Through the lobby, past the elevator, down the service stairs that still smelled like her fear.Her scent haunted my dreams.And underneath it, sharp and chemical, the bitter stench of chloroform.
He had drugged her.Pressed a cloth to her face and held her until she stopped fighting.
My wolf went silent with fury.
The basement was cold and dim, all rough stone and exposed pipes.Ancient and forgotten, the original bones of the building preserved beneath the modern luxury.I followed her scent through the mechanical room, past rows of archived boxes, into an older section where the lights were burned out and the air tasted like earth and age.
The storage room door hung open, the lock broken by my team when they had finally breached.
Inside, there was nothing.Old crates had been pushed against the wall.A single bare bulb swung gently from the ceiling, casting shadows that danced across the empty floor.And there, half-hidden in the darkness near the wall, lay her phone.The screen was cracked, and it was the last thing she had touched before the darkness took her.
I picked it up.My hands were shaking.When had my hands started shaking?I had killed men without trembling.I had endured beatings and torture and the worst the world could offer, and my hands had never shaken.
But they were shaking now.
Her scent was everywhere.Terror and confusion and underneath it, fainter, the frantic reaching of our connection.She had felt me.In those last seconds before the chloroform took her, she had felt my terror matching hers.She had tried to reach me through our connection.
I’m sorry.Find me.
The memory of her last thought along our connection, before the silence swallowed everything.
And I had been forty-five minutes away, letting Konstantin use me as a punching bag while the Pakhan watched with satisfaction.I had followed pack protocol, been a good wolf, while the woman I loved was dragged into darkness.
“I left her.”The words came out broken, barely audible.“I knew Michael was the threat.I realized it yesterday, when the evidence pointed the wrong direction.And I left her to answer a summons I should have ignored.”
Petrov stood in the doorway, his face ashen.“Sir?—”
“She’s not dead.”Dmitri’s voice from behind him.He pushed into the room, his eyes scanning the empty space, his body coiled with barely-contained violence.“The bond is still there.You said so yourself.”
“She’s unconscious.Drugged.He could be doing anything to her and I can’t—” My voice broke.“I can’t feel her.The silence is worse than the screaming.”
“Then we stop talking and we start hunting.”Dmitri grabbed my shoulder, his grip hard enough to bruise.He forced me to meet his eyes.“Property records.Michael’s mother.Anything registered to his family.Petrov, you have access to real estate databases?”
Petrov was already moving, his professional composure snapping back into place.“Michael’s emergency contact.His family.His employment records.Give me twenty minutes.”
“You have ten.”
They left me alone in the empty room, in the place where my mate had been taken, where she had struggled and lost, where she had reached for me and found me too far away to help.
Michael’s scent clung to the walls, that bland, forgettable cologne I had dismissed a hundred times as part of the hotel, part of the background.He had been in front of me for months, for years, smiling and helpful, playing the role of devoted employee while he plotted to take everything from me.
I had been so focused on external threats, on rival wolves and vampire territory disputes and Joe’s pathetic obsession, that I had been looking outward while the real monster sat in my wife’s office, brought her coffee, offered to help, and smiled at her with that friendly mask hiding the predator underneath.
There was only silence.That vast, terrible emptiness where her presence should have been.I reached for her again and again, but there was nothing to hold onto.Just cold and quiet and the absence of everything she was.
Find her.My wolf’s voice, raw with grief and rage.Hunt him.Kill him.Bring her home.
“I will.”I said it out loud, a promise to the empty room.A promise to the mate who couldn’t hear me.“I will find you.And when I do, Michael will learn exactly what happens to men who touch what’s mine.”
Dmitri appeared in the doorway.“Petrov found something.Property forty minutes north.Registered to a woman named Maria Santos.Michael’s mother.”
Forty minutes.She had been gone for over an hour now.Every second was a second she was alone with him, a second where anything could happen, a second of silence where our connection should have been.
I was already moving before Dmitri finished speaking, through the basement, up the stairs, and out into the night.The stars were coming out, cold and distant and uncaring.Dmitri fell into step beside me, his body language screaming readiness for violence.Petrov waited by the car with coordinates loaded into his phone, his expression tight with guilt and determination.
Behind us, the hotel blazed with lights, staff and guests and police all buzzing with rumors about what had happened to Mrs.Antonov, about the blood on the basement floor, about the general manager who had disappeared, about the husband who had arrived looking like a monster and descended into the depths of the building.
None of them knew.None of them understood.The monster hadn’t come from outside.He had been here all along, wearing a friendly smile and a forgettable suit, waiting for his chance.
