22. Kane
Pressing my foot against the brake pedal, I come to a stop and shove the gear shifter into park in front of the lodge. We drove seven hours back home after spending a week driving up the coast of Washington and then over to Seattle, turning north until we reached the border. We went east again, but I turned us back not long after.
There was no sign of Kate anywhere. The closer I got to Seattle, the more my instincts told me I was going in the wrong direction.
I never once picked up her scent. Neither did Trez, so here we are, empty fucking handed and back where I started with a mate lost.
Only this time, it’s wholly my fault she’s missing.
“I’ll run to my house to get everything I need for scrying. I’ll let you know when I locate my sister.” Storm pulls the handle on the back door behind Trez and slips out, leaving just him and me in the truck.
“We should still be out there looking for her instead of being back here,” Trez grumbles, his elbow digging into the padded fabric next to the window seal, his head resting in his palm, and his eyes staring out the windshield. Since we left home last week, we haven’t stopped longer than to take a quick shower and get a few hours of sleep.
“We’re going to find her. One way or another. Like I said yesterday, if I have to enlist help from the Yukon pack, I’ll do it, and we’ll cross the border.”
But I don’t think they took her to Canada. I told him that hunch yesterday, but he didn’t want to hear it.
After I picked up the scent of Kate’s blood outside that diner and Trez found the remnants of wolfsbane from a discarded tranquilizer, I had the manager of the eatery show us footage from their surveillance camera. I damn near lost my shit when I saw Kate get shot four times with poison-filled darts.
From the angle where the camera was positioned, it didn’t show her attacker, but I knew who he was. His scent was all over the dart Trez picked up. That fueled not only my anger but pissed off my wolf too.
I should have been elated that he’d dropped the wall between us, that I could finally feel him inside me again. But seeing the Marked Crest beta emerge from the driver’s side of the van, following Kate with a handgun aimed at her back, the fucking air was knocked from my lungs as my heart plummeted.
Then he shot her.
And my wolf raged.
She went down to her knees. I couldn’t tell exactly where she’d been shot, and not knowing scared the fuck out of me. A witch appeared next, and Storm’s sudden intake of air told me exactly who the dark-haired woman was before her name tumbled from Storm’s mouth.
Salem Delvaux.
The darkest witch of our time, or so Storm claims. I don’t know much about Salem besides a few stories she’s told me since landing in Moonwake.
After the video ended, I went back to the parking lot to search for the item I noticed fell from Kate’s fingers. Within a minute of looking over the ground, I found the key to her motorcycle. It had been partially covered by loose dirt. That’s when my wolf decided my punishment wasn’t over, and like pulling in a breath of air, the wall between his mind and mine was rebuilt and locked. I couldn’t stop it from happening or the loss I felt when he was no longer present.
But that wasn’t something I could dwell on at the time. Trez and Storm searched behind the diner and the gas station while I went inside to speak to the attendant. My tank had been filled. I saw him walk toward my truck when I’d entered the diner fifteen minutes earlier, and since I’d unlatched the fuel door after I’d put the truck in park, he wouldn’t have needed me until I was ready to pay.
Only paying for fuel was the furthest thing from my mind. I wanted to see his surveillance in case we missed anything or if there had been anyone else with Henrik, like his alpha or other traitors I needed to know about.
I was about to ask him when Trez pushed past me to the cash register counter, demanding to know why the bike behind his building was hidden out of sight and where the woman it belonged to was.
The name sewn onto the guy’s blue shirt read Ian in an italic font. His eyes widened, and he took a step away from the counter. When he didn’t say anything, he only stared at Trez, then glanced my way, I growled loud and menacing.
“Answer him,” I ordered, my words coming out slow but laced with the authority of an alpha.
“I don’t know. The motorcycle was abandoned,” he told us.
The problem with that statement was that I could smell his lie, his breath rancid as he spoke. Even from where he stood, the smell wafted up my nose, making me itch to get away from him.
When Kate was pleading with me before I said unforgivable things to her, I should have known she was telling the truth. She said that she didn’t know about the mark on her back. That she wasn’t playing me for a fool or here because Richard had sent her. If I’d paid attention like an alpha is supposed to, I would have known she wasn’t lying.
Instead, I allowed my guilt to fester since entering her body back at the lodge. Thinking I’d betrayed my fated mate with another shifter made the need to hurt myself by hurting Kate the only thing I could see.
She may not forgive me—and I wouldn’t blame her—but I will find her if it’s the last thing I do. Henrik and that witch are going to die. They signed their death warrants when they took Kate. The back-stabbing bastard who put four tranqs in Kate… his time is coming to an end soon, but not before I find Kate.
No, I want him to see her and realize he failed at whatever he was trying to accomplish. Maybe he thought he was protecting me, but if that were the case, Ronnie would have come clean when he saw who Trez really was.
My brother.
One of our missing wolves.
But he didn’t.
He didn’t say shit about what he’d done before he shot Trez. No mention that he followed Kate, or that she’s been taken against her will.
A rumbles courses up my throat, but I swallow the sound back down before it crests my lips.
I knew something was off with his smell, but I hadn’t put two and two together. I still don’t have all the details, but Ashleigh has been working on that since I called her to fill her in.
So far, she hasn’t found anything to tell me why he’d help the Marked Crest pack. I don’t plan to ask him until I get Kate back. Without further proof that he betrayed his people, I don’t want to alert him that I know any more than what he claimed he was doing, which is why I’m not showing that video to mine or Jagger’s parents yet.
Then there’s Richard Everhart, the false alpha, as Storm called him. The only thing she knew was a former coven leader, another dark witch, had given him the strength and power of an alpha well over a century ago.
