Page 23 of White Wolf

The captain waited, and waited…and finally pushed away from the wall, making it known that he’d chosen to leave them alone. He hadn’t been ordered.

The five of them trooped into the front room, boots heavy across the boards.

Sasha heard his mother let out a small, relieved sigh.

But there was no relief here. The man who lingered across the table from them was of no comfort, smiling and talking about weapons.

“Please,” Papa said. “I’m not sure what you want–”

Philippe leaned toward them, a sudden movement, bracing his elbows on the table, voice low. “Listen to me. I didn’t bring these men with me as my friends. They’re my escorts. They have orders to retrieve you – by whatever means necessary. I don’t think I have to tell you that they are not gentle men.” His brows lifted meaningfully.

Sasha’s hand rested on the table and Philippe covered it with his own. Warm and smooth, like before.

Sasha wanted to pull away, but found he couldn’t. His hand grew warmer, and then warmer still. His adrenaline ebbed and in its place was a bone-deep exhaustion. He was sotired. He could have put his head down on the table and slept.

“I shudder to think what they’ll do to you if you resist. What they’ll do to yourfamily. Sasha.” The old man looked grim. “I’m so sorry, my son, but I’m afraid you don’t have any choice. When theVozhdcalls you…you must answer. Or else Captain Baskin and his men will kill you and me both.”

Put like that, he didn’t really have a choice, did he?

~*~

He was a boy. Just a boy. Younger even than Pyotr.

A volunteer, Nikita thought with an inward sneer. A great weapon commissioned by Stalin. A special man to wield it – and he was just a lanky Siberian boy with pale hair falling in his blue, blue eyes. A boy who smelled of snow and wilderness, wrapped in wolf and badger fur, unselfconsciously entitled in the way of all Siberians who’d never lived beneath a man’s boot heels in Moscow.

Nikita wanted to be sick. Every time he blinked, he saw Dmitri’s face…now overlaid with the narrow, angular face of Aleksander Kashnikov.

Kolya sidled up to him, voice low. “It’s not too late to kill the old fool and say he was eaten by a bear.”

“Don’t think I haven’t thought of that.”

“We aren’t actually taking the boy, are we? Nik–”

“We have our orders,” he said with finality. But his stomach clenched.

This line of work was going to get him killed one day.

And it would be a relief.

~*~

“My beautiful boy,” Mama said, voice a choked whisper, pressing her cheek to his heart. He was so much taller than her now, and when he looked down at the top of her head, he saw rivers of silver threaded through her dark hair.

Father was next, his hands rough against Sasha’s face as he cupped his jaw. His eyes were red-rimmed and watery. “I’m proud of you, son.”

Shadows danced across the floor, the leap and crack of the fire in the hearth. Around them, the house was warm, and dark, and full of memories. He let his gaze rove across the furniture, the rugs, his mother’s tea set on its shelf above the settee.

He’d been born in this house, upstairs on sheets soft from many washings, and he was filled now with the heavy knowledge that he’d never see this place, or his parents, again.

But he would rather leave than risk their safety.

“Come, boy,” the man named Ivan called from the door.

“I love you,” he told them, one last time, heart in his throat, and he went to catch the train with the Bolshevik nightmares.

7

TO MOSCOW

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