Elara's POV
The single letter 'K' added to the letter on Lucian's phone screen felt more harmful than all of the threats listed out by Marek. It wasn't an attack; it was a ghost tapping on a window. A gentle reminder of what is to come.
"Who is K Lucian…?" I asked, my voice sounding croaked like I had swallowed down the wrong hole, heavy silence descended in the hotel's service hallway.
Lucian's face immediately got so tight and hard, a perfect mask of control, but his eyes… his eyes were just a complete storm of memory and dread. He shoved the phone away like it was heating and hurting his palm at the same time. "Someone who deserves to be dead. He really should have been dead before now"
He didn't go further with any explanations. He just started walking ahead of us, his long strides forcing me to run just to close up the distance between us...The look on his face made it all easy for one to understand; this was bad, very bad indeed that it must be handled quickly and with care. The high of facing down Marek vanished, chills ran down my spine. Knowing Lucian if I don't ask or pressure him he wasn't going to share what this is all about, so I forced out a deep breath before calling him;
"Lucian, talk to me! Who is he?"
He whirled on me so fast, causing me to stumble back. The unguarded, raw fear in his gaze was a physical blow to my face. I'd seen him desperate, tormented, and even angry. But never has he been afraid. Not like this.
"Kael," he spat the name. I looked at him confused, he took in a deep breath and closed his eyes pressing his index and thumb to the bridge of his nose as if mere thinking and speaking of the name was a torture for him. "My brother" he finally got out .
The word didn't seem to make sense to me in any way. Brother. It hung in the air between us, like the remnants of a horrible nightmare.
"Your bro… but how?" I was surprised.
"He wanted the pack. The title was mine. He challenged me, but I won." The explanation was stripped of all emotions, clipped, brutal. A history book boldly written in blood. "I was weak. I banished him instead of putting an end to his life. It was a mistake that has haunted me every moon since, remembering his persistence."
A banished brother. A rival Alpha. The puzzle pieces crashed together, forming a very terrifying and horrorful new picture. Marek was a human problem. Kael was a wound from Lucian's own soul.
"And now he's back," I whispered, the inescapable conclusion in tiredness.
"He's been waiting all along while at watch Elara. He has been monitoring" Lucian's hand shot out, cupping my face, his touch possessive, urgent. "He saw the press conference. He knows I'm distracted. He knows all about you." His thumb stroked my cheek, a gesture of tenderness that contradicted the ice in his voice. "He won't come with lawsuits, Elara. He will come for you. To take what I have owned. To break me"
The way he said "take" wasn't about kidnapping. It was about claiming. A primal chill seized my spine. This wasn't a hunt anymore. It was a war over a prize. And I was the prize.
"What are we to do now?"
"We stay low," he said, the decision final.
He pulled me through the labyrinth of service corridors, our footsteps echoing off concrete. We burst into a cold alley where a black sedan sat idling. He pushed me into the back seat and followed, a wall of tense muscle beside me.
"The mountain safehouse. Go," he ordered the driver, a silent mountain of a man from The Glass Den.
As the car lurched into the night, I watched my city as it blurred past the window. My apartment, my life, the fragile normalcy I'd fought for all gone in a twinkle of an eye. I was running again. But this hunter wasn't a fanatic with a badge just like Marek. He was a shadow bearing the same blood with Lucian, and the same fierce eyes.
I looked at Lucian's profile,through the glass as the streetlights threw shadows of light on us . He was staring ahead with his jaw clenched, a statue of fear and fury. A wall of shared violence and history stood between us, a past I don't think I will ever be able to access.
"He called you Lucian," I said into the tense quiet.
He didn't look at me. "Yes. Because that is my name."
"No," I insisted, a cold certainty dawning on me. "Marek addresses you as Drax. I call you Lucian. Your pack calls you Alpha." I swallowed hard, the truth very bitter. "He does too, doesn't he?"
He finally turned. The pain in his silver eyes was absolute, an old wound ripped open.
"Yes," he admitted finally, his voice a rough scrape. "He's the only other one who ever did."
The car sped off towards the wilderness, putting miles between the city and us. But his words filled the space, a history of blood and hatred, brotherhood I could never understand. I was tied to the man, but I was a target for the boy he'd left behind.
As the city's glow disappeared, one truth solidified in the cold dark of the car: Kael wasn't coming just for a fight.
He was coming to finish a story that had started long before I was born, and he intended to write me into its final bloody chapter.