Chapter 25 - Soren
Aurela is missing.
When I woke up this morning, Aurela was still fast asleep, curled into the bed, the comforter pulled up tightly under her chin, a slight smile on her perfect lips.
At first, I remained in bed, just watching her breathe steadily, brushing the hair out of her face where it caught on her nose.
Every morning I wake up next to her feels like a dream, and it takes a while for me to remember that it’s really happening—after so long pining for her, wanting her, suffering over the fact that she would be marrying someone else, I finally have her. She’s mine, and I’m hers.
After spending far too long lying in bed, gazing at her and feeling like a lovesick fool, I took a deep, steadying breath and swung my legs over the side of the bed, feeling for the old slippers Gramps got me years ago.
As an alpha, I typically only need around four hours of sleep each night, unless I’m healing or have just done a big hunt.
As an omega, Aurela needs closer to eight or ten hours of sleep.
Many of the alpha-omega couples I know have to choose between going to bed together or waking up together, and I prefer going to bed at the same time.
Which means I’m up six hours before her most days.
So I forced myself up and to the bathroom, shaving, showering, being as quiet as I could. Yesterday, I took Aurela shopping, and now the shower doesn’t just have my soap but is lined with a collection of pink and purple bottles, things that smell like her when I pop them open, smell them.
I toweled off, ran a hand through my curls, sprayed them with curl solution. When I opened the door and walked back into our bedroom, she was gone. The bed empty, the comforter flat where her body had been just half an hour before.
Now, I walk quietly through the house, careful not to wake Gramps, trying to stuff down the panic in my head. I’m sure she must have woken up hungry or needed something from the living room. There has to be a good reason for her not being in bed.
But she’s not in the kitchen, not on the couch. And the deep-seated fear in my chest starts to rise with every passing moment I look for her and don’t see her.
Her scent starts to thin out, and I realize she’s gone. Not in our house at all.
“What’s going on?” Gramps asks, appearing in the doorway to his room with his cane, staring at me grumpily as he rubs at his eyes. “Why are you sneaking all around?”
As an older alpha, he usually sleeps a bit longer than me, his age requiring more rest.
“Nothing, Gramps,” I start to say breathlessly, but he speaks again.
“Don’t lie to me, Soren. What is going on?”
“She’s gone,” I breathe, standing up straight, meeting his eye.
He stares right back at me, and I don’t know if it’s just me, or if the question hangs in the air—did she leave? Did she choose to walk out of this house?
Maybe she changed her mind about everything with her parents. Maybe she woke up this morning, realized I was in the bathroom, and thought of it as the perfect chance to escape.
“Ow!” I duck away from Gramps when he swats at me with a rolled magazine, but he still manages to hit me over the head, my damp curls rolling over my forehead.
“What in the hells are you waiting for?” he asks, and I can tell from the look in his eye that he knows exactly what I was thinking, and his opinion is that I’m an idiot. “Go look for her!”
He’s right. Aurela wouldn’t leave without telling me.
And that knowledge makes my stomach fucking drop.
On my way out the door, I slide my phone from my pocket and dial Xeran. Partly because I really do need his help, and partly because I want to show him that I’m not planning on keeping things from him in the future.
I trust Aurela. I know that wherever she is, whatever is happening, she’s in trouble. And I trust Xeran to approach the situation with a clear head, with the knowledge that Tara has been able to lure her out before.
As the phone rings, I curse myself inwardly. I knew she would sleepwalk. I’ve seen her out in the woods with Tara before. I never should have left her alone, with a chance to get out of this house. We should have come up with something to keep her in bed. Tied her hands to the bedposts.
But deep down, I know that if Aurela wants to, she can get away with what she wants. If she can cast in her sleep, she could just make her departure silent, or hold me in place like she did the day Lach and I were fighting.
She’s that strong.
“Soren?” Xeran answers the phone like he’s already up, and I sigh in relief that I’m not taking even more sleep from my exhausted friend. “What is it?”
“Aurela is missing.”
