Chapter 29
Luciano
Revea: I’m going to take some time away. Need some space. Sorry.
I’ve done tours in the world’s most dangerous countries, seen friends being shot, watched my pack alpha in a coma with third-degree burns to eighty per cent of his back, but nothing could ever prepare me for the way I feel right now.
She sent that message an hour ago, the longest hour of my life.
We’ve tried texting—they don’t send.
Calling—dead end.
And the worst part is, we have no fucking idea why.
We were only joking this morning about shit excuses we could make up to go see her, laughing over Sylvan’s sudden need for a haircut after years of having Kaiden do it, planning out jobs around her next convention when Syl mentioned it was in Paris…
Then this.
Rejection.
“Maybe it’s me,” Sylvan says, finally breaking the silence cloying the air. “It normally is. Maybe I did something—”
“No, Sylvan,” Kaiden cuts in, turning to him. “This isn’t on you. It isn’t on any of us.” His gaze sweeps around our office, over each of us. “We knew this could happen. She made it clear she didn’t want a pack. If anything, it’s my fault for even suggesting a heat arrangement—”
“Stop.” Val this time, but his gaze is fixed away from us. “Don’t try to take the blame for this, Kai.”
We fall back into silence, but our thoughts set the bond alight, humming with repressed emotions we’re not ready to voice.
“I just don’t get it,” I say, staring at my phone, dormant on the table.
Willing it to ring. A message. Anything.
“We’ve been talking every day, and she’s been opening up more.
She even said she couldn’t wait to see us.
Then, a few hours after she lands, she says that? ” I shake my head. “It doesn’t add up.”
“Maybe reality hit,” Val murmurs, still staring out the window. “Maybe she thought it could work when we were miles away, but now it’s real... it’s too much.”
“I can’t accept that.” I grit my teeth, shake my head again. “No. There’s got to be something else.” I blow out my cheeks. “We should go to the salon, speak to her in person—”
“No. That’ll only make things worse.” Kaiden’s voice is loud, low, but it isn’t anger that rumbles his words. I fucking wish he were angry. “She’s asked for space. If we ignore that, we’re no better than any alpha who can’t accept no.”
“What the fuck do we do then?!” I snap, alpha surging out. “Because you can’t just tell me that’s it.”
“But it is.” Sylvan looks at me, his words flat. “Even if we don’t want it to be.”
I slump back, his quiet words hitting hard, because Sylvan always tells the truth, and it fucking stings.
My chest feels hollow. “We’re not even going to fight for her?”
“Luciano.” My brother looks at me. “You can’t fight for someone who doesn’t want us.”
Another shot to the chest.
I open my mouth, swallow, then grimace.
“Fuck!” I slam my fist down. Our phones shake. “Distract me, someone.” I hold my head in my hands. “Send me on a job somewhere, fucking anywhere. Tonight, right now, earliest one.”
There’s a pause, then Sylvan’s voice is beside me. “There’s a job for Jamieson in Germany. Flight’s in two hours. Security detail for a politician who—”
“Done.” I stand, chair sliding out behind me. “I’ll go pack. Send me the details.”
“Wait...” Val calls, but I’m already through the doors, pacing down the corridor. “Luciano.” I keep going. “Joder, tío… Espera!”
He grabs my arm. I turn, slamming my brother into the nearest wall.
“?Qué cono quieres?” I snarl, getting in his face. “What, Val? You gonna tell me this is like all those times before?” I shake him by his shoulders. “That we don’t need an omega, that they’ll just get in the way? Better to lose her now than later? Huh?”
But there’s no grimace on his face. No stoic expression. Just a hard line between his brows.
He hasn’t even tried to fight back.
He isn’t even touching me anymore.
“No, hermano… no.” Val shakes his head slowly, and he looks so… dejected. “I need to come with you.”
My scowl drops, eyes darting over his face.
“If I don’t...” He swallows. “No sé qué hacer, hermano. I don’t know what to do with this feeling.” He leans his forehead against my shoulder.
I try to think of the times in my life that Val has been like this with me. Maybe twice. Normally when someone close to us dies. Because when bad things happen in our lives, something in us switches. I become the angry, bitter twin; he becomes... this.
And I fucking hate it.
“It’s okay, brother.” I keep my voice low as I pull him into a hug. “I’ve got you. You know that, right? I’ve always got you.” I keep nodding, urging him to believe it, maybe myself too. “We could all go… yeah? Like a pack trip. When was the last time we did that?”
He murmurs some type of half-assed answer.
I know a trip is the last thing on all our minds, but maybe that’s exactly why we need it. To remind ourselves that we come together when life gets fucked.
My phone buzzes in my vest pocket. The notification flashes across my watch.
My heart pounds.
Gently, I ease Val back by his shoulder. “Vamos…” I nod to my watch. “Go on, tell the guys the plan. I need to take this.”
If Val is sceptical of my dismissal, he doesn’t show it.
