19. A Heart-mate’s Vow
A HEART-MATE’S VOW
ULFAR
O rri was right—not that I’d ever admit that to him. He’d never let me live it down.
A few hours of rest did me good. I wake feeling refreshed and more settled than I have since I left Sarah to head back to the campsite. After eating a quick breakfast and saying goodbye to Orri, Isabella, and the little ones, I get back on the road toward the cottages.
It won’t be long now, and she’ll be in my arms again. The entire ride there, I think about what Orri suggested. How I need to look at every angle. Think about how she feels and react accordingly. Of course, there is also the nagging realization that no matter what I do, she still might reject me.
That stings, but the urgency of it makes me push Enebris faster. I have to know for sure.
While we’re following the riverbank back to the small village where the surrogate cottages are gathered, I notice one of Sarah’s favorite flowers. She’d pointed it out to me on one of our late-night walks. A pale green center surrounded by thin white petals that spread out in three overlapping layers.
I pick a few and carefully wrap them in my furs. It will be a nice gift, a gesture of my affection. At least, that’s how we court others on my world. I can only hope she feels the same.
When I reach the vicinity of the cottages, right away I can tell something’s up. Usually her smell lingers in the air like the freshest perfume, calling me in like a beacon of hope and happiness. But as I walk through the deserted streets, there’s none of that. My heart’s pounding when I hitch Enebris outside and hurriedly punch in the code for the door.
“Sarah?” I call out, tearing through each of the rooms in turn. “Sarah? Hello? I’m back, and I brought you something!”
She’s not here. That deep gnawing feeling grows stronger before taking up residence in my heart. I let out a breath and close my eyes. I backtrack on everything that happened before I left. Sarah and I both received a message that she needed a checkup at the medical center, we spent time together, and then she was going to visit her friend Vi.
A new worry dawns on me. What if something went wrong with the checkup that she didn’t tell me about? What if she had to return to the medical facility, alone and too scared to talk to me?
It’s as good a lead as any. So even though I want to wait here for her to come back, I have to go after her. If there’s a chance she’s in danger...
I won’t stand for it.
Enebris huffs and looks at me with wide, confused eyes when I return so soon, strapping on the saddle and bridle all over again. “I know, girl,” I say as I pet her. “I know you’re tired, but just a little bit more for me, okay?” I tilt my head toward her and she boops the tip of her snout against my forehead. It’s a gesture of trust and friendship we’ve built over the many long years we’ve grown and traveled and fought together.
“Just like old times,” I mumble to myself, mounting up and riding off toward the horizon once more.
* * *
Just as I’m about to reach the gated walls of the central ISA facility, I see another aki rider approaching out of the corner of my vision. They’re gaining fast and heading right toward me.
My hand strays to my weapon, my thighs squeezing tighter around Enebris’s back to let her know to stay alert. They don’t appear to have any weapons or even a proper saddle, it looks like. Maybe a child off on a joyride? The rider seems awfully small, and it’s not unheard of for the little ones to break into the stables before they’re ready.
But then the aki draws closer, and I realize with a shock that it’s not a child at all. It’s a woman. A human woman.
“Wait!” she cries out as soon as I’m in earshot.
Now I’m more curious than threatened. What in all the stars is a human woman doing chasing me down on an aki ? Aesirheim warriors take years of training and bonding to be able to control their mounts properly. And here she is, bounding toward us like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
If the situation weren’t so strange, I’d be impressed.
“Whoa.” I pull up on the reins, signaling Enebris to slow down. I want to see what she’s come all the way out here to say. Maybe she even knows something about Sarah.
The woman pulls up beside us at last, hair wild and windswept as she pants for breath. She looks familiar but my brain is too frazzled to remember.
“What is the meaning of this?” I ask.
“You’re Ulfar, right?”
“I am.” Another jolt of adrenaline. Oh stars, what if something really did happen to her?
“I’m Vi, Sarah’s friend. We’re both surrogates. She asked me to deliver a message to you.”
My eyebrows rise. I nearly drop the reins. “A message? Why? What’s wrong?”
“It’s...complicated.” She grimaces. “And not here. If you wanna see your girl again, get your ass in gear and follow me!”
I look over my shoulder at the tall, sterile white gates of the ISA. Then back at this wild woman riding one of our mounts and yelling at me to follow. Two paths diverged.
Is this what Orri was talking about when he said I had to consider all of the variables?
