Chapter 4: The Morning Hunt
The compound slept, but Vanja’s mind screamed. The weight of Adem’s arm across her waist was a chain. His steady breath against her neck felt like a countdown. In the dark, the faces from her own time flashed—the memorials, the silent rows of names, the footage of this very house reduced to rubble and scorched stone. The quiet trust in Sheremete’s eyes was a betrayal waiting to happen.
She had to move.
She waited another hour until his sleep was deepest, the deep, rhythmless sleep of exhaustion. Then, with the care of a bomb disposer, she slid from under his arm. He grunted, rolled onto his stomach, but did not wake. She dressed in the dark: heavy trousers, a thick sweater, her boots. She took nothing from the room. Her Swiss pass was already sewn into the lining of her coat.
The frozen world outside the compound walls was a slap. The air was a razor in her lungs. The crust of snow over the dirt crackled under her boots, each sound a potential alarm. She moved like a ghost through the skeletal trees, guided by a memory from a documentary she’d watched two decades from now—a footpath used by shepherds, leading to a derelict crossroads.
Her contact was late.
She waited in the lee of a shattered pine, shivering, her breath pluming in the moonlight. The paranoia was a physical taste, copper and bile. Every rustle was a patrol, every shadow Adem’s looming figure.
A low whistle, two notes. The signal.
He emerged from the gloom, a gaunt man in a Serbian police surplus jacket, his face pinched with cold and fear. “You’re insane to come here,” he hissed in Serbian, his eyes darting into the woods. “This is their heartland. Jashari’s wolves are everywhere.”
“You have the information?” Vanja’s voice was low, steady. Inside, her heart was a frantic bird.
He thrust a folded slip of paper at her. “The movement order. Two units from the 37th Motorized Brigade. They’re being pre-positioned at the base in Leskovac under the guise of a training exercise. Deployment window starts March 3rd. The cover is ‘anti-smuggling operations.’” He spat the words. “It’s the prelude.”
Her fingers closed around the paper. It was nothing, and everything. A single thread in the vast tapestry of the coming assault. But it was proof. A date. A unit. Something concrete she could show Adem to shatter his dangerous hope of a political solution. “What about the operational commander? Is it still—”
A branch snapped.
Not from them.
It cracked through the frozen stillness like a gunshot. Her contact’s eyes went wide. He melted backward into the shadows, gone.
Vanja didn’t run. Running was admission. She shoved the paper deep into her boot and turned, forcing her face into a mask of startled confusion.
He was just there. A darker mass against the black trees. Adem.
He didn’t speak. He just looked at her. The moonlight caught the ice in his eyes, the rigid line of his jaw. He took a step forward. Then another. The silence was worse than any accusation.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said, her voice thin in the vast cold. “I went for a walk.”
He was on her in three swift strides. His hand clamped around her upper arm, his fingers digging into the muscle with a force that promised bone-deep bruises. He didn’t acknowledge her lie. He just started walking, dragging her behind him like a sack.
He didn’t take the path back to the compound. He veered east, plunging deeper into the woods. Fallen branches clawed at her clothes. The frozen undergrowth tore at her ankles. He moved with a brutal, unerring purpose, never slowing, his grip unbreakable.
The cabin appeared like a rotten tooth in a black gum. One wall had slumped inward. The roof was a skeleton of beams, patched with moss and snow. He kicked the door, a plank of wood hanging by one hinge, and it screeched open.
He threw her inside.
She stumbled on the uneven earth floor, catching herself on a rickety table littered with mildewed maps and empty tins. The air was a foul cocktail of damp rot, old ashes, and animal decay. A single candle in a tin can guttered on the table, throwing monstrous, leaping shadows.
Adem barred the doorway, his chest heaving, not from exertion, but from a rage so vast it seemed to vibrate the very air. “A walk.”
He said the words as if tasting poison.
Vanja straightened up, her back to the rotting wall. “Yes.”
He moved. One moment he was at the door, the next he was on her, his body slamming into hers, pinning her against the clammy, splintered wood. The impact drove the air from her lungs. He brought his face inches from hers. His breath was hot, his eyes were black holes. “You met someone. Who was he?”
“There was no one.”
