Nikon: #16 (Luna Lodge)

by Madison Stevens

  They had been a great help in nabbing some of the bad guys targeting them, and Nikon was glad to have gotten to know Colonel Hall. Still, it would be nice to have the military not breathing down their necks anymore, possibly one step away from locking them up if the orders came down.

  “Have you talked to her about the move?” Lucan said after they had been driving for some time.

  They had avoided talking about Nikon’s strange relationship with Leah. If anyone could understand, it was Lucan. Nothing about their lives was really all that conventional to begin with.

  “No,” Nikon said simply. “She knows about it, but we haven’t talked about it, really.”

  Lucan looked over at him from the driver’s seat. “You just going to leave it like that? Seriously?” He shook his head. “Jamie tells me that she’s starting a job an hour away.”

  Nikon shifted in his seat and looked out the window at the passing road, still damp from the spring rain they had been getting. “She started today.”

  He tried to keep the irritation out of his voice. There was no reason to add fuel to this fire. It was best for everyone if Leah got the job, and they never saw each other again.

  “So that’s it,” Lucan said. “You’re going to just let her move on with your life and leave without even a second thought? Don’t be such a pussy.”

  Nikon could feel his temper rising as he turned to glare at the other man. “What the fuck should I do? We’re leaving Luna Lodge, and she’s got to find something normal at some point. Is she going to move with us? Hide out with us?”

  Lucan sighed. “Yes. You can’t ignore instinct, anymore than she can.”

  Nikon huffed loudly and turned away again. “There’s no instinct. She’s not my Vestal. She was for my brother, and he’s dead.”

  Silence passed over them, and the hybrid was glad for it. This wasn’t a conversation he wanted to have.

  * * *

  When the hybrids stopped just outside the gates of Luna Lodge, Lucan motioned to the guards to open up. Not a single person stood outside the gates.

  It used to be that they needed tight security because of the constant protests, not to mention the mind-controlled townspeople responsible for attacks and bombings or risk of Glycon attack.

  But for all the trouble the hybrids had been put through, they’d racked up an impressive series of victories, including the destruction of the closest Horatius Group facility, stopping the local mind control signal, and proving that the hybrid-hating Senator Woods was a tool of the Horatius Group.

  Between the elimination of the mind control and Senator Woods’s arrest, almost all of the protests had stopped. The local people seemed confused as to why they had even been there protesting to begin with, and many of the other outside groups didn’t really seem all that interested anymore, given the association with Woods’s corruption. Taking down the most vocal leader had been really all the hybrids needed to earn a reprieve.

  Not that it changed anything long-term. Luna Lodge was too well-known, too open. They’d already sent off most of the bonded pairs and the younger hybrids. They would need to start over and find their own place where they wouldn’t be under the eye of the government or the Horatius Group.

  Of course, the Group would always be lurking in dark corners, but maybe the hybrids could just get a small break.

  Lucan drove the car to the main office building and pulled into a parking spot. They spotted Cato, Wendy, and Colonel Hall standing outside.

  The hybrid put the car in park and turned to Nikon before getting out. “We all miss, Alair.” Nikon opened his mouth to reply but stopped when Lucan held up a hand. “But he’s gone, and I know he would have wanted for you to be happy. Not saying you have to immediately do anything, but you should at least think about that.”

  Without another word, Lucan stepped out of the car, leaving Nikon to digest what had just been said. No one understood what his brother wanted more than him.

  Nikon climbed out slowly, Lucan’s words still knocking around inside his skull as he stepped up to the gathered group of people.

  Each were frowning with concern.

  “What’s up?” Nikon said, looking between them.

  Cato glanced down at his phone. “The contact Rollo worked with has just said he needs to meet. Seems like there’s some concerning movement going on, and he has no way to send out the information without it being traced back to him.”

  Nikon frowned. “What sort of information are we talking about here?”

  Cato shook his head. “Whatever it is must be important, since he wants to meet later.” He blew out a breath. “You’ll need to pick up Rollo.”

  Nikon glanced at his watch. If they left now, they were looking at a very long day.

  Despite how much he tried to tell himself it didn’t matter, he would have preferred to be back before Leah got home from her job.

  Lucan sighed. “I’m going to get an earful for this,” he mumbled.

  Nikon snorted. Better his friend than him.

  “I’ll drive. You let your woman know.”

  The other hybrid pulled out his phone and texted his woman. Nikon chuckled. The man was too afraid to call her directly and deal with her wrath.

  They had just pulled up to the gates of the Lodge when Lucan’s phone rang. The hybrid cringed before answering the phone.

  Jamie was shouting before he’d even placed the phone to his ear. It was going to be a long drive for someone. Nikon turned up the music a little and smiled.

  Chapter Five

  Leah waited in the bathroom until she couldn’t wait any longer. Luckily, it seemed the halls had cleared out enough for her to make her getaway. The classes had all been dismissed for that day.

  Quietly, she made her way back to the break room. She’d only been observing the classes the latter half of the day and was already drained in more ways than she ever expected.

  Leah had been hoping to teach an impressionable group of young, open minds. Children of intelligence and desire, kids like she’d taught at Luna Lodge.

