Beneath the Alpha's Moon
Chapter 279: Stalker Ex

Chapter 279: Stalker Ex

Nova’s POV

If I thought heartbreak was the worst thing that could happen to a person, I was wrong.

Fear—raw, clenching fear—was worse. It had teeth. It gnawed at you until even breathing felt like a battle.

It had been three days since Jimmy had shown up at the bookstore. Three days since my world tilted into something uglier, colder. I tried to shake it off, to pretend that it didn’t bother me, but every time I stepped outside, I could feel him somewhere near. Watching.

Waiting.

The next time he showed up, it happened was at the campus coffee shop. I was balancing two steaming cups—one for me and one for Lara—when a shadow loomed in front of me.

"Careful," Jimmy said, smiling like a rattlesnake. "Wouldn’t want you to get burned."

The cups nearly slipped from my hands.

I sucked in a breath, straightened my spine, and forced my voice out, even though it quivered. "I have a boyfriend," I said, loudly enough that half the coffee shop turned to look. "Leave me alone, Jimmy."

The smile twitched at the corner of his mouth, like he thought I was joking. "I don’t see him here," he said, leaning closer. His breath smelled like cheap cigarettes and bitterness.

I took a step back. "He’s real. And he’s...he’s not someone you want to mess with," I said, hoping the tremble in my voice didn’t betray the lie in my heart.

Because Eldur wasn’t here. And I was starting to think he might never be again.

Jimmy didn’t stop. Over the next week, he kept popping up like a bad horror movie villain—at the library, at the bus stop, even outside my apartment building once, standing under a streetlamp like some twisted version of a love-struck poet.

It wasn’t romantic. It was terrifying.

When Lara caught him lurking outside our apartment building one night, she lost it.

She stormed right up to him, all five-foot-two inches of her, jabbing a finger into his chest.

"Listen, jackass," she snarled. "If you don’t leave Nova alone, we’re calling the freaking police. And trust me, they take creeps like you seriously now. You’re one trespass away from a restraining order."

Jimmy’s smile slipped for the first time. But he backed off. For a few days.

And I let myself hope, stupidly, that it was over.

It wasn’t.

It happened again on one of those rainy evenings when the sky looked like it had given up on holding itself together. The air was filled with the smell of wet concrete and that weird sadness that only comes when it rains on a bad day.

I was half-drenched, juggling grocery bags into the backseat of my old beat-up sedan that I rarely used— the one that rattled when you so much as looked at it wrong — when it happened.

No warning.

No dramatic music.

Just bam—Jimmy.

He stepped out of the shadows like some horror movie cliché that didn’t know it was being filmed. Before I could even process the sight of him, he was on me.

"You think you’re better than me?" he snapped, grabbing my wrist so hard it felt like my bones might crack. His fingers dug in like claws, branding me with bruises I knew I’d be seeing in the mirror for days.

"You think you can go whining to the cops and make me the bad guy?" he growled, his face inches from mine.

My heart fell right through my stomach, plummeting to some place dark and hollow.

"I didn’t—!" I gasped, but he wasn’t interested in hearing anything that wasn’t about him.

"I know everything, Nova," he spat. His breath smelled like cheap beer and old anger. "And if you don’t cut this crap and come back to me, bad things are gonna start happening. To you. To that little roommate of yours. Think about that."

Then he shoved me hard — not enough to send me sprawling, but enough to make my heart stutter and my breath snag painfully in my throat.

Jimmy stormed off into the rain like he was the hero in his own twisted story, leaving me standing there, groceries forgotten, soaked to the bone and shaking so hard my teeth almost chattered out of my mouth.

I went to the police the next morning, because what else was I supposed to do?

I sat there in this ugly little office that smelled like stale coffee and cold fear, cradling a paper cup of what could barely pass as coffee, wishing I could just disappear.

The officer across from me — middle-aged, weary, probably dreaming about his lunch break — flipped through my statement with all the enthusiasm of someone going through junk mail.

"So, he hasn’t physically hurt you yet?" he asked, like I hadn’t just described being manhandled in a grocery store parking lot.

"I—he—he grabbed me," I stammered, clutching my wrist like proof. "And he threatened me. He said—he said things would happen. To me and to my roommate."

The officer sighed, long and slow, tapping his pen against the useless, thin report.

"Look, Miss..." he said in a voice so flat it practically ironed out my soul, "It’s your word against his. Unless he does something more concrete — like, you know, actual bodily harm — there’s not a whole lot we can do right now. If anything serious happens, call us."

He said it like he was handing me an umbrella in the middle of a hurricane.

