Chapter 30 #2
We arrived at the kindergarten right on time for pickup. The other parents were milling around outside, chatting and laughing, completely oblivious to the horror that had just unfolded across town. I envied them. Envied their ignorance. Their simple, uncomplicated lives.
I got out of the car and walked toward the building, forcing my legs to move normally, forcing my expression into something that resembled calm. I couldn’t let the twins see how scared I was. Couldn’t let them know that their father and baby sister were in the hands of people who wanted to hurt us.
The doors opened and children came streaming out, a flood of tiny bodies and high-pitched voices. I spotted Rowan first, his dark hair and serious expression so much like his father’s. Then Thea, bouncing along beside him, her gray eyes bright with excitement.
They saw me and their faces lit up.
“Mommy!”
They came running, throwing themselves at me with the full force of their five-year-old bodies. I caught them both, pulling them close, burying my face in their hair so they wouldn’t see the tears threatening to spill down my cheeks.
“Hey, babies,” I managed. “How was school?”
“It was AMAZING,” Thea announced, pulling back to look at me. “We learned about dinosaurs and I drew a T-Rex and Mrs. Patterson said it was the best one in the whole class!”
“That’s wonderful, sweetie.”
Rowan was quieter, studying my face with those too-perceptive eyes. “Mommy, are you okay? You look sad.”
My heart clenched. Even at five years old, he could read me like a book.
“I’m fine, baby,” I lied, smoothing his hair back from his forehead. “Just tired. Work stuff.”
“Where’s Daddy?” Thea asked, looking around. “And baby Blake? I want to show Blake my dinosaur picture!”
The question hit me like a physical blow. I forced a smile onto my face, hoping it looked more convincing than it felt.
“Daddy had to go somewhere for work,” I said carefully. “And baby Blake is with him. They’ll be back soon.”
It wasn’t a lie. Not really. They would be back soon. I would make sure of it.
“Oh.” Thea’s face fell slightly, but she bounced back quickly. “Okay! Can we show them when they get home?”
“Absolutely. They’ll love it.”
I stood up and took their hands, leading them toward the car. “Listen, I have to go to a very important meeting. I might be working very late tonight. So I arranged for you to stay with a friend of mine.”
“What friend?” Rowan asked suspiciously.
I gestured toward Jasmine, who was standing by the car, a warm smile on her face. “This is Jasmine. She’s very nice, and she’s going to take care of you tonight.”
Jasmine crouched down to their level, her green eyes gentle. “Hi there. You must be Rowan and Thea. Your mom has told me so much about you.”
Thea immediately perked up. “Do you like dinosaurs?”
“I love dinosaurs. Did you know that some of them had feathers?”
“WHAT?!” Thea’s eyes went wide with amazement. “Mommy, did you know that?!”
“I did not,” I said, managing a small smile. “See? Jasmine knows all kinds of cool things.”
Rowan was still watching Jasmine with wary eyes, but when she pulled out a small bag of candy from her pocket and offered him one, he softened slightly.
“I guess she’s okay,” he muttered.
That was about as good as I was going to get.
We loaded into the car and drove to the guest house where Jasmine and Ryder had been staying. The building was already surrounded by guards, their presence visible and reassuring. More protection than I had ever seen for a single location.
Good. I needed them to be safe. I needed at least one thing to go right today.
I walked the twins to the door, Jasmine beside us. She was chatting with Thea about feathered dinosaurs, her voice light and cheerful, and I felt a rush of gratitude for her ability to distract my daughter from the tension in the air.
“Be good for Jasmine,” I told them at the door, crouching down to their level. “I’ll come get you as soon as I can. Okay?”
“Okay, Mommy.” Thea threw her arms around my neck. “I love you!”
“I love you too, baby.” I hugged her tight, breathing in her familiar scent, trying to memorize the feeling of her small body in my arms. Then I turned to Rowan. “Take care of your sister.”
He nodded solemnly, looking far too old for his age. “I will.”
I hugged him too, holding on for just a moment longer than necessary. Then I straightened up and looked at Jasmine.
“Thank you,” I said, and this time the words came out thick with emotion. “For everything.”
“Go find your family,” Jasmine said firmly. “We’ll be fine here.”
I turned to the guards stationed around the building. There were at least a dozen of them, their eyes alert, their postures ready for combat.
“I’m entrusting you with my children,” I said, making sure to meet each of their eyes. “Protect them with your lives.”
“Yes, Luna,” they responded in unison.
I walked back to the car on legs that felt increasingly unsteady. The adrenaline was starting to fade, leaving behind a bone-deep exhaustion that threatened to drag me under. But I couldn’t rest. Not yet. Not until Knox and Blake were safe.
Noah drove us to the pack building, neither of us speaking. There was nothing to say. We both knew how dire the situation was. We both knew what was at stake.
The meeting room was full when I arrived.
Cole was standing by the window, his arms crossed, his expression dark.
Ryder sat at the table, maps and documents spread out in front of him.
Sawyer was by the door, his hand still resting on his hip.
A few other high-ranking wolves were scattered around the room, all of them watching me as I entered.
