"That’s what it means to be a complete soul. We, ‘defectives’, can’t say the same about ourselves." He laughs softly, like he finds it amusing, then leans against the railing and stares out at the gray ocean for a moment.
I watch him closely.
Moon actually looks good. Real good.
For years I saw him at his worst: high, depressed, tormented by visions he couldn’t control or understand, fragmented, and deformed.
His gift never developed steadily or gently. Some days, visions drowned him, left him unable to function, crushed under their weight. That’s when he’d run off to find a dealer, buy the drugs that dulled his mind and turned the chaos into meaningless mush that couldn’t hurt him anymore.
I remember what he looked like then: thin, wild-eyed, pupils blown wide. He locked himself in his room, and me, four years younger, watched from a distance, sometimes too scared to talk to him because the things he said sounded like a madman’s rambling. Sometimes I truly thought my brother had lost his mind.
At twenty, his life shifted a little when he started working at an animal shelter. Being around the animals healed something in him. He cut down on drugs, and for a while, it seemed like he was finally getting better.
Then one day, at a charity event raising money for the shelter, he met one of the major sponsors, Anzo Ferro. Anzo donated generously, but his intentions were far from pure. He had his eye on Moon. Moon’s beauty and that constant air of tragedy around him caught the attention of many men.
Neither his twin Ragnar, who was in the army at the time, nor our parents, nor teenage me could make sense of the madness of it. A relationship with a mob boss? It sounded like next-level insanity, a path that led nowhere but ruin.
So when Moon vanished almost two years ago, part of me wasn’t even surprised. For one thing, I never fully trusted his prophetic visions. I always thought he couldn’t even predict his own future, or that he misread what he saw.
"How did you figure out Luca was your fated mate? Did you know before you got with Anzo, or did it only click later when you actually met him?"
Moon turns to me, his mismatched eyes full of sorrow and regret.
"When I met Anzo, I was still using. Not heavily like before, but I was still taking things to blunt the visions. You need to understand, what I see doesn’t come with built-in understanding. These are possible paths, raw visions, scattered images. I was still learning how to read them. So I saw flashes of my life with Anzo, and at the same time I saw Luca. But I couldn’t connect the two. I thought years of drugs had fried my brain, making my visions worthless. So I just drifted with it."
"And when you stood in front of him? Did it all become clear then?"
"No. I mean, I recognized him from my visions. Some of them showed me with him in…" He pauses, glancing at me with slight embarrassment. "In intimate moments. But Luca acted indifferent toward me at first. And he was on suppressants, just like I was. Anzo insisted on it. Over time I did notice Luca’s growing focus on me, and I kept having the visions, but I didn’t know how to test it. And of course, Anzo never let me near his nephews. I was isolated. He knew what Rocco was like, how often he stole boys right out from under him, and Anzo didn’t want Rocco laying hands on me. He thought I was too valuable because of my gift." Moon grimaces slightly, as if the idea that only his clairvoyant talent made him valuable still stings, especially since that gift had been the source of his greatest suffering.
My brother rakes a hand through his hair, tucking silver strands behind his ear.
"Eventually, though, at some public event, I managed to get close enough to Luca for us to shake hands. There was no shock,no surge. Our strong suppressants smothered it. But even so, the touch triggered something. It started the Pull. Days passed, and the Pull between us only grew stronger until it became almost unbearable."
"But you were practically guarded twenty-four-seven. How did you two even meet up? I lived in that fortress. I know how heavily it’s monitored."
Moon smiles with a hint of superiority. "You’re forgetting Luca’s a purple alpha. He’s got his own gift, one that turned out to be very useful. Luca can cause momentary lapses in awareness. By talking to someone, he can confuse them so completely they don’t even realize what happened. A bit of a natural hypnosis skill. He used it plenty of times on Anzo and his brothers, especially Mauro, who managed the camera system. For everyone’s safety, it was better if no one knew the truth about our relationship."
I let out a deep sigh.
"Couldn’t you predict it? Tell me once and for all, were you… or weren’t you sure about your own future? Or did you just recklessly risk everything?"
Moon gives me a sad smile.
"So… that’s exactly why I agreed to marry Anzo."
"I don’t get it." I stare at him, lost.
"Don’t you see? He’s the one who helped me sharpen my gift, Summer! He found a way to help me control it, or at least put some order into the visions I kept seeing. When I first walked into that fortress, I was a mess—"
"So you really did take a gamble… with your own life and… your brothers!"
Moon swallows. "I was an addict, Summer. Gambling was what I did with my life on a daily basis."
I have no words for it.
He continues, "Anzo helped me tame my talent, and then I understood better the paths not only for my future but yours too. I could help set it in motion. Of course, Anzo used my visions as well, for his own ends. With my predictions, he crushed the Russians. He anticipated his enemies’ moves, spotted informants, and I gave him all the leads. I never failed him once. He valued me."
I frown.
