Chapter Twenty-Five
Rylan
I took off the chains binding my cousin to the wall, thankful that he hadn’t broken free, even though he could have easily done so.
“Now that the girls are gone,” I said, watching as Ledger rubbed his wrists, “is there anything I should know about?”
“Are you asking if I know what my mother is planning?” Ledger asked bluntly.
“Yes.”
“You’re in luck. I know part of the plan, but not all of it. Mother is particular about who knows what.”
“Has she always manipulated you?” I couldn’t help but ask. If so, it would explain everything.
“Yes, but only a little bit in the beginning. It got worse the older I grew. Then, when the Alpha Seeker escaped the Cage, she ramped it up to a whole other level. I remember feeling the intense urge to protect the Gala at all costs. I had to plan for every contingency. Looking back, it was strange, even for her, but then shit hit the fan and everything started to make sense. She needed to ensure another Alpha Seeker didn’t show up and ruin her plans to take full control.”
“Why did she send you and Alder?”
“If Alder failed, I was supposed to step in and finish the job. She knew you had the power to release wolves from her control after the Gala incident; she just didn’t know how.”
“So, Alder was a decoy, basically.”
“Basically.” He shrugged, and I hated how nonchalant he was.
“What was your plan after that?”
“Take you down. I was ordered to kill you if given the chance. I underestimated your abilities, especially in your partial-beast form. It takes energy and concentration to maintain that sort of shift, but you handled it just fine.” Ledger raised his eyebrows in question, but I bit my cheek, refusing to explain.
The truth was, I wasn’t entirely sure how I’d managed to maintain the partial form for so long, but I suspected it was because of my wolf. Both of us working together were able to hold our form while fighting, which, until then, was completely unheard of.
My wolf huffed his agreement. It hadn’t always been an easy road for us, but we’d pushed through. Now, we were here—alpha of our own pack and mated to the Alpha Seeker, which meant we would unite the packs.
‘One step at a time,’my wolf admonished in a gruff voice.
Speaking of the Alpha Seeker, I reached for Pearl through our bond and found it completely quiet. Had she fallen asleep that quickly? She’d only left a couple minutes ago, but maybe she’d been able to avoid Arden and go straight to bed.
I tried to shrug it off, but a nagging part of me was convinced that something wasn’t right.
“Everything okay?” Deacon asked, watching me intently. He was always good at reading my body language.
“It’s nothing. The bond with Pearl is just quiet.”
“Could she be asleep?”
“Yeah, it happened really fast…” I trailed off, reaching through the bond again and finding nothing there.
My wolf squirmed uneasily, also picking up on the strangeness.
“I need to go make sure she’s okay.” I thought we were ready, but maybe we should have stayed in our secret place for longer. I couldn’t be the alpha my pack needed if I was obsessing over my mate all the time.
The urge to see her and make sure she was all right grew with every passing second. I stormed to the door and wrenched it open, nearly ripping the whole thing off of its hinges. Taking a breath, I found my mate’s scent in the air, telling me she had walked through this area recently.
Heading down the path, I didn’t bother to see if Deacon or my cousin were following. I was sure they were.
Halfway between the cellar and the cabin, her scent disappeared. I backtracked, wondering if her and Estella had turned around to return, but there was no indication that they had changed direction.
Panic started to build in my chest, but the logical side of me was trying to think rationally. A scent trail didn’t just disappear into thin air without a reason.
A frustrated growl rumbled through my chest as I ran through every possibility. Pearl and Estella had definitely come this way, but now they were gone.
“Do you smell that?” I asked Deacon, who was standing to my right.
“Yeah,” he confirmed, his own frustration clear in his voice.
“Where’d they go?” Ledger murmured from my left side.
I called on my wolf sight and studied the grass. There were two distinct sets of footsteps. They continued for a couple more feet before they disappeared entirely. I backed up, retracing their steps again, praying that I was missing something. But I came to the same conclusion as before.
“We should go search the cabin just in case,” Deacon suggested, already making his way toward the building.
“Don’t bother.” Ledger stood off to the side, his hands outstretched. “They’re both gone.”
“Gone? Gone where?” Deacon demanded, but I could sense the answer.
“They’ve been taken.”
“What? How?”
“If I had to guess, I’d say it was the shadows.” Ledger waved his hand through the air, causing some sort of disturbance.
“What the fuck is that?” Deacon’s grip on his control was slipping.
“The darkness took them,” Ledger answered, moving his fingers in the lingering shadows. “The Shadow Wolf left this as a calling card. Somehow, he snatched the girls without leaving anything to trace.”
“Where would he take them?” My question was a growl full of unfiltered fury.
“My guess is to her.” His shoulders drooped in defeat.
“What could she possibly want with them?” Deacon growled; his tone was dangerous. If there was any doubt before, there wasn’t any now. Estella was Deacon’s mate, and the fact that she’d been taken was making him see red. Much like I was.
“Estella shouldn’t have survived. The fact that she did probably made mother curious, and Pearl… I think she took her to get to you.” Ledger looked me in the eye when he said the last part.
This was a direct attack on me. Somehow, she knew that Pearl and I had completed the mate bond. She also knew that her sister wasn’t dead, as she had once believed. This was Tamra’s second attack in a matter of days, which meant she was confident we weren’t a threat.
That wasn’t true though. I was an alpha now, and I would not roll over or abandon any of my pack members. Tamra was banking on that.
She was drawing me out and using the Shadow Wolf and my mate to do it, which was low, even for her. I wouldn’t let her get away with it. If she wanted a fight so badly, then I’d give her just that.