Chapter 26
Aspen
By the time I’d boxed up my last spatula and wiped down the bakery’s folding table, my brain was already pinging alarms. The relief and joy I’d felt just hours ago were thinning, replaced by a growing sense of wrongness.
Papa should have been there to help break down the tables—he’d promised to haul all the bakery gear back to the truck, and if nothing else, the man never let me carry anything heavier than a cake box.
Except… he wasn’t there.
Not at the cake tables, where Gunner and his nephews were fighting over the last wedge of lemon chiffon.
Not by the fire pit, where the MC officers laughed and tried to one-up each other on who could roast a marshmallow without burning the stick.
Not at the tables, where Juliet and her friends had begun the world’s slowest game of Uno, the rules already devolving into local legend.
“Have you seen Papa?” I whispered, not wanting to start a scene. “He’s been gone for… I don’t know, over half an hour?”
Oscar flicked his tongue over a chunk of gouda from a cheese board and tilted his head. “Not for a while, Miss. I assumed he was conferring with the Alpha about something.”
That tracked. But the pack was, for once, enjoying themselves, every officer accounted for and within eyesight. Even Bronc was letting his hair down, standing with his arm slung around Juliet and both their faces wreathed in uncharacteristic joy.
A few minutes later, I was in full search mode.
“Miss, I believe we have a situation,” he said, voice barely more than a breath.
“What’s wrong?”
My heart jackhammered in my chest. “You feel that too?”
Oscar nodded, whiskers trembling. “Something is… dampened. Like a blanket over a candle. Not snuffed out, but hidden.”
For the first time, icy dread crept into my veins. “Come on,” I said, scooping him up and hustling toward the main house. “We’ll check the compound.”
The walk felt like a hundred miles. The compound was still hopping—Pearl’s kitchen crew cleaning up, the security wolves running post-event sweeps, children chasing each other down the hallways.
I darted through the front door and found the entry empty, but music and laughter poured from the rec room.
I followed the sound, only to find the entire pack leadership accounted for: Bronc and Juliet, Arsenal, Gunner, even Wrecker, who looked up as I barged in.
He clocked my face and came over immediately. “Something wrong?”
I tried to keep the panic out of my voice. “Have you seen Papa? He’s not at the clearing, and I can’t find him anywhere.”
Wrecker’s face changed—instantly, chilling seriousness. “He said he was going to check the perimeter, but he should have been back. Let me get Parker. Maybe she can pull the drone feeds.”
He hustled out of the room, leaving me standing awkwardly with the rest of the crew. Arsenal caught my eye and jerked his chin toward the hallway, signaling for me to follow. He pulled me aside, his big hand gently on my arm.
“Hey,” he said, “when’s the last time you saw him?”
I did the mental math. “After the dancing, during cleanup. He kissed me at the cake table, then went to help. But that was, like, an hour ago.”
Arsenal’s mouth flattened into a line. “He’d never just bail on you. Not on a night like this.”
I nodded, eyes burning. “I know. Something’s wrong. The bond is murky.”
Arsenal turned to the door. “I’ll do a sweep. You stay here and wait for word from Parker.”
I was ready to run out and keep looking, but the rec room door opened and Wrecker reappeared, Parker on his heels. She was already holding her laptop, typing one-handed as she walked.
“I’m running the feeds,” she said, dropping into a kitchen chair. “Give me a minute.”
The room seemed to shrink. Everyone—Pearl, Wrecker, even some of the clean-up wolves—crowded around. Oscar perched on my shoulder, silent, but I could feel him vibrating with anxiety.
Parker tapped away, lines of code flying. “I’ve got four drones on the east perimeter, two more on the west, and the cam at the entry drive. Wait… back it up, there—”
She froze the frame. On the laptop screen, Papa’s figure strode along the tree line, his head down, hands in pockets.
The timestamp said 9:13. She ran it forward—he paced the perimeter, checked a couple of outbuildings, then stopped by a small grove of juniper trees.
He stood there for a full minute, looking at something out of frame. And then—just like that—he was gone.
Parker rewound, zoomed in. “He’s walking, walking… and then nothing. No one else in the shot. No sign of a struggle. He just… vanishes.”
I stared at the screen, willing it to show something else. A flash of color, a shadow, a clue. But there was only the darkness at the edge of the trees and the way Papa seemed to dissolve into it, like a drop of ink in water.
