Chapter 32
“Where is she?” Kaldrek’s voice tore through the clearing. “Where is my mate?” The pack stood scattered among the trees, blood on their hands and mud streaked across their skin, shock still clinging to their faces.
One by one, they shook their heads. No one had seen her taken. No one knew where she had gone. An hour had already passed.
Kaldrek’s thoughts refused to settle as panic pressed against his skull, warping every instinct and threatening to strip him of the control he demanded of himself. He forced his breathing to steady, fought to remain alpha, but the silence in the mate-bond clawed at him like a living thing.
They had taken her.
They had taken Holden too.
He reached for Evelyne again through the bond, pushing hard enough to make his vision blur. Nothing answered. No warmth. No tether pulling him back to her.
He tried the alpha line next, reaching for Holden. Just silence.
But she was not dead. He knew it with bone-deep certainty. The bond was weakened, but not severed.
“We haven’t seen or scented them,” Nathan said carefully, and something like pity flickered in his eyes.
Kaldrek’s lip curled. He did not want pity. He wanted blood.
“Gather another search group,” he ordered, hardening his voice into steel. “Rotate the others to rest. I want scouts posted at all times.”
“Yes, Alpha.”
Heidara kept pace at his side, with Alaric close behind and Cillian just beside him. Fear hung over the pack like a storm as Kaldrek relived the attack again and again in his mind. It had been swift. Coordinated. There had not been a single chance to reach Evelyne before they got to her.
He had smelled her blood, the trace still burned in his memory.
But the trail had ended without warning, swallowed by mud and hints of blood magic.
They had fed on her, he knew it. The thought dragged something feral up from deep inside him.
For that alone, he would kill every Noskari still drawing breath.
“You need to rest, Heidara,” he said sharply.
“I will not,” she snapped back.
He understood.
“Then tend to the wounded,” he amended, trying to steady his tone. “Lorena is still bleeding. Help her.”
The edge in his voice was unfair, and he knew it. Rage bled into everything now.
He had let himself be drawn away. That was the truth of it.
The whispers had started softly this time, barely audible as they threaded through the trees like smoke.
They had called him by name. Spoken of his mother.
Of his blood. Of the strength beneath his wolf.
They spoke of Velenshire as though it belonged to him. As though he belonged to it.
They promised answers. Power. Home.
It was all so perfectly distracting. He should have ignored them. He should have known better. But he hesitated for just a few seconds, and it cost him.
By the time he realized he had been led too far from the pack, the darkness had shifted and thickened behind him, in the direction he had come from. Then they moved fast, like a plague carried on the wind, straight to her and Holden.
A warning was all he had managed to send through the bond. A single command.
Too late.
He failed her. He failed Holden. He failed his pack.
Kaldrek sank into a crouch, head bowed over the blood-darkened ground.
He no longer cared what the pack saw. Bravery was useless here.
Authority was useless. Nothing mattered except finding her.
If he had been stronger, if he had been better at sensing them, better at wielding what little power had awakened in him, perhaps this never would have happened.
But they had taken her in seconds, and he had been left with nothing.
One moment he had been running toward her. The next, pain and weakness had flooded through him, not his own, but hers. He had heard the pack shouting. Heard the fight. Then silence.
And she was gone.
Holden too.
A savage sound threatened to break from him. He wanted blood. He wanted to tear the nearest Noskari apart with his bare hands. Fury surged through him, hot enough to choke on, but he crushed it down.
Rage would not find her.
Clarity might.
He inhaled slowly, steadying himself. He would find her. He would tear the world apart if he had to.
“Kaldrek.”
He lifted his head to see Alaric and Cillian standing before him, Heidara still at his side. Only then did he register the weight of her hand resting on his shoulder. She had placed it there gently, not as comfort born of pity, but as solidarity, because she did not see him as weak.
Kaldrek’s eyes dropped to Alaric’s hand, once again full of loose soil. If the male mentioned that metallic scent one more time, Kaldrek thought he might lose the last of his restraint.
“I was trying to tell you before,” Alaric said carefully. “I think… I think something is beneath us.”
Kaldrek lifted a brow and let him continue.
“I know I rely more on instinct than proof,” Alaric said, “but the land feels wrong. It felt wrong before the attack. I think it was trying to warn me. And now we need to listen.”
He opened his hand and let the dirt spill back to the ground.
“They’re underground,” he said quietly. “We need to find the entrance.”
Kaldrek rose to his full height and studied him. There was no hesitation in Alaric’s eyes, only certainty. And right now, his instinct was all they had.
Kaldrek gave a single nod.
“Let’s go.”
***
Evelyne refused to close her eyes.
Sleep would have been mercy, a brief surrender to exhaustion, but she would not allow herself that weakness. Not after watching the young woman reduced to something less than human, toyed with like prey before a meal. The image refused to leave her mind and it infuriated her.
