Chapter 24 #2
I press two fingers under his jaw and find a pulse, thready, gone then back, but beating.
He’s alive. I’ve got a healer dialed before I’ve chosen to move, my voice scraping out of me.
“Badly hurt shifter, his throat’s cut, he’s bleeding out.
I need you now.” I rattle off the store and the lot number.
Then my eyes cut to the glass doors, and the floor drops out from under me.
Jessa. The girls.
They’re still in there. They have to be.
“Help’s coming, Adrian,” I tell him hoarsely and lower the trunk lid just enough that a passerby won’t see him but the healer will catch his scent. Walking away from him is the hardest thing I’ve done all day.
Inside, a girl at the customer desk asks if she can help me. “The manager,” I tell her. “Right now.”
She’s gone and back with a woman in a store vest, keys on a lanyard, a name tag I don’t read. “Sir, what’s this about?”
“Your lot cameras. I need to see them.”
Her face closes over. “I can’t do that. We don’t show security footage to the public, that’s a police—”
“A man was attacked in your parking lot in the last hour. Two children were taken.” I get in close, and my voice drops to something that isn’t quite human. “You’re going to walk me to that footage.”
“I understand you’re upset.” She’s backing toward the desk, one hand up. “But I could lose my—”
“You’ll lose more than your job.” I plant a hand on the counter between us. “I own half the property this chain leases in the county. You keep me out of that room, and I’ll have this store dark by the end of the day. Every one of these people out of work. Now show me the tapes.”
The blood goes out of her face. Whatever she sees in mine, she quits arguing. “This way.”
She takes me back through a door marked staff, past the break room, to a desk with four monitors, and pulls up the footage while I brace both hands on the desk to keep them from shaking.
I start on the outside feed. Jessa and the girls go in a little after two, Adrian parked with his eyes on the doors. A man walks up to his window and points at the store urgently, waving for him to come. Adrian hesitates.
“Stay in the car,” I tell him under my breath, hours too late. The manager glances at me sidelong.
He’s timed the whole thing. He waits until a delivery cart rolls between the parked cars, until a knot of shoppers crosses the hood, and for two seconds, every line of sight goes dark.
Adrian gets out. I watch the blade cross his throat, one flicker on the tape, there and gone.
The man catches him before he drops, tips him into the trunk, and strolls off across the lot with his hands in his pockets. My own throat closes.
“Inside,” I get out. “Show me inside.”
She switches feeds. I already don’t want to see it, and I make myself look.
Jessa moves through the aisles with Mia at her hip and Bella trailing.
She turns to reach for something on a shelf.
Her foot skids, and she goes down hard into a display, cans scattering across the floor.
I’m on my feet off the desk before I know why.
In that same breath, a figure in a puffy jacket, cap pulled low, scoops Mia off the floor and runs for the far exit.
Half a second, and my daughter’s gone off the edge of the frame.
Jessa’s up before she’s finished falling. She gets a hand on Bella, spins her toward the front, and flings her arm at the doors. I read it straight off her mouth. Go. Run to Adrian.
Bella never reaches the doors.
I have the worker line up the timestamps, the second Adrian went down against the second Jessa pushed Bella off. They match. Bella saw it, or near enough, and she hid instead of running into the open. She’s still in the building.
I take the store’s mic, and I make my voice steady for her. “Bella. It’s Uncle Marcus. Where are you?”
A long nothing stretches out. Then she stumbles out of a storeroom at the back, face wrecked, and throws herself at me.
“Someone took Mia.” She’s sobbing into my shirt. “Jessa went after her. I couldn’t—”
“You did right.” I cup the back of her head. “You hid. That was exactly right.” She’s shaking so hard I feel it through my hands, and it takes everything I have not to shift on the spot.
Cole and Tomas come through the doors at a run. I put Bella into Cole’s arms. “Stay with Cole.”
I nudge my head at Tomas, and we head out into the back alley.
It’s there on the ground, waiting for me. A scrap of paper, a glass vial standing on top of it, an address in block letters underneath. I lift the vial, and the scent hits me, sweet and sickly. Wolfsbane.
They’ve taken Jessa and Mia for bait, and they’ve left me the hook, an address, and a vial of the one thing that can put me down. They want me to come, and the wolf doesn’t care that it’s a trap. Right now neither do I.
“Get Bella somewhere safe.” I press the address into Tomas’s hand. “Then send everyone we have to this address.”
“I’m coming with you,” Tomas says fiercely.
I shake my head. “No. I need you to gather the forces and bring them. Cole has to stay with Bella and check on Adrian.”
“There’s a healer outside with Adrian.” Tomas holds my gaze. “Marcus, you shouldn’t go alone.”
“You’ll be right behind me,” I say firmly. “Go do what I said.”
Without another word, I tear out of the alleyway toward my car.
I take the road out of town too fast, wheels drifting wide on the turns, and the wolf climbs the whole way up, higher than it’s ever pushed in me.
Part of the rage is for Mia, lifted out from under my own roof while I chased bad directions across the valley.
The rest is Jessa, tied up somewhere waiting for me to come, and the animal shreds at the last of my grip.
It wants out so badly my hands are changing on the wheel, the knuckles swelling, the nails pushing to claw.
The car drifts toward the trees, and I don’t fight it. I ride two wheels into the ditch, wrench the door open, and I’m running before it’s stopped rocking.
Under the pines, I quit holding on. The shift rips up my spine and throws me down onto four legs, faster than it should, the bones grinding as they reset while the animal drags itself out ahead of the leave I meant to give it.
Pain floods every joint, and I don’t care.
It runs, and it runs for one thing only.
One word hammers through the whole of me, over and over.
Mate.
It’s her. It’s been her the whole time. The wolf has never turned its head for another woman, not once.
It’s never wanted like this, to own her and keep every other soul away from her.
It terrifies me and thrills me at once. Neither slows my stride.
Terror for the two of them drives every push of my legs, my paws tearing open the wet ground, the dead building swelling up black through the trees.
The address is an abandoned cottage back in the woods, windows dark and yard gone wild. Their scent’s all over it, hers and Mia’s both. No cars outside, no guards, and the quiet should warn me. It doesn’t slow me at all.
I force the change at the tree line, drag my pants up my legs, and put my shoulder through the door.
There’s a body on the floor. Jared. It takes me a second to place him, Rachel’s ex, the firefighter. What the hell is he doing here?
Jessa’s roped to a chair across the room, wrists lashed to the arms, tears cutting tracks down her face.
I start for her before I’ve thought. She’s shaking her head hard, straining at the ropes, screaming into the gag.
Her eyes keep cutting to something behind me.
Mia’s on the floor at her feet, small and too still.
Her chest lifts and drops, slow and shallow.
She’s breathing. That’s the only thing holding me upright.
Drugged, not gone. Her breathing hasn’t dropped to the flutter I’m terrified of, and I hold to that with everything I’ve got.
Then I catch it behind me, a hitch of movement, and I turn into the dart as it buries itself in my shoulder.
The poison goes in cold and spreads fast. Everywhere it reaches, the strength drains straight out of me.
The room whites at the edges. My legs quit, and my knees crack against the boards before I can lock them.
It’s wolfsbane, I know it before the second breath, and the animal shrieks, hauling toward Jessa all the same.
I drag it down and choke it quiet before Kylan can read the fight still left in me.