His fist clenched in the front of her sweater. With a violent yank, he tore it open. Buttons pinged against the walls and rolled into the dark. The cold bit into her exposed breasts. He didn’t look at them. His gaze was locked on her face. “You stink of lies. Of treason. Was it Agron? Did you finally take his deal?”
“No!” The denial was ripped from her.
“Then who?” he roared, the sound echoing in the small, ruinous space. He shoved his knee between her legs, forcing her thighs apart. The rough fabric of his trousers ground against her. “A Serbian? Is that it? You’re their little spy, coming here to fuck your way into my confidence?”
The injustice, the terrifying proximity to the truth, unleashed something in her. “You think I’d let you do the things you’ve done to me for intelligence?” she screamed back, spittle flying into the space between them. “You think I’d let you fuck me in a stable, in a bed, like an animal, just for a fucking report?”
Something flickered in his eyes—doubt, fury, a brutal, unwilling belief. It was drowned a second later by a darker, more possessive fire. His hand left her torn sweater and grasped her jaw, holding her head still. “Then prove it,” he whispered, the menace liquid and intimate. “Prove you’re mine. Not Agron’s. Not Serbia’s. Mine.”
His mouth crashed down on hers. It wasn’t a kiss. It was an assault. A punishment. He bit her lower lip, hard enough to draw blood. The coppery taste flooded her mouth. She gasped, and he drove his tongue inside, claiming the space, erasing the ghost of any other conversation.
He broke the kiss, panting. With both hands now, he gripped the waistband of her trousers and her underwear and dragged them down her hips in one violent motion. The cold air rushed against her bare skin. She was exposed, utterly vulnerable, pressed between the unforgiving wall and the hard, furious heat of him.
He fumbled with his own belt, his movements frantic, clumsy with rage and need. He got his trousers open, freeing his cock. It sprang out, thick and already fully hard, the head dark and flushed in the candlelight. He spat into his palm, a coarse, wet sound, and slicked himself roughly.
He didn’t position her. He didn’t guide himself. He just hooked one of her legs over his hip, lifted her slightly with terrifying strength, and slammed himself into her.
Vanja cried out, a raw, jagged sound that was lost in the rotten rafters. He was huge, and she wasn’t ready, and the entry was a burning, stretching agony that made her vision swim. He was buried to the hilt in one relentless stroke, filling her beyond comfort, beyond sense.
“Mine,” he grunted into her ear, his voice guttural. He began to move.
His rhythm was punishing. Each withdrawal was almost complete, each thrust a brutal, deep piston-drive that hammered her body into the wall. The old wood groaned and shed dust with every impact. He fucked her with a single-minded fury, as if he could exorcise his own demons, his own doubts, by pounding them into her flesh.
“You feel that?” he rasped, his breath hot and ragged. “That’s me. That’s the only thing in you. The only truth. You understand? You take me. You come on my cock. That’s your loyalty.”
The pain was subsiding, transmuting into something else—a deep, shameful, overwhelming tide of sensation. The sheer physicality of it, the raw force of his possession, sparked a fuse in her gut. Her body, traitorously, began to respond. Wetness gathered, easing his brutal passage, the slick, filthy sounds of their joining filling the cabin. She could feel every vein, every pulse of him inside her.
“Fuck,” she moaned, her head falling back against the wall. Her nails dug into the shoulders of his coat, clinging.
“Yeah,” he breathed, a note of savage triumph in his voice. He shifted his angle, and on the next downward drive, he hit a place that made her see white. A sharp, electric jolt of pure, unadulterated pleasure. She gasped.
He did it again. And again. He had found it. His thrusts became less erratic, more focused, targeting that sweet, deep spot with devastating accuracy. The pain was gone, burned away by a rising, coiling heat in her belly.
“That’s it,” he encouraged, his own control fraying. His pace quickened. The slaps of their bodies grew louder, wetter, more obscene. “Take it. Take all of it. Your cunt is so fucking tight. So greedy for me.”
She was coming apart. The guilt, the fear, the impossible mission—it all dissolved in the primal soup of sensation. She was just a body being fucked, being used, finding a perverse freedom in the annihilation. Her climax built, inevitable and vast.
“Adem,” she whimpered, a plea and a surrender.
Her release slammed into her without warning. It was a convulsive, silent explosion that locked her muscles and stole her breath. Her inner walls clamped around him in fierce, rhythmic pulses, milking his length.
