Chapter 31
Thirty-One
TALULLA
I turn into a statue as I see the guards take my mate away.
Not frozen in some poetic, tragic way—no. More like my brain hits a wall and shatters, and my body forgets how to function without instructions.
Minutes ago. That’s all it’s been. Minutes ago, I was on his lap, his teeth in my neck, his blood singing in my veins like a symphony I didn’t know existed.
Minutes ago, he was proposing with a daylight ring—a fucking daylight ring—promising me eternity and sunlight and everything I never dared to dream of. Minutes ago, we were whole.
And now they’re dragging him away in cuffs.
My mind can’t reconcile it. The whiplash is too violent, too sudden.
One moment I’m tasting forever on my tongue, feeling his essence merge with mine in the most intimate act two beings can share, and the next—this.
Werewolves in uniforms. Accusations. Handcuffs on the wrists that just held me like I was something precious.
This can’t be real.
But it is. The cold air rushing through the broken door is real. The sound of their boots on our floor is real. The sight of Flynn’s hands bound behind his back—that’s real.
And my body knows what to do. Kill them. Rip them apart. Protect what’s mine. But my mind is still stuck in that perfect moment, replaying his voice saying will you spend eternity with me while reality screams that eternity just got a lot fucking shorter.
I’m fighting everything I am, and I don’t know why.
Every instinct I have is screaming move, kill, protect, and yet I’m standing there like a badly carved monument to poor life choices.
Because this has to be my fucking fault, right?
I shouldn’t have underestimated these people, but then I turn to look at a pair of icy-gray eyes that are staring right at me.
He doesn’t put up a fight.
That’s the part that guts me.
Flynn—ancient, terrifying, powerful Flynn—is just letting them take him. Hands bound, head high, jaw set like he’s already decided this is inevitable. Like he’s choosing compliance over survival. Over us. And it’s killing me, slow and methodical, because I know what he’s doing.
He’s protecting me.
And fuck it pisses me off that after all this time, after everything we’ve been through, he’s protecting me and not himself.
How do you love someone who won’t fight for himself?
How do you watch the person who means everything choose surrender over resistance, choose my safety over his own freedom?
It’s not fair. None of this is fair. He should be tearing through them, showing them what happens when you threaten a mated vampire, proving that he’s the monster they all fear.
But he’s not. Because I’m here. Because if he fights, they’ll hurt me to control him. Because his love for me is a weapon they can use against him, and he knows it, and he’s choosing me anyway.
I hate it. I hate that his love makes him vulnerable. I hate that protecting me means letting them take him. I hate that the universe gave us one perfect moment and then immediately punished us for daring to be happy.
They’re almost out the door when something in me finally snaps—not cleanly, not heroically, just ugly and desperate—and I attack.
Stupid fucking move on my part.
Because apparently these fucking werewolves are on supernatural steroids, and before I can even register the impact, I’m airborne. The floor rushes up to meet me, my skull rattles, and darkness claws at the edges of my vision.
Pain. Sharp and immediate, radiating from the back of my head down my spine. The room tilts, blurs, comes back into focus too slowly. I taste copper—bit my tongue on impact. My hands are shaking as I try to push myself up, and that’s when it hits me.
I can’t protect him.
Not like this. Not against werewolves who can throw me across a room like I’m made of paper. Not against an organization that operates in shadows and answers to no one. I’m a hunter—I’ve staked vampires, tracked monsters, survived things that would break most people—but this? This is different.
This is helplessness.
And it’s the worst fucking feeling in the world. Worse than grief. Worse than fear. Because grief and fear are emotions you can process, but helplessness? That’s just the universe telling you that you don’t matter. That your strength, your skills, your desperation—none of it is enough.
I’m not enough.
“Tal.” Flynn’s soft whisper is the real punch in my stomach.
“Don’t turn this hostile, Miss Popescu.”
Oh.
That does it.
“Stop fucking calling me Miss Popescu,” I snarl, forcing myself upright even as my head throbs, “you’re pissing me off even more.”
Flynn’s eyes are wide open, panic flaring bright and unmistakable. He’s pulling against his restraints now, finally, muscles straining, fangs flashing just a fraction too long. “Please don’t do anything reckless, they’re not going to hurt me,” he says, and it’s supposed to reassure me.
It fucking doesn’t.
Because he’s lying. Or worse—he believes it. He has no idea what they’re going to do to him.
What if they torture him? The thought slams into me with the force of a freight train. S.P.I.A isn’t some human police force bound by laws and oversight. They’re a secret supernatural agency with no accountability, no transparency, no reason to play fair. They could do anything to him.
Interrogations that last days. Weeks. Silver chains that burn his skin.
Starvation—no blood, no sustenance, just endless hunger eating him alive from the inside.
They could make him forget me. Make him believe he’s guilty.
Turn him into something hollow and broken that doesn’t remember what we are to each other.
They could take him from me in ways that have nothing to do with distance.
