is coming for me.”

For the first time since he came down here, there’s a flash in Sergei’s eyes, casting them a brighter shade. It’s as though the mere mention of Nik’s name stripped away whatever hell this pack has put him through already. And as quickly as it appears, the light is gone.

“Yeah!” Veronica agrees from the far side of the cage. “Nikolai is coming for us!”

I have to close my eyes to keep them from rolling. Again. Why couldn’t they have a second fucking cage?

A low guttural sound vibrates from his chest. I hear the people behind me falter back, but I refuse to move an inch. We stare at one another, neither yielding. He drops the bucket to the ground and more water sloshes as it teeters in the upright position. He glides his tongue over his large and unnatural teeth.

“Viktor is alpha.”

Without another word, he kicks the bucket over, giving the cement floor a black sheen reaching for the farthest wall. A collective gasp works from one side of the cage to the other, some of the captives muttering curses under their breath. My jaw drops as a wicked grin twists his face. He turns on his heel for the stairs, not bothering to give me a second glace. “Sergei,” he demands, and starts to climb the steps.

The small wolf watches him go, giving me one last pitiful look before he limps behind him. The door slams shut atop the staircase, followed by a latch locking it in place. Silence is the only thing we hear now. Silence and the unmistakeable heavy breathing of more than a few people realizing this isn’t a dream.

“We don’t have water because of you!” a man shouts behind me.

When I turn, he shoves his finger in my direction. He has a large piece of bread in his free hand, and if I had to guess, he’s wondering how the hell he’ll wash the rest of it down while our water supply coats the floor. “You’re gonna get us all killed.”

I want to say something. To swear I was standing up for all of us, but there’s no point. I taunted a wolf, and because of me, we will all go without water until the next pail is brought down. It could be hours. It could be days. The Vostik pack will keep us alive until the red moon, that much is certain, but it doesn’t mean we won’t have to endure dehydration to get there. If I could only explain how bad it’s going to get to all of them. What the monsters upstairs are truly capable of.

But I don’t.

Instead, I lower my head in silence and turn toward the bucket of bread Sergei handed me. I kneel and scrape what I can from the bottom. Crumbs. All I’m left with are fucking crumbs.

FOUR

NIK

I have to tilt my head to fit through the cabin door, then walk down the metal steps to solid ground. The two pilots stand off to the side, each carrying the same nervous grin. It’s easy to notice the fear hiding behind those forced smiles. Not difficult to pick out when I grew up watching the staff around the Vostik compound look at me like a monster. Cooks and maids would flee from any room I entered years before my first transformation. It didn’t matter I was only six years old at the time and as human as they were. No, I had the curse, and eventually, I would become the same beast that signed their paychecks.

“I hope the flight wasn’t too bumpy, Mr. Vostik,” the pilot with four golden stripes on his shoulders says, removing the flight cap and bringing it to his belt line. Orenski, his nametag reads. Captain Orenski keeps a firm posture, though I feel each thud of his heartbeat pumping double-time. It must be painful to strain your cheeks that much to smile, when in reality all you want to do is scramble back on the jet and fly as far away from this restricted airfield as possible.

I nod, doing my best not to snarl at the two of them for what they said during the fourteen-hour flight. Sure, they stopped complaining when the wire transfer went through halfway to our destination, but that didn’t stop them from speaking their mind about the cargo they were carrying. Me.

It would seem my father added another hangar to the far end right before the tree line, this one larger than the rest. A bigger plane? More sacrifices flown here for his celebratory hunts, I assume. We’ve always transported our captives by cargo ships, loading the unconscious into large metal crates, the way clothes, food, and goods are transported across the Atlantic. Pay off a dock worker to add a new shipment to the manifest. Then, the pack has enough food to last until the next hunt. There has always been a clerical problem with that, though. The seas are unpredictable. Untimely. I’ve been on the unfortunate end of enough phone calls to know when our cargo is late. And if the pack has to go hungry? Well, it’s just another shortcoming added to my stain on the Vostik family name. Why wait weeks when you can have your crop here in hours? I’ve truly underestimated the things being done behind my back. What my own flesh and blood has kept from me.

“There—there was supposed to be a car waiting for you, sir,” Captain Orenski says. “I’m not sure if we’re early?”

We’re not. We’re right on time.

I heard their heartbeats the second we landed. Knew they were waiting in the shadows of the hangar we parked in front of. Five of them. Five wolves step into the sunlight, each as unrecognizable as the private airport I myself haven’t been back to since I left for LA. The last time I saw my father and swore I’d never come back to this little slice of hell he calls his sanctuary. The wolves form a line in front of me, each pair of glowing eyes filled with noticeable disgust.

My father has been busy. He hasn’t just been keeping the members of the pack alive but cursing new ones as well. This is why Viktor isn’t holding back anymore. Why he started taking anyone that came into Völk without my say so. It isn’t our pack Vlad Vostik needs to feed anymore.

It isn’t a pack at all. He’s created an army.

“Don’t look so shocked, Nikolai,” the largest one of the group says and takes a step forward. “Did you really think we wouldn’t be waiting for you the second you stepped foot here, traitor?”

A small, unintended laugh breaks from me, and I match his glare with a smirk. “We were counting on it.”

An arrow splits the air near my face on a collision course for the one brave enough to stand against me. His reward? Well, Dimitri’s silver-tipped arrow finds home in his chest at the spot we wolves are most frightened of.