“She’s not in there,” Vi points out, gesturing at the center. “I saw her just recently, she gave me this letter. You can read it if you like, do that smell thing you alphas do. But we need to talk, and it can’t be here.”
With one last glance at the ISA complex, I square my shoulders and sink into battle mode. Nodding, I turn Enebris around and we rush off into the unknown.
Minutes later, we’re inside Vi and Djorn’s cottage and I’m poring over the handwritten letter. With every word, every sentence, my heart sinks further.
She cared. All this time, she cared.
So why did she have to leave?
“Do you believe me now?” Vi says after I read the note for the tenth time. I don’t know what I’m expecting—for Sarah to pop out of the page or something?—but this is the last connection I have to her. The letter doesn’t say why or where she’s going, just that she had to leave and it wasn’t her choice.
That she loved me.
“Where is she?” I croak, putting the letter down on the table and looking up at Vi. “Why would she do this? Why didn’t she say something?”
A shadow passes over her face. “We all have secrets. Some of them are so big they eat us alive.”
“But do you know what happened to her? Is she—” My throat closes up at the terrible thought. “Alive?”
“Oh, she’s alive all right,” Vi sighs. “They’ll make sure of that.” Then, under her breath, “Bastards.”
“What are you talking about?” Part of me doesn’t want to know, but I have to find her and discover the truth. I have to know what she’s been hiding all this time.
“Tell me, Ulfar,” she says at last, folding her arms. “Have you ever heard of the Syndicate?”
* * *
I haven’t lost a lot of battles in my life, but one stands out among the rest. Soren, Rathgar, Orri and I were on a patrol mission through the outer reaches, looking for an illegal smuggling operation run by an organization called the Syndicate. We thought it would be an easy smash-and-grab operation. It wasn’t.
We lost too many good men that day. Realized just how extensive their network reached, how much influence and firepower they brought to bear on their enemies. Even now sometimes I wake up panting from a nightmare reliving that awful day.
And now, Sarah has been taken by them. By the only enemy that’s ever bested me. By the very thugs that still haunt my sleep at night.
I thought it couldn’t get any worse when Vi told me the Syndicate was involved, but then she dropped an even bigger bomb on my heart:
They wanted the child.
My—no, our child.
A fury the likes of which I’ve never felt before surges through my veins, activating every possessive alpha instinct I have to claim, pillage, and destroy. Our intelligence showed that the Syndicate’s forces had been largely wiped out years ago. I thought they were a long-lost foe, nothing more than a specter of the past haunting my memories.
But they fooled us once again.
I won’t let them slip through my fingers twice.
“Thank you for letting me know,” I tell Vi, pressing my fist to my chest in gratitude. “You have done me a great service, and I am in your debt.”
She waves me off. “Oh, hush with all that formal crap. I don’t need anything in return. Go get your girl and give ‘em hell.”
I bark out a laugh. I like this one. She’s feisty. “That I can do.” I head for the door, rapidly formulating a plan in my mind. “May the stars guide you, Vi.”
“And you, Ulfar.”
With a salute, I’m back on the move. I know I can’t go to the ISA with this. They wouldn’t take kindly to one of their ‘assets’ going missing. It was my responsibility to look out for her, after all. I failed in my job as a man and as an alpha, and now I’m going to make it right.
The ISA with their regulations and red tape would take too long. Sarah could be on a Syndicate slaver ship right now, jetting off to who knows where. I have to catch up with them, and fast.
And to do that, I’m going to need a little help from my friends.
“Soren, you there?” I tap the comm at my ear as I ride toward our village. He’s the war leader and my superior, so he needs to know about this.
“What’s up, Ulfar? Thought you were on leave.”
“Change of plans. The Syndicate’s back.”
“What?! Are you serious?”
“Dead.” The wind whooshes through my hair and across Enebris’s fur. My eyes burn and my muscles ache, but I’ve come too far to stop now.
“How did you hear about this? What happened, Ulfar? Do I need to sound the alarm?”
“It’s my mate, Sarah. They took her. Right from under our noses.”
Soren’s curses are drowned out by the sound of a wailing siren echoing from his location. “Damn! Thanks for the intel—grab the boys and let’s move.”
The comm line clicks off and I roar a defiant cry to the heavens. If they think they can steal my heart-mate and live to tell the tale, they have another thing coming.
They might have beaten me before, but this time it’s personal. They’re going to pay for every drop of my kinsmen’s blood spilt. And if anything happens to Sarah, mark my words—I will go to the ends of the universe to eradicate them once and for all.