“The guy?”
She gestured helplessly to the alley and its prone occupant, who lay still and injured on the asphalt. “The luminist. Are you just going to leave him here?”
Those big, dark eyes went round. “Of course not.” Delilah patted the roof of the car and offered her an unsettling smile. “Nicolas is going in the trunk!”
* * *
Kaz had never known fear. Not really.
He thought he did. He thought he knew pain. He even thought he understood the depths of desperation and exactly what he’d do for his mate if necessary. He’d experienced the horror of seeing her life threatened. Heknew.
Except he didn’t.
He didn’t know fucking anything. Norman’s threat, the gargoyles, even Vesta ambushing them in their nest — none of it existed on the same plain of existence as the terror he experienced when Atria justvanished.
He was blind and deaf to everything except the roar of denial that consumed him. There was no city, no bystanders. Fracture didn’t exist. Laws didn’t matter. When they tracked her last known location back to a stinking alley in an industrial district only to find a wrecked, abandoned vehicle and blood on the ground, he ceased to be a man.
He was nothing. Nothing without her. Nothing but rage and fear and a grief so immense it swallowed him whole.
She trusted me to keep her safe and I failed.
A high pitched whining blocked out all sound. He didn’t register what Sloane was trying to tell him as he bent over the open trunk of the car, where Atria’s scent had been ground into the lining. It was like he was being crushed under the weight of his loss. He struggled to keep himself upright as he gripped the lip of the trunk so hard the frame dented.
He bent low to take in the trace of her that remained, sifting through the competing scents of gasoline and rubber. There, under it all, was jasmine, his own musk, andfear.Sweat. The salt of tears.
He shattered.
The car didn’t stand a chance. It shredded under his claws, the hurricane of rage and grief. He roared until his throat felt fileted open. He tore at the metal and fiberglass until even his tough skin began to split. He ripped the car apart piece by piece as Fracture stood by, silent witnesses to his incomprehensible loss.
Half the team was gone, scouring the city for their lost witch, and the rest were with him. They may not have understood exactly what he felt — they couldn’t, not without mates of their own — but they didn’t flinch back, didn’t look away. Atria was theirs now, too, and her abduction was a blow they barely knew how to process. They were some of the deadliest predators on the planet. To lose one of their own from right under their noses was a shock they'd never been confronted with before.
At least in that way, they stood with him. He would have been grateful for the support if he didn’t feel like his entire world had been ripped away from him.
Because I wasn’t careful enough. Because I didn’t push hard enough. Because I didn’t tell her how much I loved her when she needed it. Because she deserves better than me.
Kaz gasped for breath, his body screaming with exhaustion and pain as he sank onto the asphalt. His hands were torn to shreds. He was bleeding onto the filthy ground. He didn’t care. He didn’tcare.
Tears blurred his vision.
Have to find her.There was no other choice. He’d burn the fucking city to the ground if he had to. He’d break every law in the UTA to bring his mate home safe. He’d raze any organization, discard every moral tenet. For her, he’d become a thing of nightmares, tearing through the world until he found his missing heart.
But where to start? Her tracker had been either lost or deactivated. The car was stolen. It was likely that she’d been dragged through an m-gate already, which meant she could be literally anywhere in the world. He’d have to start from square one to find her now, and that would take time she didn’t have.
Kaz struggled to breathe. Was she hurt? Was she bound at that very moment? What horrors drew closer with every second he sat there, useless and bleeding? Was she afraid? Was she begging him to find her even when he couldn’t fucking hear her, because shetrusted him?
He needed to get up. He needed tomove.
His body didn’t want to work. It was like the emptiness left by the tether had sucked the strength out of him. He’d been beaten inside, reduced to a whimpering, broken pulp where once he’d been an unstoppable machine.
A heavy hand grasped his bicep and pulled him off the ground. Sloane’s helmet swam into view. “Captain,” he said, from a great, watery distance, “your pocket.”
He sucked in a ragged breath. It felt like razors running down the tender flesh of his abused throat. Pocket? What about his fucking pocket?
Kaz fumbled blindly with hands that barely worked. Blood smeared the pockets of his jeans as he searched. What was he searching for? Nothing mattered. Nothing—
Something buzzed under his fingers. His lungs seized.
The tracker.