It’s like those three words are enough to communicate everything, and Xeran makes a noise on the other end of the phone like he’s already standing up from the chair.
I don’t know what’s going to happen next—if there will be a fire like the last time she was drawn out into the woods. Maybe all this is silly, and she just went out for a coffee on her own. Maybe we’ll find her, and everyone will give me shit for overreacting.
But deep down, I know that isn’t true.
“We’ll look for her,” Xeran says. “Meet at the firehouse to get our gear. I’ll call the others.”
I don’t even have time to say okay before the line goes dead, but I’m fine with that. The only thing I care about right now is finding Aurela, making sure she’s okay, and bringing her home safely.
***
“Valerie is gone,” Lachlan says, bursting through the door to the firehouse, looking rabid, his eyes skipping between the four of us.
He’s been through this before.
“As are Maeve and Phina,” Xeran says, and though his voice is calm, I can see him vibrating with a barely contained rage, shouldering the responsibility of being the leader and not just bursting out of this building, looking for his mate. “It seems this involves all of them.”
“Fuck,” Lach mutters under his breath before stomping to his cubby, grabbing his gear, and hastily pulling it on.
“We’ll follow the bonds,” Xeran says, already in his gear and turning to address the rest of us, who are already geared up.
Felix came into the firehouse a lot like how Lach did. Kalen is the only one of us without a mate in this game, but he looks just as serious, listening intently.
One of the women missing is his luna and his sister-in-law, after all.
“Ready,” Lachlan says, slamming the door to his cubby shut.
After that, we’re a blaze of motion, hopping into the engine, turning on the lights, the sirens. We’ll drive the engine toward the edge of the town, in the direction of the girls, so it’s at the ready if there’s a fire that nears the city line.
We’re quiet in the engine, each of us consumed with his own fear, adrenaline, panic.
When we get to the parking lot of the old motel, we pile out, leaving the engine as close to the edge of town as we possibly can.
Shifting would be faster, but we need to have access to our packs, especially the extinguisher on our backs, so we move together on foot, hiking up through the trees.
Each of us—save for Kalen—can feel the tug, the pull toward our mates and partners. They’re all together, like we knew they would be.
That night years ago, when the fires first started, is finally coming full circle. The moon hangs heavy over the sky, casting faint pearly streaks through the clouds and smoke. Ultra-fine, silvery ash floats through the air, twinkling and twirling around us like we’re in a snow globe.
For years, this ash has blanketed Silverville, hovering over us, suffocating us, and not for the first time, I feel a certain rage at the affront.
At the fact that no matter how hard we’ve fought, how diligently we’ve rolled out of bed and fought the fires night after night, they just continue to rage.
As if the gods have been testing us and finding us unworthy.
“This way,” Felix says quietly, not cracking his normal banter and jokes.
We turn slightly and shift with him, all agreeing silently that this is the right path to the girls, our mates, our partners.
Since the first fire, Xeran has hired even more guys. In fact, Felix is the head of a second squad now. But for something like this, a mission this important, he’s with us.
And it’s just the five of us. Just like it was on our little firefighting squad back in high school, before Xeran left and Declan took over. Before everything went completely to shit.
Normally, we’d be talking, laughing, trading a few jokes as we made our way to a fire. But it’s like after all these years, we’ve finally hit our limit. Finally, let the little spark of joy die out inside of us.
We just trudge along silently yet quickly, each of us in our own thoughts. Our hands linger near our nozzles, our eyes scanning the horizon for any sign of where the daemon fire is, where it will be moving next. If we’ll even be able to predict its path before it’s upon us.
This is not the first time something like this has happened—not even close.
It’s like the town has been plagued with this kind of frantic, middle-of-the-night searching from the moment that first fire started.
The consistent burning puts pressure on everything, everyone.
Makes the bad guys a little bolder. Makes it harder for good, upstanding shifters to make it through the day.
And, as we run through the trees, growing nearer and nearer to the scent of the daemon fire, the smoke getting thicker around us, I have an absolute certainty that it all ends tonight.
One way or another.