Talking about Kat got him worried all over again, and the tires on the truck squawked as Connor pulled into the parking lot of his apartment building way too fast. Hale’s head almost bounced off the dash as Connor slid into the empty space beside his truck and slammed on the brakes.
“Will you calm down?” Hale growled as he glared over at him. “Your truck is right there, so Kat obviously didn’t go anywhere.”
Connor knew he should have been relieved, but for some reason, he was still worried. That concern had him out of the SUV in a flash and running for the front door of his building. Hale and the others followed at a slower pace.
When he picked up his sister’s scent on the stairs, Connor finally started relaxing, slowing his strides as he planned exactly how he’d apologize to her for being a jackass. They wouldn’t have much time to talk before he needed to leave for the park, but he definitely had a few things he wanted to tell his sister. The first being that he loved her, no matter what.
He got a whiff of a few other scents that seemed familiar when he noticed the door of his apartment standing wide-open. Cursing, he sprinted down the hall, sliding to a stop as he entered the living room.
“Kat!” he shouted, eyes darting back and forth around the space. “Where are you? Jenna, are you here?”
Before the words were out of his mouth, Connor knew the answer. His nose confirmed there was no one there. Trevor, Hale, and Rachel raced inside, spreading out through his tiny apartment to search it, though he wasn’t sure why they bothered. It was obvious the place was empty.
“Connor!” Trevor called out. “In the kitchen.”
He ran that way to see his teammate standing beside the small table, looking down at the glass of milk and the plate with a half-eaten sandwich.
“The glass is warm,” Trevor said. “It’s been sitting here for a while.”
Heart thudding, Connor turned and hurried into the outer hallway. Closing his eyes, he slowly inhaled the scents he’d picked up before.
“Jenna was here, but she never went inside,” he murmured, more to himself than his pack mates, who had moved out of the apartment to join him. “There are also at least three other scents that I recognize. I don’t know from where, though.”
He opened his eyes to see Trevor and Rachel sniffing around while he and Hale stood waiting to see if they could shed more light on things.
A moment later, Trevor’s eyes widened. “It’s the big warlock we fought in front of Demarcus Jones’s home the other day—Tatum Graves. I’m almost sure the other scents belong to a witch and warlock we faced out at the farmhouse.”
“Marko has Kat,” Connor growled even as his inner wolf let out a howl of its own. “He must have had someone watching the apartment all along, waiting for the right moment to grab her. I’m assuming Jenna was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
He couldn’t believe he was speaking so calmly, especially since his inner wolf was on the verge of completely losing it. His soul mate was in the hands of the most dangerous man in this part of the country. A man who intended to use her for a horrible ritual that would take away her freedom forever. Take her away fromhim. Not to mention the fact Marko also seemed to have his sister now, too. Would he keep Jenna alive until the ritual or kill her before?
“We’re going to get both of them back,” Trevor promised as Connor led the way to the stairs. “We need to call Gage because this drastically changes our plan. Without having Kat with us, we’re going to have to go in there blind. It’ll just be our Pack against a whole coven of magic users.”
***
Kat desperately tried to convince herself that she was in Connor’s big, comfortable bed, sleeping in after another late night of lovemaking. But then she felt something hard digging painfully into her back, followed immediately by a surprisingly cold breeze blowing across her face. That’s when she realized she wasn’t in Connor’s apartment. And she definitely wasn’t in bed.
She forced her eyes open, wincing at the sense of disorientation that came over her when she saw the tree branches waving above her head. The sky overhead was growing dim, telling Kat that twilight was approaching fast. That meant it had been hours since Tatum had kidnapped her and Jenna from Connor’s apartment.
The ritual would be starting soon.
If it hadn’t already.
Kat tried to move, not only to get a look around, but also to get that stabbing pain out of her back. But moving proved nearly impossible. When she felt the tingling tension course through her, she realized she was being held in a binding spell. One that was much stronger than the one Marko had used on her four years ago. Luckily, she was still able to turn her head to the left and right a little bit. It wasn’t much, but she could make out at least part of the scene around her.
She was in a forest, that much was obvious. It was fairly dark under the trees, but the guttering lights of several nearby torches allowed her to see that she was in a small clearing with pine trees all around her. She could hear a soft gurgling sound to her right, so there was probably a stream over there.
That’s when she realized she was in Sam Houston Trail Park. At least, she hoped that’s where she was, since that’s where Connor and the Pack would be coming to stop the ritual. She simply had to hold out until they arrived.
She had a momentary spike of fear. What if Marko and his coven were expecting the Pack to show up? Considering Tatum had come to the apartment, that almost guaranteed the coven had been watching Kat and Connor and were aware of the connection between them. Did Marko know they were soul mates? And that Connor would do anything for her?
Around her, the soft murmur of chanting began to fill the air, almost blocking out the soothing sounds of the nearby stream. Kat couldn’t see anyone, but she had no doubt it was Marko’s coven starting to collect power for the ritual. She knew she was right when, a split second later, the fine hairs on her arms began to stand on end. It reminded her of the tingle of static electricity she sometimes got when she took clothes out of the dryer.
Trying to be as subtle as possible, Kat turned her head to the left as far as it would go and saw two of the kidnapped teens lying on the ground in that direction, outside the protection circle. A tilt to the right revealed the other three kids. For a moment, she wondered where Jenna was. Had Marko killed her?
Pushing that horrible thought from her mind, she focused on the kids again, only to realize that none of them were moving. What if they were already dead? What if the ritual was only seconds away from being completed and it was too late for her to stop it?
She was on the verge of losing it when she caught movement from the corner of her eye. She turned her head again to see that the teenager on the ground closest to her was indeed breathing. She could tell by the slight rise and fall of the boy’s chest.