"But... he’s scaring me," I whispered, my voice breaking apart like wet paper.

Another shrug. Another sigh. Another glance at the clock behind me.

"I’m sorry. I really am. But until something actually happens, our hands are tied."

That was the moment it really sank in.

No one was coming to save me. Not the police. Not anyone.

It didn’t matter how loud my fear was — it wasn’t loud enough to crack through their indifference.

I could disappear off the face of the earth tomorrow, and all they’d say was: "Well, maybe next time we’ll listen sooner."

My throat burned. My hands shook. And all I could think was:

Eldur never needed permission to protect me.

He never shrugged. He never sighed. He never asked if it was okay to burn the monsters down to ashes.

Yes, he was scary. Yes, he wasn’t normal.

But he had protected me. Without hesitation. Without permission.

The men who once tried to hurt me were gone—swept away like dust in one of Eldur’s terrifying portals.

I had been so blinded by fear of what he was that I hadn’t seen the heart beneath the fury.

I missed him so much it physically hurt. I would have given anything to feel the brush of his silver eyes again. To hear his gruff, awkward voice muttering about how "humans are stupid" while glaring at anyone who dared look at me too long.

I missed him.

God, I missed him.

*********

One evening, after a brutal day. Hours buried in dusty textbooks at the campus library had left my body aching and my brain running on empty fumes.

By the time I stumbled up the steps to our apartment building, the world felt like it was swaying beneath me. The hallway was dead silent, too silent.

Lara must still be at work, I thought, fumbling with my keys, yawning so hard my jaw cracked.

And that’s when I felt it.

A prickle at the base of my neck. Like the walls were leaning in, the air itself holding its breath.

I should’ve listened to that ancient animal instinct screaming at me to run.

Instead, I shoved the door open — still half-asleep — and stepped inside.

And there he was.

Jimmy.

Waiting for me like a nightmare that refused to stay in the past.

He forced his way into my apartment, the door slamming shut behind me with a violent bang that made me jump out of my skin.

"What the hell are you doing in here?!" I gasped, stumbling back, keys slipping from my fingers.

His face twisted — not angry, not sad, but monstrous. Like something human-shaped that had forgotten how to wear the right face.

"You think you can humiliate me?" he spat. "Think you’re better than me because you got some weird boyfriend now? Think you’re too good for Jimmy?"

I didn’t even think — I just moved, bolting for the door, heart hammering in my ears.

But he was faster.

He caught my arm in midair, yanking me back so hard my body snapped around like a ragdoll.

"You called the cops, didn’t you?" he hissed, his fingers digging into my skin like claws. "You ruined everything. Everything!"

His grip tightened until I cried out, struggling, kicking — and then—

Crack.

His hand collided with my face in a slap that sent me reeling. Pain exploded across my cheek, white-hot and shocking, and the world spun out of focus.

I barely managed to stay upright before another hit landed, harder this time — a brutal, knuckle-driven blow that sent my body crashing to the floor.

My knees hit the ground first. Then my palms. Then my forehead, as I scrambled, dizzy and disoriented, trying to crawl away.

Above me, Jimmy loomed — bigger, uglier, angrier.

"You should’ve stayed with me," he growled, raising his fist again, the veins in his neck bulging.

Tears blurred my vision. I was going to die here. In this tiny, forgettable apartment, all alone.

And nobody would even know until it was too late.

I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing for the final blow.

And then —

The air ripped.

It didn’t creak or crack — it tore open like the sky itself was screaming.

A swirling vortex of shadows and light exploded into existence right in the middle of the living room, thrumming with a sound too deep for human ears, too ancient for human minds.

Jimmy stumbled back, cursing, blinking against the sudden fury of it.

And from the center of the storm, a figure stepped forward.

White hair that seemed to catch every sliver of light. Silver eyes, burning like twin full moons pulled down from the heavens. Power crackling around him like a living thing.

Eldur.

Eldur was here.

He looked like a storm dressed in skin — more beautiful, more terrifying than anything I could have dreamed.

And in that one, soul-shattering moment, Jimmy — the man who thought he could break me — turned into nothing more than a scared little boy.

He bolted for the door without a second thought, shoving past the furniture, slipping on the floor in his panic to escape whatever force had just stepped through that portal.

I tried to call out, to reach for Eldur — but my body betrayed me.

Darkness folded over me, pulling me under like deep water.

And the last thing I saw before the world went completely black was Eldur’s face —Not cold. Not detached. But raw.

Terrified.

Desperate.

And laced with something so fierce, so heartbreaking, it tore through what was left of me.

Love.

Then the world slipped away, and I let the darkness take me.