It dragged him over the edge with her. With a choked, animal roar, he buried himself one last time, hilting himself so deep she felt him in her womb. His body went rigid, shuddering, as he emptied himself into her in hot, pulsing jets. He collapsed forward, his weight pressing her into the wall, his forehead resting on the wood beside her head. They stayed like that, joined, dripping, breathing in ragged, broken unison.
Slowly, the world seeped back. The cold. The stink of the cabin. The ache between her legs. The damp trail of his release already leaking down her inner thigh.
He softened and slipped out of her. He stepped back, pulling his trousers up, fastening his belt with methodical, tired movements. He wouldn’t look at her.
Vanja, her legs trembling, pulled her own clothes up. The torn sweater gaped open. She hugged herself, staring at the floor.
“You have something in your boot,” he said, his voice flat, emptied of all anger. He leaned against the table, lighting a cigarette with unsteady hands. The match flare illuminated his face—drawn, weary, haunted.
Her blood went cold. He had seen. He had seen everything.
She bent, her muscles protesting, and retrieved the crumpled, damp paper. She handed it to him without a word.
He smoothed it on the table beside the candle. He read it. His face didn’t change. He read it again. Then he slowly looked up at her. The fury was gone. In its place was something worse: a profound, weary understanding.
“March 3rd,” he said quietly.
“They’re coming, Adem. Not for talks. For a cleansing. This,” she gestured at the paper, at herself, at the filthy cabin, “is all there is. There is no deal with Agron. There is no autonomy. There is only this.” Her voice broke. “And you have to be ready. You have to be somewhere else.”
He took a long drag on the cigarette, the ember glowing brightly in the gloom. He studied her—the torn clothes, the blood on her lip, the absolute, devastating certainty in her eyes. She wasn’t a spy. She was a messenger from a future so bleak she wore its shadow like a second skin.
“Who are you?” he asked, but it was a different question now. Not an accusation. A genuine, bewildered search.
She said the only true thing she could. “I am someone who knows what happens if you stay in that compound in March.”
He was silent for a long time. He finished the cigarette, grinding it out on the sole of his boot. He walked to the door, then paused, looking back at her, a stark silhouette against the grey pre-dawn light.
“We go back,” he said. “We tell no one of this. Not even Hamez. Not yet.” He reached out a hand, not to grab, but to wait. “You walk with me.”
She took his hand. His fingers closed around hers, tight, almost painful. It wasn’t tenderness. It was an anchor. A tether between two people who now shared a secret that could either save them or destroy everything.
They walked out of the rotten cabin as the first, feeble light of dawn began to bleach the sky of stars. The paper with its fatal date remained on the table, a ghost in the candle’s dying flame.
They walked back through the iron-gray dawn in a silence more complete than the forest’s hush. The only sounds were the crunch of frost and the ragged rhythm of their breath. He never let go of her hand. His grip was a vise. She felt the ghost of him inside her, a sore, leaking reminder with every step. The compound walls rose from the mist, a grim sanctuary.
Inside the gate, he finally released her. The yard was empty. He stopped, looking at the main house, then at the small side room that had been hers. “Get your things,” he said, his voice gravel. “Bring them to my room.”
Vanja didn’t move. She stared at him, her face smudged with dirt and dried blood. “What?”
“You heard me.”
“Your parents will be back tomorrow.” The words felt automatic, a practical barrier erected against the seismic shift his order implied. “I can’t stay with you anymore. They will think it’s unfit.” She swallowed, the next question a sharp stone in her throat. “Are you,” she asked, the Albanian formal, “disrespecting me?”
He stilled. The dawn light carved the exhaustion on his face into something harder. “If you were,” he started, then stopped. His jaw worked.
“If I were what, Adem? Albanian? The daughter of your brother-in-arms, or a sister maybe?” Her laugh was a short, brittle sound. “Then this would not have happened. Right? You would have respected me. Asked for my hand in marriage. You wouldn’t fuck me in the middle of the fucking forest like I was a… a hole to be used.”
“You are wrong,” he said, the words low and fierce. He stepped closer, his body blocking out the cold light. “If you were just another woman, and not you, I wouldn’t be mad about you. I wouldn’t feel you in my blood. I wouldn’t give a shit who you met in the woods.”
She stilled, his admission striking her with more force than his hand ever had.
“I’m sorry,” he said, the apology rough and unvarnished.
