Chapter 9 Grayson
I glance from the map to the dense treeline. This is the spot they dumped Andrea. I can scent her, barely. Tire impressions cut through the dirt, wide tracks from a van just like Andrea said they’d be.
“Got blood,” Orion calls out, snapping a twig from a bush. He sniffs it. “Andrea’s.” Below us lies a ditch, maybe ten feet deep, filled with tangled branches. Orion kicks a coil of silver chains—heavy enough to restrain me, much less someone like Andrea.
Eli surveys the scene beside me, his gaze moving from Orion in the ditch to the empty road stretching away.
“This access road connects to the highway. He probably veered off here to get rid of her, then back onto the main road. Border crossing is easy here, mostly locals who know each other, daily commuters. Andrea said he was driving a work van. He could have cast a spell to make Mona unseen, or simply convinced the guards to wave him across without inspection. Wouldn’t take much to fool humans. ”
Eli’s pragmatism is appreciated. Cuts through the fog in my head. Though he’s still pissed at me for punching Kellen, his mate, this morning. Not because Kellen didn’t deserve it, but because the poor bastard was already beating himself up worse than I ever could.
As an enforcer, Kellen’s job was to protect Mona—he never should have left her side, even for a moment.
Yes, the witches are at fault, but that didn’t stop me from ripping into him for failing his duty.
Kellen begged to join the search party today, but I couldn’t even look at his face. Without a trail, he’d just be a distraction. Every time a wave of rage hits me, fear for my mate, Kellen would become my target. Eli agreed when I told him to just stay the fuck home.
Kendrick wanted to be here, too, but Lily, his new mate, woke up after being unconscious for days.
Besides, he can’t help us find what isn’t here.
There’s no trail to follow, just Andrea’s scent leading back to our territory.
Now we’re left staring at maps, trying to guess where in the fucking Canadian wilderness they might be holding her.
Kendrick isn’t sitting idle either. Mona is his long-lost daughter, after all.
He’s calling in favors from clans across the continent.
The problem is, most of the clans over the border are small.
The larger ones, who could cover more ground, are much further north, near the Arctic.
My gut says the witches wouldn’t drag her that far north.
I don’t know what Deidre’s plan is, but I feel like taking Mona is only phase two. Phase one would have been Silas. I wish I knew what the fuck phase three is.
This all feels so useless.
Guesses, maps, theories. But I can’t sit at home and just wait.
“Alright, we know they were here,” Orion says, snatching the map from my hands. The compound we destroyed is further west, a few days’ drive. If Mona was coming from the east, they’d likely have met halfway. It narrows down our search.
Not by much, but it’s something.
“Too many people in the city. They’d have stuck to the suburbs or a more rural area,” Orion mutters to himself.
“Great. Now we’ll just sift through the few thousand of those—”
“Gray, you aren’t fucking helping.”
“They have my mate!” I shout angrily up to the sky. I take a deep breath, though it does nothing to calm me. “They could be doing anything to her—”
“You think I don’t fucking know that!” he screams back in my face.
I let out a roar, and it rumbles up from my chest. It rattles my bones. Letting it out into the open air doesn’t help. Birds flee trees, animals scatter.
I take a deep breath as my alpha pulls me back. “Okay. Let’s look,” I bite back, cracking my neck like I’m gearing up for a fight. In a way, I am. After she’s home, safe, locked in a bubble for her protection, I’m unleashing unholy fucking hell on the witches.
For now, I tuck it in.
Orion nods. Eli, stoic, looks between us, then attempts to keep us focused. “Why don’t we split up? Over the border, there are four major routes. I think we can skip Nova Scotia—if anything, they went north or west. The next closest coven is Chicago, right? She’d have wanted back-up.”
We weigh the possibilities, quickly eliminating the coast. I rule against us splitting up.
It might be more efficient time-wise, but I’m a strategist. We’re wolves, we move fast. But when we find her, there will be witches to fight, and we’ll need all three of us then, because I’m not leaving a single one alive.
Both Orion and Eli nod in agreement, then we map out our trek northwest first.
The sun is setting, marking another day without her. Crickets sing loudly, echoing between the trees, mocking me.
Mona’s face lit up the first time she heard crickets, confusing them with cicadas.
I bluntly corrected her, but she just laughed at me, probably called me an asshole or something, delighted as we sat on the balcony over the bluff and just…
listened. Having lived her entire life in the city, I loved watching her eyes light up, like everything in Silent Peak was a gift.
My heart wrenches, but I swallow down the worry and climb into Eli’s sleek black SUV. It’s much faster and more efficient than my old, janky ass truck. The tires spit gravel and the forest blurs past as we accelerate toward the highway.