Luna #2
Gasping with equal parts exertion and relief, I thread the shovel through the bars.
In one swift motion, I swing it over my shoulder and start down the cave.
Blind. My shoulder bumps the wall. The shovel clanks against rock.
Cold bites my toes as my foot sinks into a freezing puddle.
I couldn’t see my own hand if I pressed it to my face.
My feet go numb before the tunnel finally twists and a faint light appears. I break into a run toward the light, shovel reared, half-expecting my captor to step in front of the exit with a knife and a grin.
I burst from the cave. Freeze. Scan for the smallest flicker of danger. Nothing. No one. Just a forest. A pair of squirls rattling a tree branch, autumn leaves floating to the ground.
It’s a trap.
My mind screams it, but adrenaline lights my feet on fire anyway. Precious energy squandered by impatience.
Sedatives slow me down. I can feel the extra weight in my legs, the slight stumble of my strides. But still, years of endurance training propel me through the trees. The shovel sways over my shoulder, heavy and off-balance.
Pain—sharp, dull, everywhere—stabs up through the bottoms of my feet and forces my focus downward. I hop over sticks and stones and roots, desperate for clean ground, and make the stupidest mistake. I don’t look up.
A voice snaps through the trees, an angry “hey,” too close. My head whips toward the man barreling after me, dressed head-to-toe in black, closing the twenty yards between us.
Fast. Too fast for my wobbly form.
He’s going to catch me.
Instinct fires before thought. I fling the shovel off my shoulder—stupid, it’s my only weapon—and my legs surge, arms pumping, form sharpening despite the drugs.
“Help me!” I scream as I launch myself over a raised tree root.
“She’s this way!” the man behind me shouts. The words hit my brain with a split of hope and anticipation.
Hope, because he’s losing confidence in catching me.
Anticipation, because it means there are more.
“Somebody please, help me!”
Stupid—giving them my location.
I’ve been running aimlessly, but when a stream flashes into view ahead, I lock onto it. With enough speed, I can clear it. The man in black: probably not. He’s too big. Too bulky. He didn’t grow up with a father who demanded physical perfection.
A second man appears in my periphery. Same black clothes, leaner fit, might be able to jump. He sprints from the right to cut me off.
A third, this time on my left. They’re an army of shadows peeling from the trees, as if they’ve been waiting for me. Yet are still unprepared.
One of them lets out a sharp, coded hoot. Signaling for more.
How many are there?
I don’t slow enough to consider the question.
My head points forward and my eyes fix onto the stream.
When I reach it, I leap, body launching off the small bluff.
My foot skids in mud just shy of the bank and slides into the water.
My knee jams hard to catch me while my palms slap lush earth.
I haul myself to flat land and take off again without looking back.
No one jumps after me. Or if they do, they land too cleanly to hear.
Strange.
Unease tightens my spine and slows my sprint to a run. Only my own ragged breaths follow me as I weave through the trees.
The quiet isn't a relief. It’s wrong. Something’s off. And even as distance widens behind me, it feels like I’m running straight into a trap.
I look over my shoulder. See nothing.
No shadows. No calls.
And I should know better.
But I keep looking anyway, even as danger materializes in front of me.
I don’t see him. I just feel a fist hook my sweater and yank me sideways behind a tree. A hand clamps over my mouth, my back held tight to a solid chest. I scream into the stranger’s palm until his warm breath brushes my ear.
“Shhh. They’ll hear you.”
They’ll hear you.
They.
I hold my breath and silence myself as leaves crunch close. I fight to twist toward the sound. The stranger steadies me as the footsteps draw near. When they’re uncomfortably close, he eases us slowly, carefully, around the tree.
The figure passes. Hoots. Its echo bounces a beat later—another call, farther off, headed the wrong direction.
Now isn’t the time for comfort, but I find myself sighing into the stranger’s palm. Large, warm, and strangely textured. As I shift, my lips rub a strip of raised, mottled flesh. A scar.
The arm around my chest loosens, but his strength is still apparent, corded muscle held like a warning.
“I’m gonna take my hand off your mouth.” The words march across my ears with the confidence of a general. “If you scream, they’ll come back. And you don’t want to know what they’ll do to you.”
A shiver runs across my shoulder blades. My neck prickles. Each thin inhale cuts through the chilled air, the rhythm slowing with my heartbeat. I wait for his hand to move, but he stays still with me—silent, watchful, studying my reaction.
When his palm finally lifts, I stay quiet instead of hurling the dozens of questions that flash through my mind. None of which I trust this stranger to answer. For all I know, he is the trap.
The arm around my chest releases, and the man’s textured palm gives my shoulder a gentle nudge forward.
He slips around into my line of sight, blocking the woods with an athletic frame several inches taller than mine.
I should search his hands, look for a weapon, assess the danger; but the stranger’s eyes catch me by the throat, and all I can do is stare.
The sky blue of his irises hold a gentleness that automatically strikes me as out of place, yet fits his features beautifully.
The tan curve of his cheeks carries the innocence of a boy, even as his chiseled jaw holds the strength of a man.
He isn’t young. The lines in his forehead make that clear.
But his head of shaggy blond hair brings him so much youth, I could forget he’s lived decades longer than me.
My arms grow rigid, and my feet root to the forest floor, even before remembering how I’m supposed to act around a potential predator. My eyes, so wide staring into his, must make me appear as silly and afraid as I feel.
Until this moment, I never believed the freeze instinct was real.
But for this man, my body forgets how to react.
“Hi,” he says. Soft, welcoming, a quiet invitation to trust him.
I don’t respond, but I feel my face flush with attraction both explosive and inappropriate.
If he notices, he doesn’t show it. His smile only softens with compassion as he gestures behind me. “Don’t worry … they’re gone. You’re safe now.”
Safe could not possibly be the word he means.
But … he said they.
He wants me to believe he isn’t one of them.
But he’s here—in the middle of a forest—where I just ran for my life…
As established, I don’t believe in fate.
“My name’s Sawyer,” he says after a beat. “What’s yours?”
I blink at him, mouth dry, throat hoarse from screaming. I expect him to offer something else. Something useful or comforting. But he just waits and lets that disarming, compassionate smile soften his face.
“Luna,” I finally answer in a hushed voice, one pitch away from a humiliating whisper.
Sawyer holds out his hand; lets it hover when I don’t go to take it.
“Welcome to the Shadow Sanctum, Luna.”