She padded beside me as we moved toward the back door. The connecting hallway was dim after the bright main room.
“Hail?” My voice echoed in the narrow space. “You still working on the kiln?”
The kiln room door stood ajar, but no sounds of work came from inside.
My heart rate kicked up a notch. I pushed the door wider, Tressa slipping through ahead of me, her nose working overtime.
The kiln room was empty. The back door had been cracked open. Tools lay scattered across the workbench, a bag of fire clay open beside them. Hail’s leather work gloves were there too, lying on the floor as if he’d been interrupted.
“Hail?” A touch of panic edged into my voice now. “Are you here?”
Tressa growled, moving toward the exterior door that led directly outside, poking her nose through the gap. Hail wouldn’t have left it open.
My hands trembled as I scanned the room, looking for any sign of my mate.
A piece of paper caught my eye, pinned under a pottery shard on the workbench mounted along the right wall.
I snatched it up, my blood turning to ice water in my veins as I read:
The orc is alive for now. If you want him to stay that way, come alone to the location marked on the map below. You have 45 minutes. Every minute you’re late costs him a finger. Tell anyone, and he dies screaming.
—Will
Below the message, I studied the crude map showing a location in the foothills north of town, with an X marking the spot.
The paper shook in my hands. This wasn’t supposed to happen. It wasn’t part of the plan. Hail had been taken right from under my nose while I swept broken pottery and daydreamed about rebuilding.
“No.” My voice cracked. “This can’t be happening.”
Tressa pressed against my legs, whining, her eyes fixed on the note in my hands. Her ears flattened against her skull, and a rumble built in her chest, her distress matching the tightness in my own throat.
I checked my phone. It couldn’t have been long. If Will’s people had taken Hail in the last twenty minutes, I had maybe half an hour left.
My first instinct was to call Dungar, to alert Detective Fernandez and get the whole team mobilized. But Will's warningechoed in my mind.Tell anyone, and he dies screaming.They'd be watching for exactly that kind of response. I couldn't risk it. Not with Hail's life hanging in the balance.
Half an hour to find him.
Half an hour before they started cutting pieces off the male I loved.
Chapter 24
Hail
The throbbing in my head woke me. Needles of pain shot through my skull with each heartbeat. I tried to reach up, to touch the source of the ache, but my arms wouldn’t move. My wrists burned, something rough biting into the skin. Rope.
Fragments of memory flashed through my mind. Checking on Allie through the connecting door. Her small frame bent over a box of mostly intact pottery, carefully sorting pieces worth saving. Tressa circling her like a furry guardian, always watching, always alert. The image of them safe together had been reassuring as I ducked back into the kiln room.
I’d been examining the cracks in the firing chamber, my upper body halfway inside the kiln. The damage looked bad, but not irreparable. Maybe we could salvage it with the right parts. Money wasn’t an issue, but it might take months to get a new kiln.
When I heard soft sounds behind me, I’d thought it was Allie coming to check on me. I backed out of the kiln, a smile on my face. I found two males crowded into the small shed,wearing cold expressions. I’d barely registered the threat before something hard cracked against the back of my skull.
As I fell, I heard one of them ask, “Should we grab the woman too?”
Another voice answered as I landed hard on the floor, my mind swimming in and out of focus. “I’m not challenging that wolf. We got what we came for.”
My last thought was relief. At least Allie had Tressa. At least she wasn’t alone.
Now, as awareness slowly returned, I forced my eyes open. Sunlight filtered through tree branches overhead, dappling the forest floor with shifting patterns of light and shadow. I was outside, tied to a support beam of a solid wooden structure. Not a tree. The surface behind me felt flat.
