Page 48 of Vicious Luna
I turn to glance toward the cot, but I can’t bring myself to walk over there and climb on. Not after what just happened. So instead, I find myself drifting over to the bars of the cell, turning around to lean my back against them and sliding down to the floor.
My own spot isn’t far from Cam’s. I can see his profile in my peripheral vision, but neither of us turn our heads to look at one another or say a word. We just sit there quietly for a long time, until exhaustion starts to set in and my eyelids grow heavy.
“I told you I’m fine,” I mumble, wondering why he’s still choosing to hang around. Surely he’s got a comfy bed upstairs to crawl into.He’snot a prisoner here.
“I know,” he rasps, hanging his head between his knees.
I dart him a sideways glance, chewing on my lower lip anxiously. “Then why are you still here?”
“I just am,” he replies quietly.
I turn my head to look at him through the gap in the bars, and his own turns in response, our gazes colliding.
“Go,” I whisper.
“No.”
I heave a sigh, turning away again and tipping my head back to stare up at the ceiling. The sting of tears prickles behind my eyes, my lower lip trembling as the events of the night replay in my mind.
“I’m sorry, Luna,” Cam murmurs.
“It’s Avery,” I breathe, squeezing my eyes closed to force the tears back.
“What?”
“My name is Avery.”
23
The last time I ignored a gut feeling, my best friend died.
The moment my dad laid out the mission plan for the last full moon- to send two of our teams north while we took the other two south- I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that it was the wrong move. Deep down, Iknewsomething bad was going to happen, but I ignored my own instincts. I kept quiet, and we proceeded to go out on the mission. The teams that went north were slaughtered.
Maybe that’s why I actually paid attention when that odd sensation of unease came over me last night; an uncomfortable twisting in my gut and a throb in the back of my skull, like something pounding on a locked door in my brain in warning. I was right in the middle of playing chicken with a bottle of vodka, debating whether I should drink myself into a coma to forget about the insanity of my father’s latest scheme, when that strange spike of alarm suddenly registered. It was jarring enough that I set aside the booze to grab my computer, and what I saw on the video feed confirmed my freakish intuition was spot-on.
Everything after that is a little bit hazy. I wish I could say Ididn’t go charging down to the basement with murderous intent, but why else would I have grabbed my gun? I don’t make a habit of carrying it around the house, and I sure as shit wasn’t going to use it onher. I knew exactly what I was doing when I slipped it into my waistband on the way out of my room. I knew Griff and Adams had to die for putting their filthy hands on her, and I knew I was going to be the one to end them.
I’ve killed before. After a while, you get desensitized to it and the taking of a life becomes almost transactional.Me or them.I choose me every time, and I don’t lose any sleep over that decision. Then again, every kill under my belt thus far has been an enemy. I’ve never had to question whether ending them was the right call; I just pulled the fucking trigger.
While the situation last night was different, the thought process was the same. It didn’t matter that Griffin and Adams were also hunters in The Guild. It didn’t matter that we were technically on the same side. In that moment, they were the enemy, so I put them down.
I’m definitely thinking twice about my actions now, though, because someone has to answer for what I’ve done. My father will want an explanation, and I have no idea what I’m going to tell him. Killing them to protect a prisoner is treasonous. Killing them for defying orders is a gross overreaction. I probably could’ve saved myself a whole lot of trouble if I’d just turned the gun on myself and fired a third shot, but then who would protecther?
I blink my eyes open groggily, my sore body protesting as I shift my weight to sit up from my slumped position against the cell bars. My low back is achy and my ass is numb. A concrete floor is probably the least comfortable place to sleep, but I wasn’t thinking rationally when I made the decision to camp out here for the night. I couldn’t leave. The same instinct that warned me she was in peril compelled me to stay and try to make it better somehow, and while I don’t know the firstthing about how to comfort someone, I remembered how simply being present after her panic attack in the shower seemed to help.
I’m not sure if it did this time, but when I circle my neck on my shoulders to get the kinks out and glance beside me, she’s still there on the other side of the bars. She’s awake, too, and she hasn’t moved from the spot where I last saw her. She’s just staring in my direction, that whiskey-eyed stare studying me like she’s trying to slot the pieces of a puzzle together.
Maybe she’s trying to rationalize why I did what I did last night. Hell, that’d make two of us. For the past decade, I’ve been hunting her kind, resolute in the belief that I was doing my part to rid the world of monsters. By all accounts, that’s what this girl is. She’s a werewolf. An inhuman beast; a freak of nature. I shouldn’t see her as a person or care about what abuses she suffers, yet here I am waking up with my colleagues’ blood on my hands, shed in her name.
Avery.
It’s uniquely beautiful, just like her, and it’s been echoing in my mind ever since she spoke it. Somehow, I already know that name will be my fucking downfall.
I push up from the floor with a grunt, getting my feet underneath me and stretching my aching limbs. I need to find a shirt, then figure out how to approach my dad about what went down last night. Executing two soldiers isn’t something I can just sweep under the rug. He’ll want answers, and I need to be prepared to explain why I did it without calling my own loyalty into question.
I’m so fucked.
“Where are you going?” Avery pipes up as I turn to start for the stairs.