My gaze bounced from him to Justice, who stood next to my dad, then to Noble, who shot a flurry of magic toward Midnight Pack.
‘No idea,’Noble said, keeping his attention on the Midnight wolves. ‘It’s not like her to hide.’
Exactly my thought.
‘Honor…’I looked down at the black wolf by my side.‘We gotta find your mom.’
‘Hurry, Nai,’ Ragesaid.
I peered over my shoulder to see him wrestling with Declan and was assaulted with a wall of heat that attested to the ferocity of their battle, but Rage was severely handicapped until he knew his mom was safe. I needed to find her.
Now.
A massive explosion rocked the night, and Rage seethed, his anger and frustration leaking through our bond.
‘I need you to stop those, Noble!’Rage snarled.
‘Doin’ my best, man,’Noble replied, his voice strained. ‘It’d be easier if Lilith didn’t block—”
My father shifted into his wolf then and raced toward the king. His voice resounded through our pack.‘Crescent, defend our land!’
The pull to shift and fight hit me again, but this one was easier to push away.
My pack streaked past me, racing to attack the Midnight wolves, and I knew all hell was about to break loose.
Blood rushed in my ears, and tears of desperation burned my eyes as I racked my brain for quick ways to find the queen.
Think. Think. Think.
The only way Elaine wouldn’t be here helping was if Declan had captured her. But then where would he—?
Oh. My. Mage.
‘Honor!’I twisted toward the burning lodge and my childhood home, gaping as certainty sliced through me. Zero percent doubt. That bastard!
‘I need that curse gone,’Rage barked with just enough desperation that when I called for my wolf, she roared to the surface.
My clothes exploded into shreds as I ran.
‘She’s in our house … attached to the lodge,’ I told Honor. The feeling rang clear as a bell. Was that sick bastard going to burn his wife alive? Or did my aunt Lilith do this? She was the last one with Elaine…
We sprinted to the building, and horror crashed through me when I saw flames all along the roof of our private residence. Dark yellow smoke puffed from around the edges of the back door, which was open a crack.
‘I sense her inside!’Honor howled into my head, and that got me moving.
I pushed the door in with my nose, and unease slithered through me as I entered the house with Honor right behind me. The thick haze made visibility terrible, and heat pressed against me like a physical weight. Every breath of the acrid smoke scorched my throat, and my eyes burned from the suspended soot.
‘Do you know where she is?’ I asked Honor, who trailed behind me.
Before he could answer, a loud crash resounded above us, and my fur bristled. Surely he wouldn’t put Elaine upstairs, right? He wouldn’t want her dead, or did he? What could Declan hope to gain from this kind of brutality? If he killed Elaine, there’s no way the Midnight brothers would ever forgive him—not that there was much, if any, hope of that anymore. And if he did, then they would have nothing holding them back from killing him because she would be gone along with the spell. Maybe Lilith did it. I could see my Aunt going full evil and tying Elaine up in the basement if we had one.
I froze.
We didn’t have a basement, but we had a root cellar. We used it to store large quantities of food for our pack in the winter. There was only one way in or out: the door under the stairway to the second story. It looked like a storage closet, but stairs led down to the concrete-lined cellar.
The floor above us groaned again, and I heard a strange popping sound. ‘Honor…’
My mind ran a mile a minute as I hacked on the smoke getting thicker by the second.
