He shrugged. “That’s what I want to believe. We have no evidence to the contrary. And I’ll continue to believe that until someone says they have proof otherwise. It’s not like I don’t have experience surviving incidents that would have killed stronger people than me, so I don’t doubt that if he has even a one-percent chance, he’ll take it and get back to us.”
“I said horrible things to him.” Her voice choked, now ashamed of how she’d lashed out at him.
Those texts on his phone. Because she knew he never deleted a text from her, good or bad. She’d once teased him about wanting to keep evidence against her, and he’d sadly smiled and said no, he understood how quickly life could change, and he didn’t want to forget a single thing.
Back then, she’d always kept the sweet texts from him but deleted the mundane stuff—grocery lists, appointment reminders, things like that.
From that day forward, she’d kept every text, making sure to back them up regularly.
Now she wondered if she’d ever have another chance to receive them.
“I’d offer to make you a drink,” he said. “But…”
She shook her head. “Not while I’m breastfeeding,” she said. “I know.”
Ken
Ken gave Gillian one more hug before leaving, gently closing the bedroom door behind him and rejoining the other men.
“What now?” Trent asked.
“Now I have to track down my wife. And hope she meant it when she said mates are sacrosanct,” Ken muttered as he pulled up the family locator app on his phone.
“What?” Trent asked. “Why?”
Ken glanced at him. “Because I might literally need to hold on to her. If y’all haven’t noticed, I’m not a shifter, and she can easily rip my head off. If you think she’s going to hear this news and stay calm, then you really don’t know her at all.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Peyton
Before dawn, the temperature dropped and it started lightly raining. When he was abducted he was wearing a short-sleeved, knit pullover shirt and jeans because it’d felt comfortably cool.
And he hadn’t anticipated being abducted.
If I had, I would’ve worn my abduction clothes.
And a gun.
I will never hear the end of this from Dewi. And Beck. And evvvvveryone. I walked into that trap. Literally.
It didn’t take long for his clothes to quickly soak through, between the rain and running through dense foliage now wet from the precipitation.
Gillian is going to fucking kill me if these assholes don’t beat her to it.
Despite the cold and the rain, Peyton focused on running, on staying ahead of his captors.
They were humans, but even he couldn’t outrun a high-powered rifle round or a helicopter carrying advanced detection equipment.
And while he suspected they wanted him alive—why else tranq him?—he knew they’d probably kill him to protect their secrets if they couldn’t easily recapture him.
It’d been several hours since he’d last heard or sensed any signs of pursuit, but that didn’t mean they didn’t have drones and IR tech searching the region. Not to mention exhaustion was setting in, compounded by his hunger, thirst, and the lingering effects of whatever they dosed him with to knock him out.
Meaning he’d need to find somewhere to hole up and rest. Somewhere he could escape detection from the air. Until he could get a better handle on where he was and what the terrain ahead looked like—or found signs he was approaching a populated area—he couldn’t take the chance of stumbling right back into his captors’ arms.
He was approaching rocky hills surrounded by a thickly wooded area, and he hoped to find a deep cranny or natural cave or, better, an old mine shaft to crawl into. He’d even settle for a thick, concrete drainage pipe at this point. Anything to shield him from detection so he could catch a few goddamned hours of sleep and try to come up with a plan.
And figure out where the fuck he was. He preferred to stay clear of roads until he had a better idea of his location and figured out how to reach friendly territory.
