We stepped inside, our eyes scanning every corner, every shadow. The entryway looked normal. Coats hanging on hooks. Shoes lined up by the door. A vase of flowers on the side table.
But there was a smell in the air. Something metallic and wrong.
Blood.
The word flashed through my mind and I felt my heart stutter. Blood. Someone was bleeding. Someone was hurt.
We moved deeper into the house, following the scent that Knox’s wolf could track better than my human nose. Through the foyer. Past the living room. Toward the kitchen.
I saw her first.
Serena was lying on the floor near the kitchen doorway, crumpled on her side like a discarded doll, her eyes closed. Shopping bags were scattered around her, their contents spilled across the hardwood. Baby clothes and toys and packages of diapers, all the things she and Sarah had gone to buy for Blake, now strewn carelessly across the floor.
“Serena!” I dropped to my knees beside her, my fingers finding her pulse with desperate urgency.
It was there. Steady. Strong.
Relief crashed through me so hard I almost sobbed. She was breathing normally, her chest rising and falling in an even rhythm. No visible injuries. No blood. She was alive.
“She’s alive,” I said, my voice breaking. “She’s unconscious, but she’s alive.”
Knox nodded once, sharply, but he was already moving past me, his eyes fixed on something in the next room. I followed his gaze and saw a foot peeking out from the dining room doorway. A small foot in a sensible shoe.
Sarah.
We ran to her together, nearly tripping over each other in our haste. She was in the same state as Serena. Unconscious butalive, her pulse strong, her breathing normal. No visible injuries. They had been drugged, probably. Knocked out so they couldn’t fight back or call for help.
But where was Blake?
Where was our baby?
“Father?” Knox called out, his voice echoing through the silent house. “Father, where are you?”
No answer.
But then we heard it.
A whimper. High pitched and plaintive. A baby’s cry.
Blake.
My heart seized in my chest. She was here. She was alive. She was crying, which meant she was scared or hungry or uncomfortable, but she was alive.
We sprinted for the stairs, taking them two at a time. The crying was coming from the master bedroom at the end of the hall. We ran toward it, my heart pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat, could hear it in my ears.
Knox reached the door first and threw it open.
The sight that greeted us stopped me cold.
Lucio stood in the center of the room.
He looked nothing like the polished, professional tech specialist who had smiled at us in meetings and offered to help protect our family. His face was battered and bloody, scratches across his cheeks, a bruise forming on his jaw. His shirt was torn and stained red, evidence of a fight that had been brutal.
He’d been in a struggle. And from the looks of it, someone had given him hell before going down.
At his feet lay Marcus.
Knox’s father was sprawled on the floor, motionless, a pool of blood spreading beneath him. His face was pale, too pale, waxen in a way that made my stomach turn. I couldn’t tell from where I stood if he was breathing.
