Chapter 24 - Caleb
The evening brings a slight reprieve from the summer heat, keeping me feeling more grounded as I move along the north-west perimeter with deliberate strides.
The pine needles under my boots crack softly, and the breeze carries familiar scents of the pack, earth, and water running in the distance. Everything seems normal. Predictable, even.
But inside, nothing is. There’s nothing routine about the lingering ache in my chest and the burn of the fact I now carry.
Jack walks a few paces behind me, giving me room to think while the guys monitor within a relative proximity. Everyone knows by now that I’m one mild inconvenience away from snapping again, so they don’t push. Surprisingly, even Dominic has toned down his usual antics.
When I’m not myself, they all know it, and they’re also aware that it’s in their best interest not to make it worse.
Regardless of how the trees sway gently around us, which should be calming to me right now, my heart squeezes anyway at the echo of the fight I had with Lila. It’s still so raw, and the sound of her shaky voice strikes me again and again. She looked guilty, yes, but also beyond hurt. Vulnerable.
Astrid is my daughter, yet no matter how many times I say it in my mind, it’s just as surreal.
At this point, I’m not angry. I don’t even feel betrayed. I just feel the empty loss of those years I missed, and the years she grew without me knowing she existed.
That precious, bright little girl is mine, yet I wasn’t there for her until recently.
And Lila… she didn’t keep her from me out of spite. She hid her because I didn’t give her the safety and security she needed. At her confession, I crushed that fragile, irreplaceable thing between us.
I didn’t deserve to know it. I didn’t deserve anything but the distance between us.
After a while, Jack clears his throat from behind me. “You’ve been quiet.”
“I’m thinking.”
“You’ve been thinking a lot lately,” he adds dryly.
When I glare at him, he just shrugs and keeps walking. I don’t even have the mental energy to do anything more than that.
The truth of the matter is, I’m not angry that Astrid is mine. I’m angry that I failed both of them long before I knew the truth, and now I’m paying for it.
“Being a bonded mate isn’t exactly easy, as I’ve learned,” I mutter while we follow that unmarked path through the trees.
“I can just imagine.”
Ignoring him, I focus my strength on keeping my emotions under control. But even then, I can still hear the two of us in the kitchen, and I can see the way she didn’t fight back. She just took it, like she knew it was inevitable. Because it was.
Lila reacted like keeping Astrid from me was an unforgivable offence, and one we’d never come back from. She felt guilty, and to me, that spoke volumes.
It wasn’t something she wanted to do, but nothing had been in her favor back then. Nobody was there for her.
I certainly wasn’t.
I can hardly blame her for doing everything in her power to protect Astrid. I just wish it didn’t cost me that time with her.
But now, this is bigger than just the two of us.
I want to be her father. Not just an anomaly in her life, but a present one. A loving one. And I want Lila there too.
I just don’t know what it will take to get us back to that place.
Shaking it off, I continue, not wanting it to consume me.
Then the winds shift, carrying a scent that’s both familiar and offensive at the same time. I stop, nose turning up at it.
“What’s that smell?” Dominic asks from a distance, glancing around to make sure he isn’t the only one catching it.
It turns my stomach, but I shove it down and force myself to follow it. “Whatever it is, it can’t be good.”
“It’s coming from this way,” Zane shouts, waving us forward.
Holding back the urge to retch, we move towards the smell despite wanting to do the opposite, moving through the woods with deliberate steps.
Soon enough, I push through branches thick with needles, breaking into the clearing before stopping abruptly. My brows furrow.
“What the hell is this?”
The guys move in behind me, all pausing at the gruesome sight.
Laid out on the forest floor is a pile of animal carcasses stacked on one another, all at varying stages of decay. Flies buzz around them, landing on half-rotted hides while the summer heat has sped up the process.
Up close, the smell is even more pungent, making us cover our noses.
“Christ…” Luke mumbles, voice muffled by his arm. “What is this supposed to be?”
“Wolves were definitely here,” I murmur, taking a closer look at the deep gashes in the spoiled flesh.
“But why pile them like this?” Hunter questions, brows furrowed.
“Who knows,” I say, unable to shake the feeling of dread that creeps into my system. “But I have the feeling I know who did this.”
They all look at me, but they don’t need to ask.
Wraith Peak.
As we glance around, trying to come up with any kind of explanation, my muscles coil tight, and something else hits me hard. It’s immediate and sharp, like a streak of panic slicing through the bond.