Evelyne shifted, inching closer under the excuse of adjusting her position, trying to get a better look at the marks climbing the girl’s arms and shoulders.
Even in the dim light, she could make out faint lines, punctures, bruises, old scars layered over newer ones.
But they were not fresh. No… they were already knitting back together.
Not with unnatural speed, but faster than any human should heal.
That would explain it. Why she was still alive. Why they kept returning her.
Holden had not moved since the Noskari disappeared into the dark. He sat rigid beside her, the chains at his ankles gone slack, staring into nothing. Even when Evelyne tried to speak to him, he gave no answer. It was as though some part of him had retreated far inward, leaving only his body behind.
Then new screams rose through the tunnels, ricocheting off the walls from somewhere deeper in the dark. They did not last long. Evelyne could not tell whether those taken were dragged back in chains afterward or simply left where they fell.
Not knowing was worse.
She forced herself to think. They could try the chains again, all at once, with more force this time, but that risked drawing attention. And she would not give the Noskari another reason to make an example of the girl, or worse, to choose someone else.
Her eyes drifted toward the darkness where the creatures had vanished. As though her stare had called them back, two shapes peeled free of the black and stepped into the faint reach of her adjusting vision.
They had returned.
Her heart pounded so hard it felt ready to crack her ribs from the inside.
The creatures moved their attention over the prisoners as though choosing from a feast, and then, slowly, as if savoring the fear thickening in the chamber, they drifted toward the young woman in the corner.
Her trembling worsened at once. Beside Evelyne, Holden, who had sat locked in silence, suddenly snapped upright and loosed a deep, guttural growl that rolled against the dirt walls.
“Why can’t I shift?” Evelyne whispered urgently. She had tried—straining until her muscles burned and her bones felt hollow. “Can you?”
“No,” Holden muttered through clenched teeth. “These damned bloodroot veins are leaching the shifter magic. Every time I try, something pulls it back down.”
She felt it too, the dragging sensation in her blood whenever she reached for her magic.
One of the Noskari crouched and gripped the chain near the girl’s ankles. Its long, gray fingers traced the iron laced with hardened bloodroot fibers. The dark veins threaded through the metal seemed to loosen at its touch, responding like obedient tendrils.
The second creature seized the girl’s wrists as she tried weakly to resist.
Evelyne could not watch this again.
“Stop!” she shouted before she could stop herself. “Leave her alone. She is not your amusement, you fiends.”
Both creatures turned, their black eyes fixed on her with unsettling stillness.
“Volunteering?” one hissed.
Her pulse stuttered. What had she done?
She forced her chin higher, swallowing her fear.
“Not volunteering,” she replied coldly. “Just hoping you’ll come closer so I can see the faces of the monsters hiding in the dark. Preying on the weak to delight in their pain. Pathetic.”
They advanced.
Holden lunged as far as his chains allowed. One of the creatures lashed out casually, claws slicing across his cheek. Blood streaked his skin in bright lines against the dimness. He snarled.
Rage burned through Evelyne. She could not shift, but she could still fight.
One closed the distance and gripped her shoulders with crushing force. She twisted quickly, deflecting its arm and driving her fist hard into its jaw. Pain exploded across her knuckles and the creature staggered half a step, more irritated than injured.
The second Noskari moved behind her and yanked her hair back violently, baring her throat. Holden launched himself again, but the creature shoved him aside with ease. Down here, fed and swollen with stolen blood, they were much stronger.
Evelyne clawed for its face, aiming for those endless black eyes, but it caught her wrist mid-strike.
Its grip tightened and she felt her bone snap.
A scream tore from her throat as agony shot up her arm.
“Let her go!” Holden roared, straining against the bloodroot chains.
“You will never harm us,” it rasped. “But we will savor you. Feed from you. Treasure every scream.”
The chains at her ankles slackened as the bloodroot fibers unwound at the creature’s command.
For one fleeting moment, warmth stirred faintly in her veins, like the ghost of returning magic.
Then it yanked her forward. Evelyne kicked and twisted, refusing to go quietly.
If she was going to die here, she would wound one of them first. Buy time. Make them bleed—
“Evelyne?”
The voice was soft. Fragile. So familiar it sliced through the chaos at once.
Her head turned sharply toward the girl in the corner. No, not a girl. A woman.
Even through the grime and blood tangled in her hair, Evelyne saw it: recognition kindling in those hollow eyes. Then came the horror, spreading slowly across her pale face.
No. No, no, no.
“Get her out, Holden! Get them all out!” Evelyne shouted, desperation tearing through her voice.
It was the only command she managed before a clawed hand struck her across the mouth. The blow snapped her head sideways, and the sharp taste of copper flooded her tongue. Darkness blurred at the edges of her vision. The tunnel spun.
She forced her eyes open. She would not lose consciousness.
Not now. Not after hearing her voice.