I had missed it.I had looked everywhere except where it mattered.
And now my mate was gone.
The bond remained silent as I drove into the darkness.Silent and empty and screaming louder than any sound could.That void where she should have been, that absence that felt like a wound torn in the center of my chest.
Hold on, Lena.I’m coming.
I didn’t know if she could hear me.I didn’t know if the bond could carry thoughts across the distance and the drugs and whatever hell she was living through.But I sent it anyway.My love.My terror.My absolute certainty that I would find her and bring her home.
And my guilt.
Because I had left her.I had known Michael was the threat and I had answered the Pakhan’s summons anyway, choosing pack duty over my mate’s safety.Being a good wolf instead of a good husband.
If I didn’t find her in time, I would have to live with that choice forever.
27
LENA
The chemical taste came first.Bitter and sharp at the back of my throat, coating my tongue like poison.My head throbbed with a relentless ache that pulsed behind my eyes, and when I tried to lift my hand to press against my temples, I discovered I could not move my arms.
I was bound.My wrists were secured behind me, tied to the hard back of a wooden chair.The zip ties bit into my skin when I tested them, plastic edges cutting into flesh already raw from struggling.Cold seeped through my blouse from the hard wooden back of the chair, and my shoulders screamed from the unnatural angle of my arms.
I forced my eyes to focus through the haze.A small living room materialized in fragments.Floral wallpaper in faded pink and cream, the pattern so dated it belonged to another decade.Doilies on every surface, yellowed with age and neglect.Religious imagery covered the walls.A crucifix above the doorway, saint candles on the mantle with wax pooled at their bases, a framed picture of the Virgin Mary watching me with sorrowful eyes.The air smelled like dust and old perfume, something floral and cheap that had seeped into the walls over years, and underneath that, the particular staleness of a house where no one had lived for months.Cold and empty and waiting.
Through the mark on my shoulder, I reached for Raphael.
Silence answered me.Not the complete absence of the bond, but the connection felt muted and distant, like hearing music through water.The drugs were still clearing my system, clouding the awareness I had come to depend on.I could feel him there, somewhere at the edges of my consciousness, but I could not grasp him clearly.The bite throbbed against my shoulder, warm even in this cold house, a reminder that I was not alone even when the isolation pressed in.
Where am I?
The question floated through my aching head as I tried to piece together what had happened.The basement.The service stairwell.Michael’s face, wrong somehow, the professional mask slipping to reveal the stranger underneath.His voice, saying words that did not make sense.
We have the same father.
The memory hit like ice water.Michael pressing the chloroform-soaked cloth to my face.The chemical burn in my lungs as I fought to hold my breath.Raphael’s terror flooding through our connection before everything went dark.His wolf howling through our connection, frantic and furious and too far away to save me.
I had passed out with his fear echoing in my skull.
A door opened somewhere behind me.The hinges creaked, and cold air rushed in from whatever room lay beyond.
I heard footsteps crossing hardwood, measured and unhurried.The unhurried pace of someone who knew they had all the time in the world.Then Michael appeared in my peripheral vision, moving around to face me.He carried a glass of water in one hand, a bottle of aspirin in the other.Still playing caretaker.Still pretending this was normal.Still wearing that helpful expression I had trusted for years.
But his face was different.
The friendly general manager I had trusted was gone.In his place was a stranger with hungry eyes and a jaw clenched too tight, like he was barely containing an emotion too large for his body.The boyish charm had decayed into something feverish.The professional smile had twisted into an expression I did not recognize and never wanted to see again.His collar was askew, his usually neat hair disheveled, and there was a wildness in his eyes that made my stomach clench with fear.
“You’re awake.”He crouched in front of me, setting the water and aspirin on the floor between us.Too close.His cologne, that familiar scent I had stopped noticing years ago, now made my stomach turn.It smelled like lies.Like every moment he had stood beside me, pretending to be my ally while plotting my destruction.“How’s your head?”
“Where are we?”
“Somewhere safe.”He reached toward my face, and I flinched back as far as the chair would allow.His hand paused mid-air, hurt flickering across his features like I had wounded him.“I’m not going to hurt you, Lena.I would never hurt you.You know that.”
I don’t know anything anymore.
The words caught in my throat.I swallowed against the chemical taste and tried to think clearly through the fog still clouding my thoughts.The house.The religious imagery.A woman’s touches everywhere, the doilies, the saint candles, the cheap perfume saturating the walls.But no woman present.Photographs lined the mantle beside the candles, and from this angle I could see them properly now.A dark-haired woman with kind eyes and a tired smile.A young boy with Michael’s face, gap-toothed and innocent.And in one frame, half-hidden behind a candle like someone had tried to make it less visible, a man I recognized.
It was my father.
