Chapter 489: Why Can’t I Have You?

[FROLO]

Three months.

That was how long it had been since Katya had seen Sergei up close.

Oh, he knew where the alpha was, alright. Knew what he was doing thanks to the horror that had spread across the city. Katya knew where to find him.

The only problem...

Each time he hoped to use the bond to track Sergei, he got there ten minutes late.

An hour late.

Sometimes he was met with the clothes that he’d scented like a gift for Katya.

But he’d not seen him face to face since the day they left to go talk to the president.

Since the day Sergei had stood in front of a camera and waved the president’s head on the grandest declaration of war.

Since the day the Myrtles and the secretaries had last been seen with him heading out.

The seven hadn’t been seen at all.

Katya had gone to Yaroslav at Knox, Irina at Moskowsky Holdings. Hell, even Anya Kavinsky in the office at Moskowsky Holdings.

The answer was the same.

We don’t know where he is.

And they were not lying to him. Which was the saddest part of it all.

They had tried to track the alpha’s movements, but with Rastenkin with him, tracking Sergei was impossible.

The only way to know where Sergei was or had been was to wait for the next major death announcement.

Or the next company that was flattened. The next shipment that had been hijacked by the same team.

One Sergei, two snipers, four Myrtles and a bunch of Moskowsky betas who came to clean up after them each time.

No one was left alive.

And those who were fortunate enough to be left alive were murdered by the Moskowsky betas in their cleanup.

And the city...

Gods, it had the same line of thought.

Sergei was a monster.

Sadly enough, Sergei didn’t care that he was a monster.

He didn’t care what the city perceived him as anymore.

Worse...

He didn’t care what Katya looked at him and saw.

A good person? He wouldn’t go back home anyway.

A monster? That was the best motivation for Katya to stay away.

A mad man? All the better because it was useless being sane in a city that had kept taking and taking and taking shit from him.

The only solace Katya had was the fact that Sergei hadn’t locked him out of the mate bond.

Maybe because the alpha didn’t care anymore.

But Katya felt it all.

The unfiltered rage.

The desire to eliminate everything.

The anger at what had become of them and him.

The chaos he engineered.

He felt it when Sergei got hurt. And most of the time the hurt lasted long because Sergei didn’t treat his wounds.

Katya didn’t need to see the man face to face to know that.

He felt all that pain. Lately it had been insistent. The kind of pain that never stopped. And no matter how much Katya tried to reach out, he couldn’t.

No one ever got the chance.

And he despised Frolo for taking his alpha from him.

For ruining the little hope Sergei had in humanity.

Through it all, Katya knew what Sergei was doing.

Pushing him away.

Trying to tell Katya that he was the monster and nothing could change that.

But Katya didn’t want a changed Sergei. Which was the tragedy of it all.

He didn’t care whether Sergei was the greatest saint of all time. Or the monster that monsters were scared of.

All he cared about was his Vladimir.

The man.

The monster.

The barbarian.

The Pelmeni cook.

His Vladimir.

That was who he wanted back.

"You know everything he did... He did it so you could do what you love most. So you didn’t have to worry about anything out there," Anya had said one time when Katya went to ask her if she’d seen Sergei.

She hadn’t.

Didn’t even know what Rastenkin was doing with them anymore.

She had tried to reach out to Sergei a few times. To the team he was working with. Hell, even the team of operatives who had been transferred to the power floors of Moskowsky Holdings.

But there was nothing.

None of them knew shit about their boss.

They always got paged to go pick up the bodies and clean up crime scenes.

That was all. And it wasn’t because Sergei was hiding from the fact that he and his team did it. No.

He just didn’t want to burden them with cleaning up what he had ruined.

And that had been Katya’s link to him.

In a way, Katya believed the humane Sergei still existed.

But he wouldn’t go to find that version of Sergei. He just hoped to see the man even just once, so he could confirm that he was doing okay.

But the pain...

It was the constant reminder that Sergei wasn’t okay.

Hadn’t been okay in a while.

And Katya refused to pretend like he loved his research more than he loved Sergei. Maybe that was also why he was back in his father’s office at Romanov Steel.

Mr. Romanov was expecting him.

Not because it was sudden. But because Katya had been coming.

Day in. Day out.

With the same question.

"Papa... What did your trackers find?"

Even if the answer was the same. Had been the same for the three months Sergei had not come home to Katya.

He still hoped.

Still prayed for the day when the answer was different.

"Nothing new, Michka. Your boyfriend is still hard to track," Mr. Romanov said sadly. He knew what wasn’t what Katya wanted to hear.

And yet, like every other day...

"Thank you. I’ll go wait for him at home," Katya said, and Mr. Romanov didn’t even try to talk him out of it.

Because home...

Home for Katya was no longer the beautiful penthouse Sergei had bought for Katya years ago.

Home was Sergei’s penthouse.

Right above the seventieth floor.

Where Sergei’s belongings were.

Where his scent lingered even though it was slowly fading because the man hadn’t come back.

The months Katya had waited.

And today...

He knew today would just be another day.

Another day without Sergei. Without Vladimir. Another day to hope in vain regardless.

But maybe today would be different, right?

Well... It wasn’t.

The lobby of Moskowsky Holdings was still the same.

Soldiers waiting on orders.

Weapons being sharpened and cleaned.

The little gun store at the front, where people would drop their weapons and take others.

A system that worked so well.

Save for the fact that his Vladimir was not home.

But Katya wasn’t one to give up.

Hadn’t been taught to give up.

Even when he knew Sergei was being intentionally violent and ruthless to push him away. To show him that the man he knew and had known was gone.

That the man he loved so much had disappeared and would never come back. That the man who handed him the entire empire again was gone.

Wouldn’t return.

Yet Katya was patient.

So, like every other day, he went up to the penthouse, smiled at the soldiers like he always did.

The men who saw his boyfriend more than he saw his boyfriend.

The warriors who understood more than he’d ever understand.

But maybe...

Just maybe...

Always... Maybe.