Page 53 of Bite for Sore Eyes

"Magnus," Rath barked, already turning back toward the territory's heart. "Final sweep of this area, then get back to the security center. We need to⁠—"

The rest of his words were lost as both Alphas broke into a dead sprint back toward the security center, their powerful legs eating up the distance with desperate urgency. Torren's mind raced alongside his body, trying to process what they might find when they reached the security center.

Lana had been so confident, so determined to help save their failing systems. The pride he'd felt watching her take charge, seeing her brilliant mind tackle their problems, now twisted into something approaching panic.

"Do you feel that?" Rath's voice cut through the night air as they bounded down a steep slope.

"Feel what?" Torren responded, though even as he asked, a horrible realization began creeping through his consciousness.

"We just completed the triad mate bond," Rath panted, vaulting over a fallen log with practiced ease. "We should feel Lana so strongly right now that it's almost overwhelming. But I can barely sense her at all."

Torren stumbled slightly, his concentration shattered by the truth of Rath's words. In the adrenaline rush of responding to the false emergency, he hadn't been paying close attention to the mate bond humming through his system. But now, focusing on that connection, he felt his blood turn to ice.

The bond was there—a thin thread of warmth that confirmed Lana still lived—but it felt muted, distant, as if something was interfering with their connection.

"She's alive," Torren said, more to reassure himself than inform Rath. "I'd know if she was dead. My bear would be going insane, tearing apart everything in sight."

"Same here," Rath agreed, though his voice carried an edge of desperation. "It would feel like my heart had been ripped from my chest. But something's definitely wrong."

They burst through the security center's front entrance like twin forces of nature, their massive frames filling the doorway as they scanned the main floor. The usual hum of activity seemed subdued—only a handful of technicians working at their stations, and the emergency lighting casting everything in harsh red shadows. Torren spotted Branson hunched over a diagnostic terminal near the center of the room and made a beeline for him, Rath close behind.

"Branson," Torren called out, his voice carrying enough authority to make the younger bear's head snap up immediately. "Have you seen Jace or Lana?"

"Yeah," Branson replied, his expression brightening slightly. "They went with Vaughn to his office about ten minutes ago. Said they needed to work on the systems crashing in a more secure environment."

The words hit Torren wrong. Vaughn's office. The man who'd designed most of their current infrastructure, who'd seemed oddly dismissive of Lana's expertise, who'd been conspicuously absent during most of the recent council meetings.

Without waiting for further explanation, both Alphas sprinted toward the back corridors where the senior staff maintained their private offices. Torren's bear roared with protective fury, demanding they find their mate immediately. The corridor seemed to stretch endlessly as they ran, their boots echoing off the polished floors as they passed several offices. Then seconds later, Vaughn's office door appeared ahead—solid, imposing, and utterly silent. Rath didn't bother knocking. He grabbed the handle and wrenched the door open with enough force to tear it from its hinges.

But the office was empty.

No Vaughn, no Jace, no Lana. The desk sat undisturbed, papers neatly arranged, and the computer terminal dark.

"They were never here," Torren realized, his voice coming out as a low growl. "Branson was fed false information."

Rath's hands clenched into fists. "Vaughn. It has to be Vaughn behind all of this."

The pieces clicked together in Torren's mind with sickening clarity. The system failures that had plagued them for months. The perfectly timed attacks that always seemed to expose new vulnerabilities. The way Vaughn had reacted to Lana's arrival and expertise with barely concealed irritation.

"His cabin," Rath said, already moving back toward the corridor. "If he's taken them somewhere, it has to be his cabin in the northern woods."

They raced back through the security center, ignoring Branson's confused questions, and burst through the exit into the cold night air. The northern woods lay at least fifteen minutes away at a full sprint—fifteen minutes during which anything could happen to their mate.

Torren's bear demanded he shift and cover the distance faster, but his human mind knew they needed to conserve energy for whatever confrontation awaited them. Instead, he channeled every ounce of his Alpha strength into his legs, pushing himself harder than he had since his warrior training days.

The mate bond flickered weakly in his chest, a constant reminder that Lana was still alive but in danger. Whatever Vaughn's plan, whatever twisted justification he'd constructed for his actions, Torren would make him pay for threatening their mate.

TWENTY-ONE

LANA

Consciousness returned to Lana like a tide washing over jagged rocks—slow, disorienting, and accompanied by a throbbing headache that pulsed behind her eyes. The musty scent of aged wood and something metallic filled her nostrils as she struggled to focus on her surroundings. Her limbs felt impossibly heavy, weighted down by something far worse than fatigue. This wasn't one of her neurological episodes—her mind remained sharp despite the fog clouding her thoughts, and she recognized the telltale signs of pharmaceutical intervention.

The narrow cot beneath her creaked as she moved and rough blankets scratched against her skin. Blinking against the dim light filtering through a small, grimy window, she turned her head and saw Jace lying motionless on an identical cot barely three feet away. His dark blonde hair was matted against his forehead, and his breathing carried the deep, labored rhythm of someone fighting off sedation.

Then memory crashed back with brutal clarity. Following Vaughn down that sterile corridor in the security center, alarms blaring around them as their systems crashed in real time. His offer to provide deeper access through his private office had seemed logical—desperate, even—until the moment she'd realized they weren't heading toward his office at all.

She could still feel the phantom grip of his hand clamping over her mouth as Jace crumpled to the floor beside her, already unconscious from whatever Vaughn had used on him. Then the sharp prick of a needle in her neck. Her vision tunneling as she'd tried to scream for help, but the security center's chaos had swallowed her voice completely. The last thing she remembered was the terrible understanding that Vaughn—respected, methodical Vaughn—was the architect behind every system failure that had plagued the territory.