Eight hours. That’s how long it’s been since Rowan vanished.
Eight hours of silence where her heartbeat used to echo through mine.
Eight hours of our bond becoming cracked and splintered, gnawing at me.
And every second of it has been hell.
My hands ache from too many partial shifts in too few hours. The claws of my wolf have shredded through my skin without warning at least a half dozen times, raking across stone and tearing through furniture that never stood a chance.
Now, I stand in what’s left of my room after Liz brought news I didn’t want to hear.
Not a single one of the survivors we captured from the attack remembers who they were working for.
Hearing that snapped one of the few strands of hope I’d been clinging to, which resulted in my bedframe being broken clean in half.
Iris can bill me.
Waiting on information from the captured is the only reason I’ve stayed back at NightShade as long as I have. I thought the answers I needed would be here, buried among the wounded or in the minds of the cowards we caught. But every single one of them acts the same way—blank stares and trembling voices, like the memories have been carved out of them.
All they remember is following orders. Orders from something—or someone—calledThe Keep.
And no one knows what the hellThe Keepis.
I’ve got one last chance at a lead, and it’s with the Shadowyn Alpha. Three of the wolf council members were at the fight. Two are dead—Milo fromGlacier Crest and Eamon from Thornwell—from the storm Rowan unleashed. The third, Taren from Shadowyn, has been unconscious ever since.
Rowan’s surge of power knocked out everything in its path. She didn’t kill me or the people she cares about, but I have no doubt that she could have. I woke long enough to see her disappear into the night with that cloaked bastard. By the time I could stand again, it was well past midnight, and she was gone.
I kick the splintered leg of a broken chair, watching as it lodges into the wall. Yet, there’s no satisfaction in the destruction that lies around me.
Only wrath—slow, steady, and corrosive—building in my chest until I can taste the charcoal of it in the back of my throat.
We have to get her back,my wolf snarls, pacing under my skin.
We will,I answer, because I refuse to believe otherwise.
Either I bring Rowan home, or I follow her into whatever hell she’s been taken to. No matter what it costs. No matter who I have to break to get there.
Shattered glass from a vase crunches under my boots as I pace the room, waiting for word that Taren, the council member, has woken. She’s been out the longest, but she’s also the strongest among those present. I haven’t spoken to her in decades, but even my mother respected Taren. A fact that I need to mean something soon.
Because Taren is the last shred of hope I have to cling to before I run from this place, tearing apart the world until I have my mate back in my arms.
There’s a knock at my door.Elias. He’s been by tocheck on me too many times since the battle ended. Normally, I’d be annoyed, but there’s a fraction of control left in me that knows I need this. I need someone to support me right now before I lose myself to the darkness.
A choice I can’t make unless I’m doing so with my mate.
Elias opens the door at my grunt. He stands beneath the frame, jaw tight, watching me like I’m one twitch away from tearing the entire manor apart.
He’s not wrong.
“Nothing?” I bite out.
He shakes his head once. “No trace. The scouts are doing another sweep of the perimeter, though. And Stephanie’s?—”
“What is she doing back here?” She’d left before, seeming to have only been around to piss me off, and I’m not sure I want her around now.
Elias holds up a hand as if that will calm me. “She’s the reason members of the Solara Pack are here right now, and she’s been surprisingly helpful.”
Interesting. I thought we had extra help because Elias facilitated it.