“It’s okay,” she whispered, looking away at the frozen laundry. It wasn’t. But it was what she had. It was the currency of this time, this place.
He lit a cigarette, the smoke weaving into the mist. “If we are to marry, no one can know.” He took a long drag. “My parents, yes. And Hamez and Zana. But that is it. No one else. Not until this is over.”
She stared at him, the reality of it—the absurd, dangerous reality—dawning slowly. “Why are you staring?” he asked, his eyes narrowing against the smoke.
“You want to marry me?” The disbelief bled into a raw, sarcastic edge. “Is my pussy that tight? Or my filije that good?”
He moved faster than she could blink. He dropped the cigarette, crushed it under his boot, and closed the space between them. His hand cupped the back of her neck, not gently. He pulled her in and kissed her. This kiss was different. It wasn't the punishing conquest of the cabin. It was a claiming, yes, but a deliberate one, sealed with the taste of tobacco and a furious, undeniable intent. When he broke away, his breath was hers. “Get your things,” he repeated, his voice a rough promise against her lips. “Now.”
She moved. The room that had been her temporary shelter felt like a museum of a discarded identity now. She gathered her few things—the spare sweater, her notebook, the small bottle of perfume that felt absurd in this place—and shoved them into her bag. Her hands trembled. This wasn't a romance. This was a tactical merger, a desperate consolidation in the face of an avalanche. She walked back across the yard, the bag heavy in her hand, her body still humming with the deep-set ache he’d left inside her.
His room was spare, militant. A bed, a desk buried in papers, a rifle leaning in the corner by a small, cold stove. He was pouring rakia into two small glasses when she entered. He didn’t look at her. He handed her a glass. “Drink.”
They drank in silence, the liquor burning a path of false warmth down to her gut. He took the glass from her, his fingers brushing hers. “We do it tonight,” he said, his voice low. “Hamez will bring the hodža. A man from Prekaz who can be quiet.”
“Tonight?” The word was a gasp. The speed of it stole her breath. It made it real.
“Before my parents return. Before anyone else has an opinion.” He finally looked at her. The candlelight from the desk caught the flecks of gray in his beard, the uncompromising lines around his eyes. “This changes nothing about what is coming. You understand that? It only changes this.” He gestured between them, a sharp, frustrated motion. “It means you stay here. With me. Where I can see you.”
“Where you can control me,” she said, not as an accusation, but a flat recognition.
“Yes.” He didn’t deny it. He put his glass down. “Take off your clothes.”
Her breath hitched. It was an audit. A reassertion. She complied, her fingers numb on the buttons of her torn sweater, then the fastenings of her trousers. The cold air of the room pebbled her skin. She stood before him, exposed, the marks from the cabin’s wall faintly visible on her back.
He looked at her, his gaze traveling over her body with a terrifying passion. It was an assessment. He walked to her, circled her. His calloused thumb traced a bruise on her hip. “This is from the table.”
“Yes.”
He stopped in front of her. He placed his hands on her waist, his palms hot against her cool skin. Then he slowly slid them up, over the curve of her ribs, until his thumbs brushed the undersides of her breasts. He watched her face. “You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen,” he said, the words stark and strangely devoid of warmth. “It is a problem.”
He bent his head and took her nipple into his mouth. Not softly. He sucked, hard, his tongue rough against the peak, his teeth grazing. A sharp jolt of sensation, pain and pleasure fused, shot through her. She whimpered, her hands coming up to clutch at his shoulders. He switched to the other breast, giving it the same brutal attention. Her body was responding, betraying her again, warmth pooling low in her belly.
He straightened up, his lips wet. “Lie down.”
She moved to the bed, its rough wool blanket scratchy against her bare back. He stripped off his own clothes with efficient, hurried movements. His body was a map of old scars and taut muscle, shadows dancing over the planes of his chest and stomach. His cock was already half-hard, thickening as he watched her watch him.
He didn’t join her immediately. He stood at the foot of the bed, his eyes drinking her in. “Open your legs.”
She did, letting her knees fall apart, exposing herself completely to his gaze. The cool air touched her most intimate skin. He made a low sound in his throat, a rumble of pure want. He climbed onto the bed, kneeling between her thighs. He didn’t touch her with his hands. He leaned forward, bracing himself above her, and lowered his mouth to her cunt.
