Bronc
The Guatemalan jungle clung to my skin like a second layer—thick, suffocating, alive with sweat and despair. I checked my watch out of habit: 7:14 p.m. The exact moment our bond snapped.
It felt like a bone breaking inside me. A jagged fracture tearing through marrow and muscle until all I tasted was blood and absence. She was gone. Not just out of reach, but severed clean from my soul. My knees hit damp earth as I braced myself against a tree trunk slick with moss, its ridges biting into my palm like a mockery of Juliet’s teeth sinking into my shoulder during her heat.
Apparently, she’d left sometime this morning.
Ma’s voice from earlier looped in my head through the static of our unstable connection. She’d called after noon to let me know Juliet wasn’t at home when she’d stopped by to bring her lunch. It had become a routine. She’d been skipping meals since I’d been gone, and I’d asked Ma to try to make her eat. The best way to do that was to bring her food. She’d stopped by our house around 12:15 p.m. and discovered the place was empty. I’d called Juliet’s phone, and Ma answered it.
“It’s me, son. She left the phone. It looks like she may have packed a bag. She couldn’t have taken much. Looks like all of her clothes are here. Let me check out back for your truck.” Iknew she wouldn’t find it. Knew she’d taken it. To where exactly, I wasn’t certain, but I’d goddamn sure find out. I sure as shit knew her ultimate destination. I hung up after Ma verified what I knew was true. I opened my tracking software and found my truck at an Amarillo Flying J. Made a call to T-Bone and had him pick the truck up and grill the truck stop employees on when Juliet had been there. Five in the morning. She had a seven-hour head start. She was fucking long gone.
But she hadn’t runfromme—she’d runforsomeone else. Her mother’s face flashed behind my eyelids—Renda’s cold eyes staring back from that news broadcast days ago—and I knew. Juliet had bartered herself in some sacrificial swap. For a fucking woman who never gave two shits about her. Stupid fucking bravery twisted into a suicide mission by Harrison’s puppeteering hands. My beautiful brave mate didn’t trust me enough to tell me what she was planning, and now our bond was severed, and I didn’t know if she still lived.
The jungle roared around me—howler monkeys screaming while my wolf clawed at my ribs from within. I wanted to shift so badly my gums ached where canines threatened to lengthen uninvited. But shifting here meant losing myself entirely, with no control beyond primal need. And if there was one thing left anchoring me to humanity, it was rage sharper than any blade ever forged by Menace or Arsenal.
He had her now. Harrison who ripped bonds like they were paper chains meant for kindergarten crafts instead of sacred threads stitched into our DNA over lifetimes of wolf-blood legacy… Did he hurt her badly? Did she scream when he tore through our mating mark? Or did she shut down like she had when we first met—frozen prey hiding behind CPA degrees and lie after lie until my wolf pried its way under those walls? Did he lose control until her heart stopped? I roared, losing my mind.
“Bronc!” Wrecker’s voice cut through the mangrove haze as he emerged from our command tent thirty yards ahead, whereMenace paced inside under lamplight maps spread across crates serving as tables because nothing here stayed clean or neat or permanent. Just chaos upon chaos… “Intel came through—”
I didn’t let him finish before turning toward camp though every step felt wrong-footed without Juliet shifting beside me in sync like moonlight over prairie grass back home… Home where Pearl would scrub counters raw trying to not cry while Maddie prayed over another empty dining table placemat… Home where Skeeter was probably smirking through another stolen payout because God forbid any problem stay simple long enough to solve before another disaster imploded.
But none mattered next to this singular truth scorching nerve endings raw: Juliet thought sacrifice made martyrdom noble.
Not cowardice couched as courage… Not abandonment twisting knife-deep… Noble… And maybe part of me agreed even now—admired that infuriating spark flaring bright enough to burn them both alive if needed because that was my mate—wildfire wrapped in soft curves.
But admiration wouldn’t save her from cages built for corporate greed and revenge.
