Marked by the Alpha Team (Luna Merrick) novel Chapter 111

Chapter III

Luna’s POV

My eyes slowly opened, and for a few seconds, I couldn’t understand what I was looking at. Everything around me was dark so dark that I couldn’t even tell where one thing ended and another began.

At first, I thought maybe I had simply woken up in the middle of the night and my eyes hadn’t adjusted yet, but the longer I looked around, the more wrong everything felt. This wasn’t the darkness of my dorm room. It wasn’t the familiar darknes that came with sleeping in my room at all. There was no faint light from the streetlights outside the window, there was no outline of Ivy’s bed, no desk, no closet, and no comforting familiarity that usually came with waking up in my own space.

Instead, there was only darkness, endless darkness stretching in every direction, and an unpleasant cold that seemed to seep directly into my bones. I immediately felt my stomach tighten. The last thing I remembered was lying in bed after spending more than two hours talking to Ivy, I remembered arguing with her about my mates, and I remembered laughing at the disappointed look on her face every time I refused to give her the answer she wanted. I remembered eventually climbing into bed and pulling my blanket over myself, and I also remembered falling asleep.

Somehow, between then and now, I was no longer in my room.

I stood completely still as confusion and fear started creeping into my chest. The air felt damp and heavy around me, and there was a strange smell that reminded me of old stone and abandoned places. It was the kind of smell that made it feel like no one had been here for years. I wrapped my arms around myself instinctively and looked around again, trying to force my eyes to adjust.

The darkness seemed almost alive, and it felt like it was watching me. It also felt like I wasn’t supposed to be here, and that thought came so suddenly and so strongly that it made me shiver. I didn’t know why I felt that way. I couldn’t explain it, but every instinct inside me was screaming that something was wrong, very wrong.

For a few seconds, I wondered if this was another werewolf thing nobody had bothered explaining to me. Maybe wolves had weird dreams, maybe wolves sleepwalked, or maybe wolves somehow teleported while sleeping. At this point, nothing in my life would have surprised me anymore.

Taking a slow breath, I decided that standing around wasn’t helping. If I wanted answers, then I needed to move. Maybe there was a door somewhere, Maybe there was a light. Maybe there was someone who could explain where I was and why I was there. I shifted my weight slightly and prepared to take a step forward, but before I could move even an inch, a voice suddenly echoed through the darkness.

“Have you found her?”

The sound froze me instantly.

Every muscle in my body locked. The voice wasn’t particularly loud, but there was something about it that made my blood run cold. It sounded powerful, dangerous, and authoritative. Yet somehow, despite never hearing it before, it also sounded familiar. That was the part that terrified me the most. I couldn’t place it or identify it, but something deep inside me reacte to it as if I should know who it belonged to.

My heart immediately started beating faster. I pressed myself against what felt like a cold stone wall and held my breath. without even realizing I was doing it. Whoever that voice belonged to, I did not want them noticing me.

A second voice answered from somewhere farther away.

The moment those words were spoken, silence en the was over. Then the first voice exploded with rage.

Then find her!”

No we still haven’t found her

darkness. For one brief second. I foolishly hoped the couver

the roar echoed through the darkness so violently that 1 physically flinched. It sounded like thunder. It sounded like something ancient and powerful had suddenly lost its patience, and my heart nearly stopped. I had never heard anger like that before. Even Orion, who had scared me a bit with how angry he had been with Jace, didn’t sound like that. Even Coach Ramirez on his worst day did sound like that. This was differefit. This sounded like the kind of anger that got people killed.

“Find her,” the voice continued furiously. “Or every single one of you will pay with your lives.”

A chill ran through my entire body.

The terrifying thing wasn’t just what he said, it was how he said it. There was no hesitation, no exaggeration, and no empty threat. Whoever was speaking genuinely meant every word. I could hear it clearly in his voice. The people he was talking were terrified of him, and honestly, I was terrified too.

My mind immediately latched onto one particular word.

‘Her‘

They kept saying her. So now the question was, who was his ‘her‘?

For reasons I couldn’t explain, a ridiculous thought suddenly entered my head.

Could they be talking about me?

I immediately shook my head because that made absolutely no sense. Why would anyone be searching for me? I wasn’t important. I was just Luna, a silly nineteen–year–old who spent most of her time running around a track. Nobody would threaten people’s lives just to find me. The idea was absurd, yet the thought refused to leave. The more I listened, the more uneasy I became. Something about the conversation felt wrong, and something about it felt connected to me, even though couldn’t explain why.

