When we finally locate Kismet, she can barely hold herself up. Tears fall freely down her grief-stricken face. Deep purple circles cling beneath her eyes. She’s gutted.
“We will find who sent them here. And we will carve their hearts from their chest so that you may burn them with the rest of the savages. You have our word,” Demi vows, kneeling before the chief.
Clutching her cane, she dismisses us with the tilt of her head.
Trotting back to the truck, I quickly revert to my human form and slip on my clothes. The area is finally secure, but among lycans, something still feels amiss.
I call the cabin. The line is dead. Then I try Nell’s personal cell, which doesn’t pick up either.
Testing the new connection with my mate, I reach for her. Shouldn’t I be able to sense her emotions from this range? If anything, I should be able to at least gage some level of fear.
I don’t feel a thing.
Something’s not right, my wolf urges.We should hurry back.
Half an hour later, I’m speeding up the hill. Nell’s car is out front, and so is she, hovering over the limp body of Tripp, whose femur protrudes from his mangled leg. Not far from him are the two other fallen patrolmen in their human forms. Limbs shattered. Throats torn clean off.
I kick open the front door. My nose pulls me in the direction of the kitchen where the foul stench of charred food in the oven unfurls like smog. The phone line has been cut. A pistol lays abandoned on the floor and a bullet is lodged into the wood beneath the sink. Clearly, signs of a struggle.
I press my nose to the cabinet, the residue of sweat and gunpowder activating my augment. It plays out in three seconds.Vessa’s finger pulls back on the trigger just as it’s confiscated from her. She slumps against the chest of a broad male, who promptly hauls her away.
Fuck.Fuck!
Fur spreads along my arms as I hurtle out the door, stumbling to Nell’s side as she compresses Tripp’s wound.
“It was Belgrave,” the last living patrolman whispers.
I let this happen. I left her here with that traitorous grunt.
As darkness falls over the forest, I’m racing into its depths, leaping into my wolf form. Surrendering myself entirely to smell and sound, I follow my mate’s scent as far as it takes me. Gemma’s travels with it, along with an unknown male. Three miles are put behind me before I come to a crumbling farmhouse where three ATVs are parked along a gravel lot. Fresh tire marks disturb the road, having sped off in a hurry, vanishing with my mate.
I throw back my head, summoning all the power within my lungs to howl. The cry lifts into the night, signaling that the Luna is gone.
War is upon us.
Chapter 37
VESSA
Aheavy thunk flings my eyes open. I try to scream, but a cloth has been inserted in my mouth, wrapped tightly around the back of my head. In this dark space, I have no sense of time, nor any inkling as to where I am heading.
Confined to this fetal position, my head thumps against a hard, felt surface. An engine thrums beneath the fabric interior. Have I been stuffed in the trunk?
I writhe against plastic. My hands are zip-tied behind my back, legs secured by a tightly wound rope. My ankles throb against the chafing fiber. I’m immobilized. Feeling around, my fingers detect a metal bracket in the left corner. I extend my wrists, feeling around the joint for a sharp edge or divot that may catch the plastic restraint. Nothing.
Three or four minutes later, the car pulls onto what feels like a dirt road, gradually breaking. Eventually, after another hefty bump in the road, we come to a halt. Panic spikes in my chest. I feel the slam of the driver’s door, then the passenger’s.
“We were successful in extracting the Alpha’s human. You can open the trunk and see for yourself, but I trust that you can smell her.”
A raspy female voice declines. “That isn’t necessary. Go ahead and check your account. You’ll see that you two were paid in full.”
Two sets of footsteps stalk closer to the back of the car. My stomach does a lofty somersault.
A pinging notification from a cell phone pierces the silence.
“Excellent,” Gemma says. “It was my pleasure?—"
Her last words are cut off by sudden gunfire.
