2. Sloane
Sloane
The tires spit gravel behind me as I take the drive too fast, the house shrinking in the rearview until the trees swallow it whole.
Garrett’s voice stays in my head anyway, polished and poisonous, telling me Callie asked for time, telling me she chose distance, telling me every word like I’m supposed to accept a story that doesn’t have her heartbeat in it.
My hands are locked around the wheel so hard the leather creaks under my palms, and the place in my chest where the bond used to live is a cold, cauterized wound that keeps trying to open.
I call her before I hit the main road. The line rings once, then drops to voicemail, and the sound of her recorded greeting nearly takes me off the road because her voice is still soft there.
Warm. Alive. “You’ve reached Calliope. I can’t get to the phone right now, but leave a message and I’ll call you back as soon as I can.
” The beep sounds, and my throat closes around everything I need to say.
I hang up because if I leave a message, it’ll come out as a scream.
I call again. One ring. Voicemail. Again.
One ring. Voicemail. Again, because the part of me that’s bonded to her doesn’t understand phones or privacy or campus schedules.
It only understands that a moment ago there was terror.
A flash of it came through the bond before she cut me off, sharp enough to make my teeth ache, cold enough to turn my blood to ice.
Callie was terrified, and then she was gone.
People don’t choose distance with fear like that ripping through them.
My baby doesn’t close a bond while terrified unless something has her cornered.
“Answer me,” I say into the empty car, hitting call again even though I already know what I’m going to hear.
My voice comes out too low, ruined at the edges.
“Come on, Callie. Baby, where are you? Pick up. Let me hear you. Let me know where you are, and I’ll come get you.
I don’t care what happened. I don’t care what he said. Just answer me.”
Voicemail again.
I nearly throw the phone against the passenger window. My arm jerks with it, rage blazing up so fast it blinds me for half a second, but I force my hand back down because this phone is the only line I still have to her, even if the line keeps turning into a wall.
I send a text instead, thumbs punching too hard against the screen while the car eats the road beneath me.
Callie, talk to me. I felt you. I felt you get scared before the bond closed. Whatever Garrett told you, whatever happened, call me. I’m coming.
Idris calls when I’m twenty minutes out from the sister campus. His name lights up the screen, and for one brutal second I hate him for not being hers, then hate myself for even having the thought. I hit accept and put him on speaker because my hands are shaking too badly to hold the phone.
“Sloane,” Idris says, and his voice is too controlled. It’s the kind of control that means he’s holding something back with both hands. “Where are you?”
“Halfway to campus.” I take the next turn so hard the back end of the car shifts under me. “She’s not answering. Every call goes to voicemail after one ring. She’s not reading texts, or they’re not getting through, or someone’s got her phone. I don’t know yet.”
“Theo’s asking for her,” Idris says, and something in me tears wider.
There’s movement behind his voice, a low murmur I think might be Dr. Mercer, then the soft rustle of blankets.
“He’s wrapped up on the sofa in the library.
Mercer doesn’t want him back in the sunroom until his vitals hold for another hour.
He’s awake, but he’s shaking every time Garrett speaks. ”
My vision narrows on the road. “Don’t leave him alone with Garrett.”
“I’m not.” Idris' voice lowers, and I can hear the danger under it now. “Garrett tried to come into the library with tea. Theo asked him not to. Garrett didn’t like that.”
A sound comes out of me before I can stop it.
It fills the car, low and animal, and the speedometer climbs because my foot presses harder before my brain catches up.
“He did something to her. He went to campus to help her, and now she’s gone.
Theo’s heat crashed. The bond shut. Callie isn’t answering.
Garrett came home with a ready-made explanation and that fucking message on my phone like he’d been waiting to hand it to me. ”
“I know,” Idris says. “Get to campus. Find the last place she was seen. Don’t put your hands on anyone, Sloane.”
“I’m not promising that.”
“You’re going to promise it because if you look like a feral bonded Alpha threatening university staff, they’ll lock every door before you get through the first question.
Garrett’s story will get stronger if you give them the shape of it.
” Idris pauses, and when he speaks again, something rough enters his voice.
“I need you to find her, and you can’t do that from a holding cell. ”
I suck in a breath through my teeth and force my hand to loosen on the wheel before I snap something inside the steering column.
“She was scared, Idris.” My voice breaks in the middle of her fear.
“I felt it. I felt terror. It hit me and then she cut me out.” A growl pulls from my throat.
“I should’ve gone with her this morning.
” The sentence rips out of me before I can bury it.
“I should’ve driven her. I should’ve told Garrett to stay the fuck away from her.
I knew she was quiet. I knew something was wrong, and I let the house pull me back to Theo, to the heat, to the logistics.
I let her walk into that campus with Garrett circling her, and now I can’t feel her. ”
“Sloane, listen to me.” Idris’ voice sharpens, the command held back but present enough to cut through the panic. “Blame later. Move now.”
I swallow hard enough to hurt. “Keep Theo with you.”
“I will. Call me the second you have anything.”
The call ends, and the silence that follows feels hostile.
I call Callie again anyway. One ring. Voicemail.
Her voice fills the car, and I slam my palm against the wheel because I can’t get to the real woman behind it.
“Baby, please,” I say when the beep sounds this time, because I can’t hang up again without giving her something in case the messages are getting through.
“It’s me. I’m on my way to the campus. I felt you, Callie.