I’ve actually never seen him look so... lost. He simply walks away.
I lean against the wall, slamming my head back with a sharp curse, then answer. “Yeah?”
“Hey, man. I know you’re my boss, and this might be crossing a line I don’t really want to cross, but I just need to know something.” Rue sounds... odd. “Is Revea with you?”
Fuck, why does hearing her name make my chest ache? I grit my jaw. “Nah, man. Not at all.” I huff through my nose. “Why?”
“Really? Fuck.”
I finally realise why he sounds so strange. It’s his tone, it’s pitched higher, there’s a tremble like he’s… distressed.
My instincts kick in as I push off the wall. “What’s wrong, Rue?”
He lets out a long breath. “Revea was meant to be coming to Rowan’s today, straight after her flight.
Instead, she sends us some cryptic fucking message about being ill.
I tell her I’ll come over and bring some stuff.
She says no, that she needs to rest. But then she’s not answering messages, and her phone’s turned off.
I go over anyway because I know she’s a stubborn ass and I’m imagining her suffocating in her own vomit, when I stumble upon fucking Steve—”
“Who the fuck is Steve?” I snarl, fists clenching.
“Right?! That’s what I said! Then he tells me he’s been renting the house off some website for the last two months.”
I frown. “A house?”
“Yeah, Revea’s house, and I’m like, what the fuck do you mean renting my sister’s—”
“She doesn’t live in a house.”
He pauses. “Erm, I think I know where my fucking sister lives, Luc.”
“Rue, clearly, you don’t.” I run a hand over my stubble. “I know where she’s living, and it isn’t in a house. I’ll send you the address.”
I text it out quickly.
“What the fuck? She’s been living there? In that shit hole? Why? Why didn’t she tell us...”
“Listen, I don’t know all the details. But that’s the address Syl has. And before you storm over there, you should know she sent us a message too.” I clench my teeth, body tensing at even the thought of repeating it. “Said she wanted time away, needed some space...”
“Nah,” he scoffs before I’ve even finished. “No fucking way, that’s not my sister. She doesn’t walk away from shit. She’d tell you to your face.”
He curses suddenly, footsteps pounding on concrete.
“I’m heading there now. I’ll ring Rowan on the way and fill him in.
” His breaths quicken. “He’s already been to the salon.
Margret got the same text about being ill.
” A car door opens, slams shut. “She’s never done anything like this before, Luc.
Never just dropped everything and gone off the grid.
.. What… what if...” He’s panting. “What if she didn’t even send these messages?
What if... fuck, man, you hear all those fucking horror stories about omegas travelling alone—”
“Stop,” I bark, for him and for me. His breath shivers down the phone. “Go to the flat. If she isn’t there, you call me back immediately, understood?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ve got it, boss. I will. Sorry.”
I hang up.
The worry that Revea rejected us is now drowned out by the horrific fear that something far worse has happened.
That she isn’t safe.
I slam open the office doors. My pack’s confused expressions land on me, but I’m locked on Sylvan.
“Track her. Now,” I bark so hard and loud that all of them tense.
Sylvan pulls out his phone, types in a code, pinches his screen a few times, then his jaw tenses. “She didn’t just turn off her phone. She removed the chip. Last tracked point is the airport.”
“And she didn’t just text us. She texted her brothers and Margret too. Told them she’s unwell. But Rue’s just been on the phone, said it’s unusual behaviour, that she isn’t at her house. Yeah, house, apparently she’s been hiding the flat from them. I’ve sent him there, told him to call me when...”
My phone buzzes, I answer, putting it on loudspeaker.
“She’s not here,” Rue says, and my growl rumbles out. “Rowan’s here, he’s got people tracking her phone, but they can’t find anything.”
“She removed the chip,” Syl adds.
Rue curses, then repeats it to someone before his voice lowers. “I don’t know what to do, guys. I thought she’d be with you, but now I can’t stop thinking she’s...”
“Rue, take a breath,” Kaiden rumbles out, his soft bark enough to stop him. “The worst-case scenario you’re picturing right now, stop. You know how those people work, and this isn’t it. They wouldn’t send texts, it’s too risky a tip-off.”
“Yeah, yeah, you’re right. Rowan said that too...”
“I’ll find her,” Sylvan says without hesitation.
There’s the sound of the phone being passed, then a new voice. “Kaiden?”
Our pack alpha pauses. “Hey, Rowan—”
“Please find her.” Rowan’s voice is raw, dark; he sounds just like Kaiden. “Use whatever you have, use my men, whatever you need, just…” Then it fades out. “…find my baby sister.”
Kaiden’s eyes sweep over us all. “We will.”
We sit in silence after that. Sylvan never stops working, only to ask us for things like extra screens and to jot down marks on a digital map.
Time goes so slow. Each second brings more dread.
What if we’re wrong? What if this is a kidnapping, and we’re all just sitting here while she gets taken further and further away from us—
“I’ve found her.”