  Unfortunately, Matt had been right. The students at Hawthorn were little monsters, spoiled brats who were all too aware of their families’ wealth and influence and thought it gave them the right to say and do almost anything they wanted.

  She hated to think that way about any children at all, but in this case, she was willing to make an exception. It only made her miss the children from the Lodge even more.

  Even worse, she’d been deceived. She was supposed to ease herself in, teaching one of the younger classes.

  It’d all started innocently enough. The teacher Leah had been sitting in with that afternoon decided that the new arrival might want to take over for a bit while she slipped outside for a smoke break, something Leah was sure the headmaster would disapprove of it he knew about it.

  All those sweet little children she had seen before suddenly turned into sex-crazed little animals. Where did all these twelve-year-olds even hear the term testicles? She wasn’t certain she’d heard that word until she was a teen, if then even. But they somehow managed to include the word in every question they asked. In a freaking literature class.

  The students made a joke or game out of everything, including who was going to read. Leah would call on a student, and a totally different one would then start reading. That was merely disconcerting.

  The little punks then thought it would be fun to interject the word penis or testicles every so often into the reading. The entire room would erupt into laughter each time, like it was the funniest thing they’d ever heard.

  In fact, the first time Leah had heard it, she wasn’t even certain she’d heard them correctly. Each child got louder and louder as they said those specific words. By the time the regular teacher was back in the room, they were all but shouting penis at the top of their lungs, and chaos had all but broken out. The classroom had turned into Lord of the Flies.

  Leah had never been so embarrassed in her entire life. The students
neither recognized her authority nor her ability to teach. Plus, she kept expecting Williams to come in and demand she leave immediately. Likely the only thing stopping the teacher from going to tell him was that she would get in trouble herself for leaving the classroom to go smoke.

  Mutually assured destruction as some might call it.

  Leah sighed and sat down in a breakroom chair with another scone in her hand. For a brief second, the wonderful scent of the baked goods almost made her forget the horror of the afternoon. Almost.

  Did they use magic to make these things stay warm all day? They seemed just as fresh and warm as it did that morning. It made her wonder if the chef made them at all hours of the days, and if so, she had to meet the man and shake his hand.

  Leah took a bite of her scone and smiled. “I needed that.”

  Maybe that was how they kept teachers there, by plying them with delicious coffee and sweets. Because it certainly wasn’t the students.

  “Rough day?”

  Leah jumped at the deep voice from behind her. She turned and found Matt standing there.

  “You could say that.” She sighed and took another bite of her scone.

  It was still just as heavenly as before. The blueberries popped in her mouth. The sweet, warm juices made the whole experience almost orgasmic.

  “Let me see,” Matt said, taking the seat next to her.

  He scrunched up his face as he tried to think. She had to admit he really was a handsome man.

  Matt held up a finger in exclamation. “You have the look of a teacher who just heard penis shouted about a million times by bratty pre-teens.”

  Leah’s eyes widened in surprise. That was an amazing talent he had. Or maybe it wasn’t talent so much as first-hand knowledge. He’d been at the school for five years, after all.

  “They did the same to you?”

  Matt shook his head. His soft slightly peppered brown curls shifted only a little. It seemed like he used a little product to get those carefree curls.

  “Not in the same way,” the man said. “It’s only fun to tease the pretty new teacher by shouting rude words. It’s not the kind of thing they might think would embarrass me.”

  Heat sprang to her cheeks. “Oh?”

  Matt smiled. “The truth is I’m down the hall. We could all hear what was going on. Those boys weren’t exactly quiet.”

  Leah groaned and let her head fall forward until it hit the table with a thud. The throb it created only matched the one that was currently building behind her eyes. Things had gone so wrong, so quickly. It was only her first day for crying out loud.

  “Great,” she mumbled into the table.

  A warm hand landed on her shoulder, and she frowned. Several seconds passed before she even could figure out why.

  The hand just felt… wrong there. Leah pushed the thought to the back of her mind as she sat back up, and Matt’s hand fell back to where it had been.

  “It’s your first day,” he said. “You’ll get a handle on them. Besides, it could be worse. You could have the last name Dixon.”

  Leah frowned for a moment before her eyes widened. She could see where the mind of a boy might go with that one, especially if it were the last name of a male teacher. The jokes almost wrote themselves. Not that she was planning on telling any of them.

  “Yup,” he said. “For two years, I got to hear that under every one of my student’s breaths. Then it just stopped out of the blue like they’d never even said it to begin with. It will be the same for you. They’ll get used to you, and bored with those kinds of antics.”

  Leah gave a small smile. It was nice to know she wasn’t alone in this. When she’d started at the Lodge, she’d been lucky enough to have Jamie there with her to combat the nerves. Matt was proving to be a good person she could lean on, and that’s exactly what she needed right now.

  “It’s Friday somewhere,” Matt said with a warm smile. “Why don’t we go get something to eat or maybe a liquid dinner?”

  Leah glanced at the clock on the wall. It was already five. By the time she stopped for dinner and got home, it would be pushing six-thirty.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m meeting someone tonight.”

