Cayden pressed a hand against my chest, trying to stop me from storming toward the café. “Calm down, Roman.”
I pushed him away from me and snatched his collar. “I’ll tell you one last time to get out of my fucking way.” My body shook with rage. Isabella was so close that I could smell her.
“Or what?” he asked, eyes wide. “You’ll kill me for your senseless mistakes?”
My wolf growled, and I bared my teeth at my beta.
He shook his head, unafraid of me. “If you go into that club while she’s working and approach her like that, everything is going to fall apart.”
“She’s not working. She’s with a fucking guy who fucking marked her having a good fucking time.” I released him and continued to storm through the woods to the nightclub. Music thumped through the forest, the scent of alcohol becoming almost unbearable.
Suddenly, someone screamed—at the top of their lungs—and the music stopped. I collapsed onto all fours, my nails lengthening into claws and my bones snapping, and lifted my nose to the moon, taking off toward the nightclub as Cayden followed us.
Outside of the café, a group of people were huddled together and whispering. Some people had drinks in their hands, others were crying. Grasping onto each other in their tight clothes, tears falling from their eyes. Warriors scouting the area and trying to calm everyone down. It was pure chaos.
I shifted into my human, scanning the crowd for Isabella. Jane and Vanessa were holding each other by the doorway. Jane’s cheeks were stained with black streaks. She gazed at me, pressed a hand to her chest, then ran in my direction. “Thank the Moon Goddess, you’re alright!” She threw her arms around me. “I thought I lost you too.”
My brows furrowed together. “Where’s Isabella?”
She wiped a tear from her cheek and nodded to the side of woods where a group of alphas were huddled. I pushed Jane away and hurried to them. Mate. I needed my mate. Cayden followed me, trying to keep up with my quickening pace.
My heart thumped against my chest when the scent of alcohol faded into the stench of blood. Blood. Blood everywhere. I pushed through the alphas, not caring who I pissed off, when I saw the rogue. Dead and lying in a puddle of his own blood, he smelled like her.
Where was she?
A few yards from the rogue was another. His face was torn apart—completely unrecognizable. And a few yards from him was another with a dislocated limb. Five more dead rogues laid throughout the woods, each a distance from each other.
And the mate’s necklace that I had given Isabella was in the center of the madness. Painted with blood, not Isabella’s but the rogues. I grabbed the necklace and deposited it into my pocket. I needed to find her.
Gore covered a few trees and was splattered all over the ground. This wasn’t planned. If Isabella was here on business with someone, they would’ve taken out each rogue without a mess.
I sniffed the air for any trace of my mate, needing to make sure she was alright and hadn’t mated with anyone else. I followed the only scent I could pick up and came to a small stream. A Lycan was in it, washing blood off of his body. His brows were pulled together in pain, and he clutched the open wound on his abdomen.
“Where is she?” I asked, stepping closer to him.
The Lycan gazed over at me, jaw clenching as he pulled himself out of the water and put more pressure on the open wound which sat almost perfectly along the line of Moonflowers tattooed on his side.
“Who?”
“Isabella. Where is she?”
He stiffened, then scoffed. “So… you’re her mate?”
I stalked over to him and grabbed him by the neck. “Where is she?”
“Take your hands off of me before someone gets hurt.”
“I asked you a question.”
“And I asked you to take your hands off of me.”
I growled, baring my teeth at the man who had Isabella’s scent all over him. Her scent was so strong—too strong. “Where?”
“I don’t know where your mate is. I asked her to leave.”
“Don’t give me that shit! I know you Lycans have an oath to each other that’d you never leave a mission. Where is she?”
He pushed me away and grabbed his wound again. “I asked her to leave so I wouldn’t mark her. She’s going through heat, you dumbass.” He shook his head. Heat. My mate. She was in heat. “Don’t act so fucking surprised either. If anything, you should be thanking me. If I wasn’t here, those rogues would’ve devoured her.”
