“Jude’s gone,” I snarled, not letting go of Remi, the only practitioner we’d had on our team. “Vanished!”
“I didn’t do this,” Remi repeated.
“We’re on our way up,” Victor said, interrupting the noise over the line. “Don’t kill the fairy boy, Angel.”
“I won’t if he gives me Jude back.”
“I didn’t do this,” Remi whispered.
“Breathe, Angel. You sense him, right? You have a mate bond,” Wade reminded me.
I sucked in air, the edges of my vision narrowing as the panic grew. Did I feel him? No? But maybe?
Footsteps pounded up the stairwell, a thunder of loyalty in the silent, empty building. The team was coming, breaking every protocol and risking their careers without a second thought. For me, and because Jude was theirs now, a part of this ragged family I’d stitched together over years of trauma bonding.
But he wasminefirst.
The thought was primal. A truth that seized my heart and squeezed. I kept my hold on Remi, my knuckles white, the urge to wring the answers out of him a tangible pressure in my muscles. His magic had failed to detect the cryptic symbol that had somehow stolen my mate.
The door burst open. The team flooded in, their voices calling my name. I sucked in a shallow breath, my vision narrowing to a pinprick of rage and terror, my grip on Remi the only thing keeping me from shattering.
“Angel.” Wade soothed, suddenly at my shoulder, a calming force in the storm of my panic. His hand hovered near my arm, grounding. “Breathe with me, okay?”
“I can’t feel Jude.”
“No?” He asked carefully. “Not at all?”
“Maybe.” It was faint. A trickle of something distant, burned beneath the strange sensation of the dragon bond he’d sharedwith me earlier in the evening. “Nox?” I whispered, wondering if the fae creature could help me clarify. But his touch, while warm, was just as ghost-like, undefined. “I can’t…”
“Breathe,” Wade instructed again. “Let go of the panic.”
“And me,” Remi whispered.
The void in my chest ached with growing pain and rising anxiety. Remi held his hands up in a placating gesture, carefully unmoving in my grip. My hands had half shifted, claws dangerously close to tearing out his throat, and a strange change as I’d never been able to do a partial shift. Shifters had two forms, human and animal, nothing in between. Yet there I stood, claws out, jaw aching as if my teeth shifted too.
“Breathe,” Wade repeated, careful hand on my shoulder, presence large and familiar at my back. “We’ve got you. We’ll find him. You trust us, right?”
I sucked in air, trying to will the claws back and finding it hard.What the hell?
“Let me examine the mark and search for him with my magic, Angel. I can’t do that if you crush my windpipe.”
Wade kept a firm hand on my bicep, not holding me back as much as grounding me. I trusted him, and the team, even if I suspected any practitioner that came our way. Remi hadn’t earned my trust yet, nor had he proven to be a traitor.Fuck.
I growled with the force required to pull back my claws. The bite of copper pennies tainted my tongue. Blood from a partial change. Impossible, and yet I was doing it.
With a shove, I released Remi and let Wade put himself between us.
Wade studied me with a cautious gaze. He might be bigger than me, but even his bear form was no match for my cat, and we both knew it.
“He’s mine,” I whispered, the words sounding strange as my jaw seemed misshapen.
“We’ll get him back,” Wade promised.
That he stared at me, unafraid, while obviously seeing some sort of change happening, gave me pause. My best friend for over a decade, I’d never hurt Wade. He was like the kid brother I’d never had. “Wade?”
“I’ve got you,” he said. “We’ll find Jude. Focus. Pull it back. Let the team help.”
Panic flooded my veins, a thread of pure fear that wasn’t mine, overriding the calm Wade offered. “Jude,” I slurred.