And I wouldn’t know. I’d be sitting here, waiting for a phone call, while they systematically destroyed the person I love. While they erased every soft moment, every whispered promise, every piece of the man who learned Romanian in secret just to know me better.
I can’t let that happen.
But what choice do I have? Storm S.P.I.A headquarters and get myself killed? That helps no one. Sit here and do nothing? That’s not an option either.
I need help. Real help. The kind that comes with power and access and the ability to walk through doors that are closed to people like me.
“And we will get it resolved civilly.”
Of course he says that. Of course for some unknown reason, he believes in process and protocol and the basic decency of secret supernatural agencies that arrest people in the middle of the night.
He knows S.P.I.A more than I do—that’s clear.
That’s why he’s not fighting. That’s why he’s letting them drag him away like a compliant criminal instead of the monster they all secretly fear.
I have to trust him.
I hate that.
“This is fucking bullshit.”
The guard looks at me, jaw locked so tight I can practically hear his teeth grinding. For just a second—just a blink—I almost see pity in his eyes. It makes my stomach turn. He reaches into his pocket and hands me a card.
“Call this number,” he says. “Alpha will give you an appointment to come in after the interrogations.”
I stare down at the card. It’s completely white. No name. No logo. Just a phone number, stark and impersonal. S.P.I.A branding at its finest. Clinical. Erased. Like they can pretend they don’t exist and still own everything.
“Very clean,” I mouth softly, sarcasm my last remaining coping mechanism. “And what happens if I show up unannounced?”
“You won’t get in.”
“I did in the past.”
The guard snorts. “Because we thought you could see something we didn’t see before.”
“Sure,” I mutter. “Keep telling yourself that.”
“Talulla, for the love of god, don’t piss them off.”
I whip my head toward Flynn. “Well, fiancé,” I snap, the word sharp and reckless and true, “you’re pissing me off right now because you’re doing fucking nothing.”
For half a second—just half—he smirks. Like the word hits him somewhere soft and treasured. Then it’s gone, wiped away by the weight of reality crashing back down on us.
“I’m letting them take me so that we can get this over with fast,” he says quietly. “Everything will be okay, red ruby.”
My heart stutters.
“Red ruby?”
I snap my gaze back to the guard, narrowing my eyes. “Not my fault nobody loves you, asshole.”
“Talulla,” Flynn growls. “Stand back. Please.”
And that’s when I see it. The devastation in his eyes. The restraint it’s taking not to lose control—not over them, but over me. He’s trying to hold himself together because I’m falling apart, and the realization hits harder than any werewolf punch.
I’m not handling this.
I’m making it worse.
So I do as he asked, and I stand back.
My hands curl into fists so tight my nails bite into my palms, and I force myself to stay still as they finally take him away from my sight. The door closes. The sound echoes. Something final settles into my chest.
Is this revenge?
Is this the alpha’s way of saying now you won’t try to sneak in anymore?
Because if it is, congratulations—it’s working. I’m out of words. Out of threats. Out of illusions that I can brute force my way through every locked door in that fucking building.
For something like this, I would have called the only person I knew with real authority. Even if it made me feel so small by doing so.
But that person is gone. That person was gone before we made sure he didn’t hurt anyone else.
Way before we killed him.
I’m the authority in the Popescu family now.
What a fucked up turn of events.
Especially since aside from my mother and me, there’s no one left. We were already scraping the bottom before. Are there other hunters in the world? Sure. Plenty. But not Popescu hunters.
I’m the last one. The last one and don’t even want to be called that.
The weight of it is suffocating. Not the legacy—fuck the legacy.
My father turned that into something poisonous long before I put a stake through the hearts of who tried to stop me.
But the aloneness of it. The fact that there’s no safety net, no backup, no council of experienced hunters I can call for advice or reinforcements.
It’s just me. And my mother, who’s on the other side of the ocean right now, trying to build a life that doesn’t revolve around death and monsters. She deserves that. She’s earned it. But it means I’m standing here, in a house that still smells like Flynn and my desperation, with no one to call.
No Popescu network. No hunter allies who owe us favors. No ancient contacts with connections to supernatural power structures. My father burned those bridges years ago with his experiments and his cruelty and his absolute conviction that he was right and everyone else was weak.
And now I’m paying for it.
I have no one.
Except I do have someone who could get in without the need of an invitation. Someone that I very much did not expect to contact for something like this.
But what choice do I have?
Flynn is gone. And I’m standing here alone, holding a business card with a phone number that might as well be a death sentence for all the good it’ll do me.
S.P.I.A isn’t some corrupt police department I can intimidate or outmaneuver. It’s a secret agency filled with werewolves and gods-know-what-else, and that means there’s only one person I can think of who might get me through their front door without a body count.
I take the longest breath of my life.
Then I hit dial.
As soon as a voice answers on the other line, I don’t waste another second.
“I need your help.”
… TO BE CONTINUED