I tried to stay still and keep listening, but my thoughts kept racing. Maybe I had somehow sleepwalked into a dangerous place. Maybe this wasn’t even real. Maybe this was just a nightmare. Yet everything felt too vivid and too detailed. I could feel the cold air brushing against my skin, I could smell the dampness in the room, and I could hear the faint echo of breathing somewhere in the darkness. Nothing about it felt/dreamlike. If anything, it felt more real than some of my actual

memories.

Unfortunately, while I was busy trying to make sense of everything, I made a mistake.

I shifted my foot.

The movement was tiny, barely noticeable, but in the complete silence surrounding me, it sounded deafening. A scraping sound echoed under my shoe, and immediately, every sound stopped.

The silence that followed was somehow worse than the shouting, and I felt my pulse pounding in my ears.

Then the voice spoke again. “Who’s there?”

The words were calm this time, but that terrified me even more. The rage was gone. The shouting was gone.

The voice sounded controlled now, and somehow that made it infinitely more frightening. My entire body froze. I didn’t move, didn’t breathe, and didn’t even blink. I just stood there hoping that maybe whoever it was hadn’t actually heard inc.

Then I heard footsteps, slow, steady, and coming closer.

My heart immediately began hammering against my ribs so hard that I thought it might burst. Every step secured louder than the last. Whoever was approaching wasn’t rushing, and they weren’t searching blindly. They sounded confident and certain, like they already knew exactly where I was.

Every instinct I had screamed at me to run. ‘Run now. ‘Run before it’s too late. ‘Run before whoever this person is reaches

you

Yet strangely, I couldn’t move. Something deep inside me warned me that running would only make things worse. I didn’t know why. I couldn’t explant, but I Rnew with absolute certainty that whoever was walking toward me wasn’t an ordinary

person.

The footsteps continued getting closer, closer, and closer.

I swallowed hard and stared into the darkness ahead of sue. Eventually, I began to see a shape emerging from the shadows. It was only a silhouette at first, tall and broad enough to block out what little light might have existed. The figure moved with a confidence that made my stomach twist painfully. I still couldn’t see a face. I still couldn’t tell who it was, but the closer they got, the more overwhelming the pressure around them became.

It felt like the air itself was growing heavier, and it felt harder to breathe. My hands were shaking so badly now that I had to clench them into fists just to stop myself from trembling visibly.

Another step, then another. The figure was close enough now that I could almost make out features, and my pulse thundered in my ears. I desperately wanted to know who this person was, but at the same time, I desperately didn’t.

The figure took one final step toward me, and suddenly my eyes flew open.

I sat upright in bed so fast that the room spun around me.

For several seconds, I couldn’t breathe properly. My chest rose and fell rapidly as I looked around in panic. My dorm room slowly came into focus. My desk, my closet, Ivy’s bed, and the familiar walls. Everything was exactly where it was supposed to be. I wasn’t in that dark place anymore. I wasn’t standing in front of that terrifying figure. I wasn’t listening to that horrible voice.

It had been a dream.

A nightmare.

Yet somehow that realization didn’t make me feel better, and my entire body was still shaking.

I wrapped my arms around myself and realized I was trembling so hard that my teeth were almost chattering. The room wasn’t cold. If anything, it was too warm, yet I felt freezing. Goosebumps covered my arms, and my hands wouldn’t stop shaking. Sweat clung to my skin despite the cold feeling spreading through me. I tried taking several deep breaths, but none of them helped. Every time I closed my eyes, I could still hear that voice

Moon stirred uneasily inside my head, and for once, she didn’t sound confident. She sounded just as unsettled as I felt, and that wasn’t normal. She was usually fearless, reckless, and annoyingly confident. Yet even she seemed disturbed by whatever I had just experienced.

I looked over at the clock beside my bed and groaned softly when I saw the time. A little after three in the morning.

‘Wonderful. Not only had I been dragged out of sleep by the most terrifying nightmare of my life, but I was now wide awake with absolutely no chance of falling asleep again anytime soon.

I leaned back against the wall and pulled my blanket around myself. My heart had finally started slowing down, but the fak remained. It sat heavily in my chest, refusing to leave.

Most of my nightmares usually faded quickly. The details disappeared the moment I woke up faces became blurry, and voices were always impossible to remember, but it wasn’t happening now. I remembered everything. The darkness, the cokl the conversation, and the threat.

Most of all, I remembered that voice.

squeezed my eyes shut and tried to calm myself. It was just a dream, just a nightmare, and nothing more. Yet no matter how many times I repeated those words in my head, they didn’t sound convincing because deep down, I couldn’t shake the feeling that what I had experienced wasn’t an ordinary dream at all.