Chapter Nine
Logan
Logan reached the clearing just as the sun dipped behind the treetops, casting long shadows across the moss-covered ground. He paced the edge for a few minutes before sitting down on a rock, his eyes trained on the path where Willow had first appeared to him.
He checked his watch. Again.
She was late. Not by much, but enough for his nerves to start twitching.
He told himself she might’ve been delayed at work.
Maybe the healer had some sort of emergency, so she had needed Willow to stay longer.
But even those excuses began to ring hollow as darkness took hold, and the moon climbed higher into the sky.
She wasn’t coming.
Dread pooled low in Logan’s gut. The kind of dread that clawed at the back of his mind with memories of blood and betrayal.
Of death. He stood, every muscle going rigid, and lifted his nose to the air, but he couldn’t detect her scent.
Acting on instinct, he stripped quickly out of his clothes and let the shift to his wolf form take over him.
All too soon he was shaking out his fur and lifting his nose to the air. He had better senses in his wolf form.
Her scent was faint, but it was there, and Logan followed it along the path. The scent was fresh enough to confirm that Willow had been in the area that evening. But why had she left? Did she think Logan wasn’t coming…or had something else happened?
He moved faster. A few yards further and her scent grew stronger, but now another scent was layered over hers. Male. Not just one. Several.
Logan’s heart slammed against his ribs and it was all he could do to stop his wolf from throwing his head back and howling out his fear and anguish to the moon. He pushed at his wolf to get him to all the shift back into human again, but the beast wouldn’t cooperate. It wanted blood.
Destroy our rivals. Protect mate, it snarled.
We will. But we can’t do it in this form.
Reluctantly, the wolf released its hold on him, leaving Logan kneeling in the dirt and fallen leaves, scanning the ground to try to make sense of what had happened.
It was evident that there’d been some sort of a scuffle.
His stomach turned to stone.
“No,” he muttered, his mind grasping what his wolf had instinctively known. “No, no—”
Willow had been taken.
A hot surge of panic threatened to rise, but he shoved it down. Now wasn’t the time to lose control. Now was the time to move.
He ran back along the path to where he had undressed, paying little attention to the sharp rocks that dug into his bare feet. When he reached his clothes, he pulled them on then took out his phone, and hit the speed dial for Max.
It rang only once before Max picked up the call.
“Logan?” Max’s voice was sharp. Alert. “What’s up?”
“She’s gone,” Logan said, shoving his feet into his boots. “Willow’s been taken. I need backup. Now.”
Boots laced up, Logan’s moved quickly back along the path to where the scuffle had taken place, his phone pressed tight to his ear.
“She’s gone,” he repeated. “They took her, Max. I found her trail. There were signs of a struggle.”
Max swore under his breath. “You’re not going to like this, but I just got off the phone with Toby. There’s been movement near one of those old buildings we’ve been watching. The abandoned building near the ridge.”
Logan froze. “When?”
“Thirty minutes ago. Toby and Carter were running recon when they saw three wolves bring someone inside. A woman.”
Logan’s blood turned molten lava. “It’s her.”
“Logan—”
“It’s her,” he said again, firmer this time. “Tell the team to gear up. Full assault. We go in fast and quiet.”
There was a pause on the line. “Done,” Max said, voice all steel.
Logan hated the crack in his voice when he next spoke. “I have to get her back,” he said. “I can’t lose her too.”
“You’re not losing anyone on my watch,” Max said.
Logan nodded, even though his friend couldn’t see it. “I hope you’re right,” he said hoarsely.
“Damn straight I am.”
Finally, Logan exhaled, the sound more growl than sigh. “I’ll meet you at the ridge.”
“Already moving,” Max said.
The line went dead.
Logan slipped the phone back into his pocket, then took off into the dark.
A short while later, he crested the ridge without slowing, breath steady, his body locked in lethal focus.
His team was already assembled. Max crouched behind a cluster of rocks, Carter and Toby were posted in the tree line directly opposite the old stone building, Arlo and Seb had circled around to the other side of the building, and Ezra had charged ahead as usual.
The crazy bastard was standing right outside the building’s main entrance, just behind the door.
Max stood as Logan approached. “You ready for this?”
Logan nodded. “Do you know where they’re holding her?”
Toby gestured to a narrow window in the side wall. “Room just behind that window. We’ve counted nine enforcers in total, and Derek is in there too, he was talking to Willow when we last looked in,” Toby said, and then added almost as an afterthought. “If it’s her.”
Logan’s gaze locked on the window. His muscles coiled tight, ready to spring. “It’s her,” he said.
He was about to move, but something stopped him. A memory. For a heartbeat, the woods around him melted away and he was seventeen again. His father’s blood stained the front steps of their home and Derek stood over his body, his face blank.
Logan’s mother’s scream echoed in Logan’s ears right before Derek had turned the gun on her and shot her too.
Logan had been helpless then, beaten half to death and weak and he’d run.
It had been the only thing he’d known how to do.
Not this time. This time he would stand his ground and fight.
He wasn’t leaving that building until Derek had taken his last breath.
Logan might have considered bringing Derek to justice so that he could have spent the rest of his life rotting in prison, but that door had closed to him the minute he’d taken Willow. Death was his only option now.
Logan moved low and silent to the side of the building that Toby had indicated, and he peered through the dirty glass of the high window. His breath caught and bile clawed its way up in his throat.
Willow was slumped in a heap on the floor, her wrists bound. One eye was nearly swollen shut, a fresh bruise marring the soft skin of her cheek. Her lip was split and her shirt was ripped.
Logan saw red. His vision tunneled and his pulse pounded like war drums in his ears. His wolf pressed at the edge of his control, snarling to be let loose.
Save mate! Kill Derek!
He would.
Logan stepped back from the window, jaw clenched tight.
“This ends now.”