Wrecker grunted. “Play it again. Slower.”
She did. This time, I caught a blur in the left corner of the frame—a flicker of movement, just as Papa turned his head. The motion was wrong: too fast, too smooth. Not a wolf. Not human.
Oscar leaned forward, his nose nearly pressed to the laptop screen. “Miss,” he said, “that is witchcraft. He has been taken.”
The world narrowed to a single, painful point.
I stepped back from the table, my knees weak. I tried to reach for the mate bond, but it was muffled, like trying to hear someone shout through a concrete wall. I knew he was alive, because I could feel a faint echo of him—fear, not for himself, but for me. That made it worse.
Bronc came through the door, his face dark with concern. “Report?”
Wrecker briefed him in two sentences. Bronc listened, then turned to me. “We’ll find him, Aspen. I swear to you.”
I nodded, but my heart was gone. I’d spent months thinking I was the target, that the witches of Verdant Hollow would come for me first. But Papa was my anchor, my whole world. I’d never considered that, in their twisted logic, they might strike at him instead.
Bronc barked orders, sending search teams into the woods and along the highway.
Parker fired off a string of texts to the other packs.
Within minutes, the entire compound shifted from party to war room, everyone moving with grim purpose.
But I felt frozen in place, my entire self a hollow, echoing shell.
Juliet found me, her arm wrapped around my shoulders. “It’s not your fault,” she whispered, holding me tight.
But it was. It was my blood the Wyrdmother wanted, my magic. If I hadn’t come here, none of this would have happened. I’d do whatever it took to get him back.
I’d changed out of the party dress into black leggings, tall flat boots, and a borrowed MC sweater that hung down past my butt and left my arms free to move.
I’d cinched my hair into a high ponytail to keep it out of my face more than anything.
I needed every neuron focused, every sense sharp, nothing falling into my eyes to distract me.
Wrecker’s place was barely contained chaos.
I stood just inside the door, pulse high and hot, as Parker flitted from one screen to another, her fingers blurring over the keyboard.
They’d transferred their tech room to the living room.
It had been gutted for this: coffee table banished, all furniture shoved against the walls to make room for a folding table packed with laptops, monitors, and charging cords.
At the center, a flatscreen TV displayed a live grid of security feeds, each window labeled in all-caps: BARN, ENTRY RD, SOUTH TREE LINE, BUNKHOUSE, and more.
Juliet and Maddie hovered near me like an ad hoc honor guard, but I barely felt them. Every cell in my body was screaming for JT—for Papa—and the mate bond was no longer a lifeline but a noose cinched tight. If I could have reached through space and yanked him home, I would have.
The air in the house vibrated with the kind of tension you get in the last seconds before a tornado touches down.
Arsenal and Gunner had been pacing the entryway, but they’d stopped now, arms folded tight across their chests, eyes pinned to the screens.
Even the enforcers looked spooked; this was not a drill.
Kazimir stood near the window, backlit by the outside security lights, a presence so cold he seemed to pull the heat from the room.
Every now and then he let out a low, almost-growl rumble, but mostly he watched the activity in silence, his jaw clenched like a bear trap.
King Rafe, who had to duck to clear the ceiling fan, was camped out near the kitchen, arms crossed, feet planted like he was bracing for impact.
Oscar, in his best “crisis” waistcoat, had a front-row seat atop Parker’s monitor, standing at attention.
His fur was so puffed it looked like he’d stuck a paw in a live wire.
He barely glanced at me when I entered, but I felt the faint nudge of his familiar magic at the edge of my senses, an extra buffer against the panic in my veins.
I tried to count the people in the room, tried to anchor myself in their presence, but my attention kept boomeranging back to the screens.
Every time the outside cam flickered, my heart would jerk—hoping for a flash of blond hair, a telltale stride.
I looked again and again, as if sheer force of will could conjure him back.
Parker muttered a string of curses at her monitor, then stabbed the enter key like it owed her money.
“I’ve got the last hour of footage parsed, but he’s just gone.
One frame he’s there, next frame he’s smoke.
This doesn’t make any fucking sense. And there’s not another person or presence anywhere to be seen.
Not outside the fences, not on the highway. ”
Wrecker hovered behind her, eyes red, jaw set. “Rewind and scrub again. Look for any energy signatures—heat, electromagnetic, whatever.”