Page 91 of Eternal

AZRA

“Mojo Pin” by Jeff Buckley

Present

I woke up feeling like death.

The wine bottles were still on the floor, all empty. My boots were still on, and my head…hurts, like someone had cracked it open and poured in every bad memory I ever tried to forget.

No one did this to me but me. Classic.

I sat up slowly, my mouth was dry, my throat burned, my eyes were crusted with smudged mascara, and there was a vague red stain blooming near my collarbone that I really didn’t want to investigate too hard.

It had been years since I lost control like that, since I let the bottle win.

I used to be this girl, drinking until the blackout, until the guilt turned quiet. Crying alone in bathrooms. Sleeping in my own vomit when I wasn’t even old enough to drive.

Then I got better, or so I told everyone. Told myself.

But last night I let it slip a little. Enough to remind me that she’s still in there, the girl with the shaking hands and the broken heart. The one who drinks to shut it all down. The one I promised to leave behind.

And now here I am, hungover, angry, wearing yesterday’s clothes and my life’s regrets.

I found my phone eventually, face down on the table. One message.

11AM Meeting.

From the Don, with an address for a small coffee shop in the middle of the city.

What a cute little brunch lineup.

The Venom Reapers, the Huntress turned Emira, and me, the psychotic killer, wine-stained, tired, and still smelling faintly of shame.

I dragged myself into the bathroom, took a quick shower and splashed water on my face until I couldn’t feel it, and avoided the mirror, I already knew who I’d see.

That tired, mean-eyed version of me who always shows up when life gets too heavy, the one who whispers, ‘See? You never really got better.’

The one who mistook numbness for control, the one who drinks and gets high alone and still thinks she’s fine. God, I hate her.

But she always finds her way back when I’m hurting.

I threw on some black jeans, my leather jacket, tied my hair back, and hoped I looked less like heartbreak and more like the woman they all are waiting for. I put the file in my bag, grabbed my keys and went out.

The ride helped, the wind sobered me up just enough to feel more like a person and less like trash.

I pulled up to the coffee shop and immediately hated how sweet it looked. Warm light, soft chatter and wooden chairs, probably served lattes with tiny foam hearts and the world’s best pancakes.

I took off my helmet and walked in like I fit there, like I hadn’t slept drunk on a couch and cried over a man who lied to me while holding a wine bottle like a lifeline.

A bell chimed as the door opened. Of course it did.

Cute place for a casual meeting between four potential murderers.

And then I saw them, a kid ran past me, giggling, slipping between tables smiling brightly. He darted between two women, one with a soft bob, the other with long raven hair. She caught him mid-run, scooped him up with love and kissed his cheek as he laughed harder.

And there they were, sitting and watching the two women and the kid with a smile.

Nikolai Moretti and Elijah Volkov.

I should've looked more put together for a meeting like this, but I didn’t have it in me to care. I was here. That had to be enough.

Then she turned around.

The woman with the long black hair.

And I froze for half a second just enough to feel stupid about it.

She was... beautiful. Not the fragile kind, the kind of beauty that made you stare before your brain caught up.

Her skin was pale, like snow, and she had soft freckles, mostly around her nose.

Her eyes were almond-shaped, hazel-gold, amber and warm like the sun but cold enough to make you wonder if you were imagining it.

She looked like someone who had seen every kind of violence and made peace with it.

She smiled, soft but not sweet. Just… real. Still holding the kid on her hip, she offered her hand to me. “Hi. Voron, I suppose?” A soft and raspy voice, exactly how I imagined it.

I nodded, shaking her hand, trying not to let it show how much I was thrown off. “Hi, yeah, that’s me.”

And then I saw them, the scars.

Faint but clear, horizontal lines along her wrist, too many to be anything but what they were. Except one, vertical, it cut straight down the middle, deeper and angrier. That one was different, that one looked like the time she really meant it.

She had a tattoo over them, the Pakhan’s name inked just above her veins with a heartbeat running through it.

I didn’t mean to stare, but I did, because I knew those marks, not hers, specifically. But the kind you carry long after they’ve healed. I wondered how many people looked at her and just saw the beautiful woman, the magical eyes, the power, not the aftermath, not her past.

And suddenly I didn’t feel like some assassin or enforcer or drunk girl playing grown-up in a city that wasn’t mine. I just felt like a woman looking at another woman.