The desire for revenge sits heavy behind my eyes, but it’s not my top priority unless that motherfucker has my girl—and then I’ll rip him limb by limb to get to her. He doesn’t deserve mercy, and his time is coming, I just don’t know if it’ll be me that rips his throat out or if it’ll be Kate.
His crest is too similar to the symbol of the Bloodmoon pack: a reddish-orange full moon, a blood moon, with the head of a wolf faded into it. I’ve always said it can’t be a coincidence. I still believe that now, and it makes me wonder if Richard was once a part of the Bloodmoon pack.
This isn’t the first time that thought has come to mind. I once asked my father years ago when I was a teenager, but he promised me there was no evidence of Richard ever being anyone except the Marked Crest alpha. But every alpha is someone before they become an alpha. My father has never cared to find out, but I will. Now that I know he isn’t a true alpha, I’m determined more than ever to find out who he really is.
Wolf shifters are born with their wolf. You’re either alpha, beta, gamma, a pack warrior, or an omega. A beta can rule a pack if there isn’t an alpha leader, but it’s rare. Most packs want an alpha and will seek one out until they find one.
The Yukon pack is an example of that. Caleb was a born beta. Their alpha was killed, though no one knows how or why. Caleb leads them, and to my knowledge, their pack is happy with him and does not wish to find an alpha. Betas have a similar power to alpha shifters; it’s just not as strong, and they can’t make their alphas submit like an alpha can their beta.
Pushing all that shit to the back of my mind, I release the latch on my seat belt. Trez does the same.
“You still haven’t told me where you were when Kate thought you were dead. Or what happened before you showed up here,” I say to him for at least the tenth time this week.
“If I were you, I wouldn’t hold my breath for answers.”
“Trez,” I say his name like a warning as a growl rumbles from deep within my chest and up my dry throat.
“Give it a fucking rest and drop it, Kane. You brought us back to deal with your pack, so go do it.”
“I brought us back because your mate—my beta—was about to abandon the pack to come find you.”
“And so Storm could do her witchy shit and find her sister when we should still be looking for mine,” he argues.
“Which could also help us find Kate.” I pause, taking a needed breath before I blow up and force him to whine in submission. I’ve allowed his attitude to go on too long. I’ve had enough.
“Who is not your sister, by the way,” I grit out. “Because you’re my goddamn brother.”
Storm reached out to another witch in her old coven two days ago. According to her friend, Storm’s mother went into town for supplies early last week and never came home.
That coincided two days before Richard Everhart announced Trez’s death, which explains the ashes. Not why he killed or had Storm’s mother killed, though. Storm believes Salem was involved and that it was retaliation for her leaving the coven without their leader’s permission.
The thing is, that scenario only makes sense if her mother’s ashes were going to be given to Storm. How would her coven leader know Kate would steal them? How would Salem be so sure that Kate would bring that urn to the Bloodmoon pack?
No one besides my pack knew where Storm lived. She hadn’t left pack land since arriving here—until five days ago.
There’s one plausible explanation. If that’s the case, then Kate isn’t the only person’s safety I have to worry about. I have to keep Storm safe too, and that means she can’t cross the border in search of her sister without me.
The witch that Storm spoke to told her Ivy was last seen with their leader, but Salem had left to deal with a traitor of the coven. Whether or not Storm is the traitor her friend mentioned is still to be determined. What we do know is that Henrik and Salem were both in the Pacific Northwest five days ago when they took Kate.
Ashleigh hasn’t found any evidence of them crossing the border into Canada, so I’m hoping they’re still here. Somewhere. I just don’t know why they wouldn’t have taken Kate back to Rivermoon Mountain.
“We are going to find Kate, but you can no longer avoid our mother or your mate. Heads up, because he’s about to?—”
Before I can warn him, the passenger side door swings open with such force that metal slams into metal and I know without looking that Jagger bent my fucking door.
“You’re going to fix that,” I bite out.
Jagger flicks his blue stare toward mine. “You’re the auto body technician, not me.”
No, he’s not. He’s the motorcycle mechanic, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t know how to repair damaged door panels because he’s just as good as I am.
“You fucked it up, you’re going to repair it.”
“It’ll have to wait. The pack is assembled in the pavilion. But you’re on your own tonight. I have a bond to consummate that you kept me from doing.” Jag rolls his head to Trez. “Let’s go.”
“Fuck you,” my brother snaps.
Jagger jumps onto the running board and gets in Trez’s face, a cocky snarl already formed on his lips.
“I plan to. Until the sun comes up. Now get out of the fucking truck before I drag you out, baby.”
That purposeful endearment sets Trez off. Reaching up, he snatches my beta by the throat, his claws extending and piercing Jag’s skin. “If anyone’s going to be fucked, it’s going to be you,” Trez tells him.
Uhh, fuck me.
I slam my head back against the headrest. “Can you both get the fuck out of my truck?”
I don’t have a problem with my best friend and my brother being together. They were always meant to be; just like Kate and me, but I’m not into voyeurism—or having them get it on in my truck.
Wrapping his fingers around the material on the front of Trez’s t-shirt, Jagger yanks him out of the cab.
I wait a beat, then get out myself. Music coming from the pavilion hits my sensitive eardrum. Every Thursday night, the pack goes for a run, hunting deer or elk, then we roast a meal over the fire and spend most of the night partying and hanging out with each other as a family.
Shutting the door, I hesitate before I head toward the pack, knowing I’ll find Annalise and Eli there, and I’m no closer to finding their daughter than when I left.
Where the hell are you, Kate?