I took my place at the head of the table, in the chair that was usually Knox’s. It felt wrong to sit there, like I was stealing something that didn’t belong to me. But there was no time for sentiment.
“Report,” I said, looking at Cole.
He cleared his throat and stepped forward, spreading a map across the table. His finger traced a path from Ravenshollow to a point several miles south.
“The Pine Valley trackers followed the scent trail for as long as they could,” he said.
“They lost track of it here.” He tapped a spot on the map, deep in what looked like wilderness.
“The forest gets dense in that area. Lots of streams and rocky terrain that can disrupt scent trails. They’re still searching, but as of twenty minutes ago, they hadn’t picked it up again. ”
“South,” I murmured, staring at the map. “They went south.”
“Into rogue territory,” Ryder added grimly. “No pack jurisdiction. No allies. Just empty land and whoever has the strength to claim it.”
I absorbed that information, filing it away. Then I took a breath and began the retelling of what had happened.
I told them everything. Hunt’s phone call.
The sound of Mira’s voice on the other end of the line, mocking and cruel.
Racing to Marcus and Serena’s house with Noah.
Finding the women unconscious on the floor, shopping bags scattered around them.
Finding Marcus bleeding on the floor of his own bedroom, beaten nearly to death.
Lucio standing in the center of the room with Blake in his arms, his claws pressed against her tiny throat.
I told them about the impossible choice Knox had made. How he had bargained with Lucio, had convinced him that taking the Alpha would cause more suffering than taking the Luna. How he had talked about my human weakness, how much more I would suffer watching helplessly while he was in danger.
By the time I finished, every face in the room was grim. Cole’s hands were shaking with barely suppressed rage. Ryder’s jaw was clenched so tight I could see the muscles jumping beneath his skin. Even Sawyer, who I had always seen as stoic and unflappable, looked shaken.
“We’ll find them,” Cole said, his voice rough. “We’ll find them and we’ll tear those bastards apart.”
“Any news from the trackers I sent after Knox and Blake’s scent?” I asked.
Heads shook around the room.
“Nothing yet,” Ryder said. “But they’ve only been gone for about forty minutes. Give them time.”
Time. The one thing we didn’t have.
I slumped back in my chair, exhaustion crashing over me in waves. My eyes drifted closed for just a moment, and when they opened again, Ryder was staring at me with an odd expression on his face.
“Knox gave you that?” he asked, pointing at something.
I followed his gaze and saw the necklace resting against my chest. The crescent moon pendant that Knox had given me just this morning, in the panic room, before everything went to hell.
“Yes,” I said, my hand coming up to touch it automatically. “He said you gave him the idea. He wears a matching one.”
Ryder’s face did something strange. His eyebrows rose. His lips twitched. And then, impossibly, he started laughing.
I stared at him in disbelief. “What the fuck is so funny?”
But Ryder just shook his head, still chuckling, and asked, “Did he have it on when he left? The matching necklace?”
I thought back to those horrible moments in the bedroom. Knox walking toward the door. His shirt pulling tight across his chest. The glint of silver at his collar.
“Yes,” I said slowly. “He was wearing it.”
Ryder’s smile widened. He held out his hand. “Can I see yours?”
My hands were shaking too badly to work the clasp. I fumbled with it uselessly for several seconds before Noah stepped in, his gentle fingers unclasping the chain and sliding it free from my neck. He handed it to Ryder.
“Why?” I asked, watching as Ryder turned the pendant over in his hands. “What are you doing?”
Instead of answering, Ryder pulled out his phone and opened an app I didn’t recognize. He squinted at the back of the pendant, where I now noticed there was a series of tiny numbers engraved into the metal. Numbers I had never even noticed before.
He typed them into the app.
A prompt appeared on the screen, asking for a four-digit password.
“What would Knox use?” Ryder asked, looking up at me. “Something important. Something meaningful. A date, maybe, or a combination of numbers that matters to him.”
I stared at him blankly for a moment, my exhausted brain struggling to keep up. A password. Something Knox would use. Something important.
And then it hit me.
The panic room. The code on the keypad. The combination of their children’s birthdays that unlocked the door to the underground sanctuary he had built to keep us safe.
I recited the numbers, watching Ryder type them in with trembling fingers.
For a moment, nothing happened. The app just sat there, loading.
And then the screen changed.
“Bingo!” Ryder shouted, his voice ringing with triumph.
Everyone in the room surged forward, crowding around the phone to see. I pushed to the front, my heart pounding, barely daring to hope.
The screen showed a map. A satellite view of the region, with topographical lines and markers indicating major roads and landmarks. And on that map were two blue dots.
One of them was right here, in Ravenshollow. In the pack building. Where we were standing right now.
The other was miles to the south, deep in the wilderness that Cole had indicated on the paper map. Deep in rogue territory.
Moving.
“Is that what I think it is?” Noah asked, his voice shaking.
Ryder nodded, his smile so wide it threatened to split his face in half.
“The necklace has a tracker built into it,” he explained. “It’s something I had made for Jasmine some time back. I wanted a way to always be able to find her, no matter what. When Knox asked me about it, I gave him the contact for the jeweler who made them.”
He held up the phone, the blue dot pulsing steadily on the screen.
“We have Knox’s location.”