Lila.
My pulse races in response, heart ramming against my ribs.
The connection has been strained over the last few days, and cold at best, but this is almost blinding in comparison. It crashes into me, then a moment later, it feels like static before it dims back to silence.
I stagger, using the nearest tree for support.
Lila?
The hopeful part of me expects her to answer, but there’s no echo of emotion. No sense at all. Just emptiness.
Someone grabs my arm. “Caleb?”
Blinking, I try to navigate that haze. Finally, I glance up to see Jack there, but it feels more like I’ve been shocked with a cattle prod.
“Lila… she’s—” Cutting myself off, that shock morphs into rage. “Something’s wrong.”
I don’t wait another moment.
Before saying anything, I’m running.
Branches whip past me, forest blurring while I push my legs as hard as they can go. My inner wolf snaps and snarls at the edges, prepared to come out at any moment, and I don’t suppress it.
The change overcomes me immediately, and soon enough, I’m running hard, seeing the woods around me through the eyes of a predator again.
The others follow without hesitation, and with that in mind, I focus on the path ahead. On the burning need to reach her before something happens.
On the way, I catch the scent of them before I see them. The Wraith Peak wolves run along the eastern border, slipping in and out of the trees while they move swiftly, but not urgently. They dart away, putting distance between themselves and the perimeter.
There are dozens of them, but I don’t chase them. Not when I don’t catch Lila’s scent with them. Instead, I growl at them, watching as they put as much room between them and us as possible.
It’s more like they’re waiting than in pursuit of anyone.
We run into some of my wolves as they circle the grounds, most shifted and snarling in warning for the others. They’re tense and uncertain, ready to fight but not yet engaged. They haven’t received any command from me yet.
Pushing on, I try the bond again, pushing harder to try and reach for anything. Any flicker of emotion will do, but I get nothing. Just a void, and a distant, almost muffled ache.
We close in, avoiding town and navigating through the woods behind my place. Here, the scents only intensify, enraging me further.
All the while, I catch the voices of my pack members through our pack link, all confused and alarmed about what’s going on. But they all talk at once, causing a garbled mess through the connection. For the time being, I block it out and press on.
The moment I reach the porch, my heart drops.
The door’s wide open, and the place reeks of other wolves, all unfamiliar.
Worst of all, strong fear signatures linger in the space, both from Lila and Astrid. It feels more like a physical strike, making my vision tunnel.
Normally, I’d scan room to room just to make sure, but even from within the doorway, I already know.
They’re gone.
Taken.
That word echoes in my mind, and before I know it, it’s slipping through the mental link, echoing in such a gut-wrenching way.
What is it?
What happened?
Lila. Astrid. My mate and my daughter, both gone.
Wraith Peak, I send out to the others, snarling as I back away from the house and glance around the trees for any sign of others. They took my family.
The others draw closer, looking to me for answers and guidance. At once, a mutual feeling of dread and anger surges through the pack-wide connection as my words settle in.
Their Luna has been taken, and regardless of how some of them might feel about her, that’s one of the greatest offences that can be made against a pack.
One punishable by death.
What’s the plan? Hunter asks, his form looming nearby along with the rest of the guys.
Lila’s scent is weak here, but I can sense it. I can follow it. I send down the connection as my blood burns far hotter than it ever has. We track the bastards back to Wraith Peak and find her. I don’t care what it takes; we’re getting her back. If either of them is harmed—
Rustling in the nearby bushes makes me pause, and at once, everyone looks toward the trees.
From every direction, they appear, stalking forward in their wolf forms. They bare their teeth, growling low as they surround us.
Even the sight of them sends me into a blinding rage, and it takes everything in me not to lash out immediately.
There are dozens of Wraith Peak wolves, all closing in like they have a reason to be here. Like they have any kind of advantage.
But with my mate and child gone, they don’t realise just how dead they already are.
I speak again through the link, in a cold, direct tone. If any wolf stands between you and recovering Lila and Astrid, kill it. Without hesitation.
At that, I turn, lunging for the closest Wraith Peak wolf, tearing into it before it even has the chance to fight back.
It’s immediate violence as my pack follows that order, and the guys do the same, not wasting any time backing me up.
But no matter how many of them come flooding in from the tree line, I don’t stop.
Not while they have my girls.