Callum was like a ghost, but not the one I feared. Not the one that haunted me through every night and every breath and every moment my own strength became weakness.
I thought I heard her voice. I thought I heard it, and broke it, and let it bleed into the night. I thought I had more time.
Her name wouldn’t leave me, but I refused to speak it. Callum was her image, and he knew it. It kept him on the edges; it kept him in the dark. It kept him, and I hated him for it.
But I hatedher more.
The night would not end. Her refusal would not end. It was another game, another false sense of hope and control. We’d bring her back. It was all I could think, all I could allow myself to think. The certainty was consuming, destroying.
I wouldn’t outlast this.
It felt like waiting for the gallows, like knowing your place and denying it all the way down.
Bronwyn hovered in the doorway, her fingers worrying the lace at her sleeves. She still wore that damnable floral perfume, cloying as guilt itself.
“Declan…?” Her voice frayed at the edges. “Will you dine with us tonight? The cook prepared beef wellington—”
I didn’t turn from the window where moonlight carved shadows across the eastern plains. “You think my appetite hinges on beef wellington while our legacy rots?”
A pause—the soft hitch of breath she always failed to stifle. “They said… they said there may have been a sighting?” Her hope curdled my teeth. “Does Callum think…?”
“Callum thinks nothing without my order.” The glass trembled in my grip; liquid fire bled down my wrist as I turned slowly toward her crumpled face—that face I once took pride in breaking before dignitaries who might have desired it more than duty demanded of me now. Our daughter had evaded me longer than dignity allowed. “Savannah will kneel for Madison’s whelp, whether she crawls back or is dragged.”
Bronwyn flinched as if struck yet dared step closer—foolish woman still reaching through walls built long before vows were choked out between us… her blue eyes pooled with midnight grief she mistook for strength.
“She’s your child,” she whispered fiercely, so fiercely it almost resembled a spine.
My laugh cracked ice across marble floors beneath which generations of Calloway wolves snarled restlessly beneath stone tombs already forgotten by time but not blood-debt.
“She stopped being a child when defiance became her creed,” I spat, watching satisfaction bloom as crimson drained from lips pressed tight. Her hands trembled now not with fear but rage.
Bronwyn retreated first, as she always did, clutching at pearls draped over collarbones bruised more often by silence than fists these days. She halted at the threshold.
“Find her alive,” she murmured, voice splintering. “Or bury me beside her.”
Her footsteps faded down corridors colder than our wedding bed had ever been.
I finished off the bitter dregs, tracing maps marked with failed searches. Savannah would learn the consequences of defiance against the crown.
Chapter 2
Menace
Sawyer. Her absence stained the room where we met to assess the wreckage of her captivity, and I felt it burn into me while the scent of coffee, whiskey, and day-old pie pressed into the room. She’d been here six weeks now, and the mystery of her remained. We sat in a rectangle of leather chairs, tension hanging between us like another lost mate. My fingers drummed against the table, unbidden and uncertain. Bronc loomed over the worn wood, organizing our priorities: burn, retrieve, recover, report. Details spilled over the table in messy tangles of speculation. My mind worked itself raw as I pieced it all together, overanalyzed, recalculated, failed. Bronc’s eyes met mine. “What do you know about Sawyer’s time in that lab?”
“Not much. It’s a difficult subject to broach.” I felt the chairs close in around me, the clutter of papers spread like doubts, and I couldn’t stop thinking about how I’d neglected my car dealership. Everything I’d built seemed on the brink of falling, waiting on me to make sense of the madness and move. Two months of being absent. We accomplished the goal. Got our Luna back. That’s a victory. I brought back a treasure, too. One I know next to nothing about. Except for the fact that she’s mine. My business would be fine. I’ve got a great general manager. Still felt like I should be there. I gritted my teeth and waited, half ready for Bronc to chewme out and half hoping he would. I’d spent a lifetime wrestling things into order. Except for this. Except for her.
The worn leather squeaked beneath me as I shifted my weight, tried to lose the thoughts of Sawyer that slipped into every empty space. I breathed in the tang of old coffee, let the sounds of shifting chairs and shuffling papers force me back. “Prioritize,” Bronc barked, drawing the room into his rhythm. “We’re not done ‘til every name’s been accounted for and every family’s been contacted.”
I blinked, finally focusing on the room. Ghosts in leather cuts, scrawled lists like confessions, and Bronc standing at the head of it all like the wrath of God. Liam Baucaum didn’t flinch as he flipped through Juliet’s notes, scattering details like premonitions, shaking the room with his resolve. I absorbed what I could, pushed away what I couldn’t.
Wrecker’s low rumble took over as Bronc handed him the spotlight. He traced a thick finger over printouts and digital files, translating them from hieroglyphics into tragedy. “So far, Juliet’s counted sixteen recovered and seven unaccounted for,” he began. His gravel voice added weight to every number. “Anderson, R.” He continued down the list with surgical precision, calling each letter and name into its own small grave. “Lindsey, C. Marks, G.” I couldn’t bear to listen. I couldn’t look away.
Wrecker moved through the list, a countdown to the one name I knew I’d never hear but ached to. Others followed his words, but I already knew the punchline. Absence. My name this time. My sentence to watch as each piece of her shattered further from reach. I listened through the entire alphabet, pretending this time I’d been wrong, knowing damn well I never was.
“It’s not here, man,” Wrecker concluded, the files closing under his heavy hands like the lid of a casket.
Bronc’s eyes shot toward me, keen, unforgiving. I tensed. Here it comes, I thought. He held his stare on me until I felt every bone in my body snap, then shatter. “Bridger,” he said, droppingthe nickname as if invoking another name might force it to appear, “you heard anything else? It’s clear nobody is looking for her.”