“Panama City airport,” Wrecker rasped, handing satellite images showing black-site lab locations dotting the coastline like tumorous stars. But coordinates blurred red-laced vision already picturing Harrison standing over Juliet,, there smirking as monitors tracked heartbeat fading. My heartbeat. Our heartbeat. Gone silent at 7:14 sharp.
Menace slammed a fist onto the map where Costa Rica bled into Nicaragua. “He dragged us south intentionally—distracted us while—”
“While she walked straight into his goddamn arms,” I finished throat shredded raw quieter than midnight snowfall, knowing when I found him it wouldn’t be a quick death. No, there would be claws tearing his throat slow enough to savor the terror. I’d see amber eyes widening, the same shade Juliet feared, the onesshe’d faced as he tore our bond asunder. They’d reflect the fear of a beast facing his own death for his sins. He’d see vengeance was the only thing left for him.
I hit the command center like a man gone rogue, breaking and breaking away until my last shred of will brought me back. A shell of myself, no fucking actual body, but this broken one I couldn’t feel anymore. A ghost of the wolf I was without Juliet to make me whole. The team gathered in the crowded room where we’d gathered what seemed like a hundred times, faces as rough as the plans we made. Maps, wires, desperation to find that bastard Harrison and make him pay. They shifted in their chairs, grew uneasy, never saw me come apart at the seams until now. Until my connection to Juliet snapped, and they felt the fury and the resolve to get her back. I slammed my fist on the table, guttural, barked orders or death threats. I couldn’t say which, and I didn’t care. We were going after the lab. Going after Juliet. I’d hunt her with or without them.
Papers scattered, sounds of boots and bodies jerking in shock as the table rattled under my fist. Desperation charged the cramped room, sparking between me and the men I ran this show with, static as sharp as the glances they shot my way. My wildness, my raw fucking need to find her. It pushed against their discipline and forced them to follow. They knew I was Alpha. They knew I’d keep moving until I brought her back, dead if not alive, but mine either way.
JT, big as a bear and just as watchful, shifted in his chair and ran a hand over his trimmed blonde beard. A lifetime of scars made him look old as hell when he was only in his mid-thirties. A man of faith and never out of his element until right at this moment. “What’s the plan, Bronc?”
His voice was slow and wary. The question shouldn’t have needed asking. The answer was the same as always. Locate and destroy. But they could sense it in me now, my will on the verge of shattering just like my bond with Juliet had. A vein pulsedin my jaw as I gritted my teeth, let my breath and my rage and my promise of vengeance do the counting to ten before I replied.
My voice was low, barely human. “Juliet is gone.”
Bridger raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms. He was built like a truck and left a presence even when he didn’t speak. This time, he was quiet. Too fucking quiet, all of them watched me like they expected an explosion or a break. My wolf wanted both. My wolf wanted to rip through the jungle and never stop.
My fist came down on the table again, less a slam this time than a resolute, raw-edged command.
No fear. No fucking hesitation.
“Harrison took her,” I continued, feeling my face go hard and unreadable as stone. “That’s all we need to know.”
There was shuffling, bodies shifting. An awkward, uncertain sound from a crew I could always count on to have my back—to keep my head on straight, when everything else spiraled.
Eli’s sharp Southern drawl sliced through the mounting tension. “Hastings has gotta show his face at some point. He’s got a business to run.” A pause, a frown. “I frankly don’t get how he’s stayed hidden the last five weeks, Bronc. It’s why we don’t have a definitive trail this time.”
J.T. nodded once, arms folded and face creased with a concern he never voiced. “He’s communicating somehow. Whispers here and there. He’s got too fucking much money to grease too many palms.”
I could feel them looking at me, waiting for a decision or a meltdown. Waiting to see if I was still Bronc, if I was still Alpha, or if Juliet’s absence left me less. “He can’t run,” I said, as much to myself as to them, determination spreading through my veins with all the comfort of venom. “He’s got nowhere to go now. He’s got what he wanted. I’m assuming he’s made progress on whatever super-drug he’s been working on. Juliet will be a distraction. But he does have to answer to a board of directors. We need to focus there. It could give us a clue sooner than later.”