And for a second, I didn’t know what hit harder… her beauty, or the quiet proof that she survived herself.

“I’m Zanae Dellé. Nice to meet you,” she said, still smiling.

The Huntress.

She kissed the kid again, softly and whispered to him, “I’ll let you stay with mama, okay? Aunt Zee’s working, Juny baby.”

Then she turned back to me, and I still hadn’t moved.

“I’ll be right back,” she added gently, before nodding toward the table. “You can sit with Niko and Elijah.”

So I did, I dragged myself toward the two men like I hadn’t just been internally spiraling five minutes ago in front of the most beautiful woman I’d seen in my life. The Venom Reapers were mid-conversation, cups of coffee in front of them.

They looked so… normal?

Nikolai looked up from his espresso and smiled, his eyes always carried that glint, somewhere between amused and predatory.

“Rough night?” he asked.

“Comfortable.”

My eyes found the other pair of green eyes staring at me. Elijah. I had never met him in person before.

Viktor told me stories, they were close in age. He used to say Elijah was lethal in the way that didn’t show, methodical, unhinged… Dyavol.

I always thought it was underground myth-making, a title passed around to scare rookies.

But now? Sitting across from him? I wasn’t so sure anymore.

“Azra,” Elijah said, offering his hand. “Nice to meet you.”

I took it, and his grip was firm. “Likewise,” I said.

He let go, and the moment passed just as Zanae returned to the table with the coffee.

She placed mine in front of me gently, then sat beside him like it was muscle memory. He reached out with one hand and caressed her chin. “ Milaya , put some sugar in yours,” he murmured.

She rolled her eyes, but the corner of her mouth lifted, Elijah didn’t even look at her.. He just reached out again, calmly, and pulled her chair even closer. Nikolai chuckled at the sight, like it was the most normal thing in the world. In their world.

How do they find love in the world we live in? It seems so genuine.

“I’m sorry I had to come this quickly,” I started, not even sure where to begin. “But Viktor told me we might be fighting the same people.”

Zanae set the cup in front of me. “Don’t apologize, it's okay. I didn’t know how you take your coffee. Sugar’s right here.” She smiled, soft, a little tired, like she understood more than she let on about my visit.

“Thanks,” I said, managing a real smile for once. I didn’t deserve their kindness, I didn’t deserve any kindness. I wasn’t a good person.

Then Nikolai leaned in, expression shifting slightly. “So, Voron. Can we be honest around this table?”

“That’s why I came,” I said, surer of that than anything else.

“Your name is Azra Al-Mansour,” he continued. “Vik told us about you when you came back to Vegas.”

I looked between them. Elijah’s gaze hadn’t shifted once. “I knew Alexei,” Elijah said, and my heart thudded once. “And I knew your mother. When Viktor told me you were alive, that you needed a home… we checked, studied you, and approved you.”

My mother…

“I know who you are. You’re efficient and dangerous. We work hard to keep your identity clean. We have a fed on our payroll who cleans your mess when needed, you’ve given us so many opportunities. So, tell me… what do you know about the ones we’re fighting?”

I didn’t answer right away, instead, I reached into my bag and pulled out the file, and placed it gently on the table.

This was the part I hated the most. Telling the story, bleeding it out in front of strangers who might understand it or might just pity it. But I had to, because something in my gut told me they could help, or maybe I could help them. I took a breath and started.

“I was nine when they came,” I said quietly. “Men, mercenaries, I think.”

The coffee shop around us didn’t fade, but it felt further away, or maybe I was the one drifting away.

Reliving the worst night of my life. I can still hear the loud world around me, the laughter of a child, the smell of espresso, the clinking of a spoon, it was all too soft for what I was about to say.

“They started with my step father, Volk. Stabbed him in the stomach, shot him in the head while he tried to tell us to hide.” No one spoke.

“My little brother was three. They cut his throat open like he was nothing. My mother… pushed me away when they came at me, then she took the knife in the neck.” I touched the long scar on my jaw, traced it out of habit.

“It touched me here, sliced through my skin, then they pushed the blade into my stomach. They shot there to make sure I’d be dead. ”

I leaned back, trying to calm the stress, because I never told this story out loud, not to Vik, not to Kat, not to Damir. But they needed to understand, they needed to know why I’m the way I am. To know what shaped me and understand that I’m not here to waste their time.

I need to know what they know, I need it to be done with my past.