Vanja cried out, her back arching off the bed. His tongue was ruthless. It licked a broad, flat stroke through her folds, then focused on her clit with a relentless, circling pressure. He was not gentle. He was devouring her. She could hear the wet, obscene sounds, could feel his beard scraping the tender skin of her inner thighs. He fucked her with his tongue, plunging it inside her, then sucking her clit between his lips.
“Adem… fuck…” she chanted, her fingers tangling in his long hair, not pushing him away but holding him there. The climax built quickly, a turbulent wave from the depths he’d stirred in the cabin. It crashed over her, a shaking, silent convulsion that tore a ragged scream from her throat.
Before the last pulses had faded, he was moving up her body. He gripped his cock, rubbed the broad, slick head through her soaking folds, and pushed inside. She was so open, so sensitive, that the fullness was an exquisite shock. He sank deep with one long, smooth stroke, seating himself to the hilt with a grunt.
“Look at me,” he commanded.
Her golden-green eyes, blurred with pleasure, found his. He held her gaze as he began to move. His thrusts were slower now, deeper, more deliberate than in the cabin. Each one was a measured claim. She could feel every inch of him, the stretch, the perfect friction. He leaned down, his breath mingling with hers.
“You will be my wife,” he whispered against her mouth, driving into her. “You will take this cock in this bed, in this room, until this war takes us or we kill it.” He thrust harder. “Say it.”
“I will,” she gasped, wrapping her legs around his waist, pulling him deeper.
“Who do you belong to?”
“You.” The word was a moan, torn from her.
He kissed her then, a deep, consuming kiss as his hips pistoned. The pace quickened, lost its control. The bed frame knocked a dull rhythm against the stone wall. He was hitting that spot again, the one that unraveled her, and a second, tighter orgasm was coiling, impossibly, at the base of her spine. She felt him swell inside her, his rhythm fragmenting.
“Come with me,” he gritted out, his voice strangled. “Now.”
It was an order she couldn’t disobey. Her climax ripped through her, a blinding white rupture that clamped her around him. With a guttural roar, he plunged deep and froze, pulsing hot jets into her core. He collapsed, his full weight pressing her into the thin mattress, his face buried in the sweat-damp hair at her neck.
They lay like that for a long time, spent, sticky, the room silent except for their slowing breath. The candle guttered. He shifted first, rolling to his side, taking her with him so she was nestled against his chest. His arm was heavy across her.
A soft knock at the door, hours later. “Adem?” Hamez’s voice, low.
Adem slipped from the bed, pulling on his trousers. He opened the door a crack. Vanja pulled the blanket over herself, listening.
“He is here,” Hamez said. “In the back room. It is done?”
“It will be now.” Adem closed the door. He came back, handed Vanja her clothes. “Get dressed.”
The hodža was an old man with watery eyes and hands that shook. The room was Hamez’s sitting room, a single oil lamp casting a dome of shaky light. Zana stood in the corner, her face unreadable. There were no decorations. No guests. The old man’s voice quavered through the short, essential lines of the ceremony. Do you consent. Do you consent.
“I do,” Vanja said, her voice clear.
“I do,” Adem said, his eyes on her, not the hodža.
It took three minutes. The old man made a note in a small, private book, accepted a folded stack of banknotes from Hamez, and was led out into the night. There was no ring. No kiss.
Zana came forward first. She took Vanja’s face in her hands, her eyes searching. She kissed her on both cheeks. “Welcome to the family,” she said softly, but her gaze held a warning, a depth of understanding. You know what you have tied yourself to.
Hamez stood stiffly. He looked at his brother, then at Vanja. He gave a single, sharp nod. It wasn’t approval. It was acknowledgment. A tactical reality had been cemented.
Then they were alone again, back in Adem’s room. The marriage certificate, a simple piece of paper, lay on the desk beside the maps of troop movements. Adem looked at it, then at her. The enormity of it hung in the air between them—a fragile, secret contract signed in the shadow of a massacre.
He blew out the candle. In the dark, he pulled her against him. His hand settled possessively on the bare skin of her hip under her shirt. “Sleep,” he said.
But she lay awake for a long time, feeling the weight of his arm, listening to the distant bark of a dog. She was married. She had altered a timeline. And the clock on the wall, ticking toward March, grew louder with every beat of his heart against her back.