I felt you before it closed. Whatever happened, whatever you think happened, hold on.
Don’t believe anything until I’m in front of you.
Don’t let him make you think I wouldn’t come. I’m coming.”
I leave the phone open until it cuts me off.
The sister campus looks too pretty when I pull in.
Red-brick buildings, clean sidewalks, banners moving in the wind like nothing has happened here that should leave a permanent mark.
Students cross the quad with backpacks and coffees, laughing under the flat afternoon sky, and I want to scream at every one of them that Callie was here.
Callie walked through this place with her portfolio and her hopeful eyes and her careful bravery, and somewhere between the interview and the house, someone put fear in her so deep she shut down the bond to survive it.
I park badly near the administrative building and don’t care.
My hands shake when I shove the door open.
I catch my reflection in the glass before I go inside, and it’s bad enough to stop me for half a breath.
Bloodshot eyes, jaw clenched, shirt wrinkled, hair torn up from my own hands.
I look like the exact Alpha Idris warned me not to be, the kind official people step away from, not toward.
I make myself breathe once. It doesn’t calm me. It only keeps me from breaking the door when I open it.
The woman at the front desk looks up with a professional smile that dies before it reaches her eyes.
She’s a Beta, maybe mid-fifties, silver hair twisted into a knot, glasses hanging from a chain.
Her gaze drops to my hands, then to the door behind me, then back to my face.
I know what she reads from me before I speak: bonded Alpha, barely leashed, too close to losing control.
“I’m looking for Calliope Monroe,” I say, and my voice comes out too rough. I drag it back with effort. “She had an interview here today. Literature and Ethics. I need to speak with her.”
The woman’s fingers hover over her keyboard without touching it. “Can I have your name?”
“Sloane Rivera. I’m her bonded Alpha.”
Everything in her face changes while barely moving. It’s a closing. A professional, practiced closing that makes my pulse hit like a hammer. She doesn’t look surprised. She looks prepared.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Rivera,” she says. “I can’t release information about a candidate or faculty applicant without authorization.”
“I don’t need her file. I need to know where she is.
” I grip the edge of the counter, then let go immediately when her eyes flick to my hands.
“Garrett Crane came here to help her with an issue. He returned to our home without her. Since then, she hasn’t answered a single call from me, my partner, or the Omega she was supposed to come home to. ”
“I understand that you’re concerned.”
“You don’t.” The words cut out of me before I can soften them, and the security guard near the elevator straightens. I see it. “She was scared. Something happened here. I need to know who saw her last.”
The woman’s expression tightens. “Mr. Rivera, this office can confirm Professor Monroe completed her scheduled appointment and left campus. I can’t provide anything further.”
“Left how?”
“I can’t provide anything further.”
“With Garrett?”
“I can’t provide anything further.”
“Was she alone?” My voice rises, and the guard takes one step away from the elevator. I turn toward him, anger slamming into the surface of my skin. “Don’t. I’m asking where my mate is because the man who claimed he helped her came home without her.”
“Sir,” the guard says, careful and flat, “you need to lower your voice.”
I look back at the desk because if I look at him too long, I’ll give Garrett exactly what he wants. “Pull the security tapes.”
The woman’s mouth thins. “Security footage can’t be released to private individuals.”
“I’m not asking for a copy. I’m asking you to check them. Look at the admin wing, the parking lot, wherever she was after the interview. Tell me if she walked out alone.”
“That request would need to go through campus security administration or law enforcement.”
“Then get them.”
“I can’t do that based on a walk-in request.”
The counter is between us, and it’s the only reason I still have somewhere to put my hands.
My body wants movement. It wants a door to break, a file to seize, a person to shake until the truth falls out.
My mind keeps throwing Callie at me in pieces: her scarf slipping off one shoulder this morning, the small smile she gave me when I told her she’d charm the committee, the way she looked back from the driveway like she was trying to memorize the house before she left it.
I should’ve gone with her. I should’ve put my body between her and every polished sentence Garrett had ready.
“She wouldn’t just leave,” I say, and I hate how close it comes to begging. “She wouldn’t leave Theo scared. She wouldn’t leave me with the bond closed. She wouldn’t send Garrett as a messenger.”
The woman softens for half a second. It’s worse than fear. Pity makes me feel like I’m already too late.
“Mr. Rivera,” she says, quieter now, “Professor Monroe left the campus. That’s all I’m able to tell you. If you believe she’s in danger, you need to contact the local police.”
“I believe she was put in danger here.”
“I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
The security guard comes closer. Not touching distance. Close enough to make the message official. I stare at the woman behind the desk and try to remember that she’s not the enemy. She’s just a person following a rule that might be protecting Callie from someone who looks exactly like me.
I step back.
It feels like ripping skin from bone.
I make it outside before the first sound breaks out of me.
It’s ugly, too low to be human, swallowed by the wind moving across the quad.
Students glance over and then away quickly.
Good. They should look away. If they look too long, they’ll see a man coming apart in public because the woman he loves has been turned into a privacy restriction and a closed bond.
I call her again from the walkway. Voicemail.
“Callie,” I say after the beep, walking fast because standing still makes me want to go back inside and tear the building apart.
“Campus says you left. They won’t tell me how.
They won’t tell me who you were with. Baby, I know something happened.
I know you didn’t choose this. Please, if you can hear these, send me anything.
One word. A location. A blank message. I’ll find you from that. I swear I will.”
The phone cuts me off.