  Matt sat back a little. She could see a twinge of disappointment in his eyes and wasn’t really sure how she felt about that. Much like his hand on her shoulder, Leah didn’t really know if she wanted romantic advances. She still had a lot to figure out about Alair, Nikon, and her future.

  “Boyfriend?” the man asked, raising a brow.

  Leah shook her head. She wasn’t sure what the hell Nikon was, but boyfriend wasn’t the right term no matter what she wanted him to be.

  “Just a friend.”

  Matt grinned widely as he stood from the table. “Good.” He winked. “That means I still have a chance.”

  Her mouth dropped open as he whistled a little and made his way to the door.

  “Drive safe, Leah. And see you tomorrow.” He waved before heading out the door, leaving her all alone once again and confused.

  Chapter Six

  More than once Nikon thought about calling Leah or leaving a message. Maybe she was sitting around worried about him, and all he needed to do was send her a message to let her know her was all right. He didn’t like the idea he might contribute to her being upset. He pulled out his phone.

  Never before had Nikon ever thought to do something like call her to let her know where he was, but after their encounter that morning, Nikon had a hard time pushing the pretty woman out of his mind, even though he knew he should.

  Lucan cleared his throat as the hybrids sat at a little table in the back of the room. The table was worn and cracked. It’d seen better days, just like the rest of the hole-in-the-wall honky-tonk bar. Loud country music played somewhere near the front, and about every other light was missing a bulb, making the place dim for normal humans, not so much for hybrids.

  Nikon wasn’t sure if the owners were trying to create a mood with the lighting situation, or if they were just too lazy to change the bulbs.

  “Jamie said she was going to check on Leah,” Lucan said as he shifted his beer on the table.

  They weren’t there to relax, but they had to order beers, or they would have been kicked out pretty quickly.

  Nikon frowned and shoved the phone back in his pocket. He didn’t need to call her. Leah was a grown woman. Besides, it wasn’t like he owed her any sort of explanation.

  They weren’t mates. They hadn’t bonded. They were friends, that was all, and he needed to remember that if he didn’t want to have serious trouble.

  He glanced at Rollo, who was sitting next to Lucan. The two large men seemed strange in the brown contacts. It didn’t matter how many times he’d seen them or himself that way, the concealment of their natural amber eyes unnerved him.

  “Where’s your man with his information?” Nikon asked. “He’s over an hour late.” He glanced around, frowning. A late contact might be a dead contact, or the whole thing might be an ambush.

  Rollo shook his head and glanced at the time on his phone. “He’ll be here. He wouldn’t be late unless it were necessary.”

  Nikon shrugged and shook his head. He didn’t trust Rollo’s contact, the mysterious hybrid Tycho. The Luna Lodge hybrids he knew and trusted. They’d suffered the same way at the hands of the Horatius Group, but outsider hybrids, which seemed to be more common than they knew, given discoveries in the past couple of years, were all wildcards.

  None of the Luna Lodge hybrids really knew Tycho well enough to understand his reasoning or his long-term plans. From what Rollo had told them, he was helpful in bringing down Woods, but there was just something wrong about a hybrid working for the other side, which was exactly what Tycho had been doing in his time with the Russian groups who seemed just as interested as the Horatius Group in collecting hybrids and Vestals.

  The air in the room shifted as a large man stepped inside. Large even by hybrid standards. Several of the people on
stools by the door scooted away a little. The large man’s gait was menacing, and only Nikon, Rollo, and Lucan were near his size.

  “That’s Tycho,” Rollo said.

  Nikon snorted. The hybrid might as well have been carrying a large ass sign he stuck out like such a sore thumb. “You don’t say.”

  Lucan cut him with a glare.

  Nikon grunted. His friend was right. Cracking jokes wasn’t a good way to start.

  The large man made his way over to the table and looked around suspiciously as he did so, eyeing each of the men in the room until they looked away. Well, all but the other hybrids.

  “I’m being followed,” Tycho said quietly as he took a seat.

  Nikon’s muscles tightened as his whole body went on high alert. “Are they here?”

  Tycho shook his head. “I was able to lose them while still in town, but I’m sure Dmitry doesn’t trust me.” His face tightened, and he scowled.

  It was clear the hybrid was angry, but Nikon could hear the worry in his voice. Rollo had mentioned that the Russian crime boss had taken a Vestal as his soon-to-be bride. The woman was clearly meant for Tycho. Nikon couldn’t think of a greater blow to a hybrid.

  A middle-age waitress stopped by their table and smiled expectantly at Tycho. The annoyed hybrid barely even acknowledged her existence.

  “Can I get you something?” she asked, her voice laced with honey.

  Tycho turned and stared at her. Her eyes widened.

  “No, now leave,” the hybrid barked.

  Her mouth fell open before she stomped off. Once she was gone, Tycho pulled out a ream of paper from underneath his jacket and placed it on the table.

  “It took a lot for Mia to get this, and because of it, she’s currently not allowed to leave her suite. But she wanted you to have it.” The last part was clearly said begrudgingly.