Chapter 24
Iwas lost, floating again in the endless black where I couldn’t see or touch or hear or breathe.
What was my wolf doing?
Had he jumped?
Was he hurting her?
I fell into my safe place, where my mate waited for me.
I found her sharp eyes, her soft skin, her sunshine scent.
I tried to follow it, to hold onto it and use it to pull myself out like I had before, but she felt wrong.
The image I’d made of her in my mind, the one where she smiled and welcomed me, cracked and fell to pieces around me.
She’d thrown herself to her death rather than be with me.
Any version of her smiling at me was a lie. A useless lie.
I writhed, soundlessly screaming in frustration as I fought to be free. My heart thudded in my chest as panic took over. This was it. I’d been swallowed whole by the beast and I was never getting out.
I wanted to let my mind go. I was so tired of fighting to stay sane…but I couldn’t. She needed me. Even if she’d rather die than look at me, she needed me. Even if she was already dead…I screamed again, long and silent. She couldn’t be. I couldn’t allow it.
I whimpered, the sound choking in my throat. Fear prickled up my spine. Helpless, hopelessly floating, I tried to find my anchor. I tried desperately to hold onto myself.
Kole. My name is Kole. I’m twenty eight years old.
I broke my arm cliff diving when I was twelve.
My parents are Jonah and Dinah. My siblings are Kara, Kallum, and Konnor.
I’m the Alpha of the Maclay Pack. My mate is Iona Murphy.
She has blue eyes. She hates porridge and dresses. She loves her camera…
Her camera. Her pictures. My floating mind remembered the Iona Murphy slideshow on my laptop.
The one made up of every picture I could find taken by her.
I’d never been to Africa, but her images transported me there.
I wanted to hear about her adventures. I wanted her to tell me stories as we went to bed.
I wanted to watch her work. I wanted her to photograph me.
The world through her eyes was an incredible place.
I closed my eyes and watched the slideshow of her work in my memory. That was real. It held me in place, but the desperation remained. I had to get back to her.
Let me out.
Let me out.
Please, let me out.
Please.
Time ceased to mean anything. Minutes, hours, days…I had no idea, but the longer I stayed the more certain I grew that she was dead. My chest split down the middle. If I was real I would cry, but I wasn’t real, not anymore. I was a ghost, sightless and wordless. Empty but for her.
If she was gone, I had killed her. I had pushed her to that place, to that edge.
It was an insane truth.
I killed my mate.
If she was gone, let me stay here. There was nothing left for me out there anymore.
I woke on cold stone, the sound of water rushing in my ears.
I could smell my brother and I forced my eyes open to see his grey wolf watching me from a distance. I shifted, grunting with effort as my bones rearranged themselves. Once a smooth process over in seconds, now it was taking longer and longer. It was getting harder to come back.
Yet I was back…how?
“Iona…” My voice was broken, but the sensation was heaven after being stuck as mute.
As soon as Konnor saw I was back to myself, he followed suit, shifting into his skin. “You’ve been gone for a few hours. I sent Jake and Jardis after her.”
“She’s alive,” I gasped and he nodded.
“She must be.” Of course. If she’d been gone, I never would have come back.
Konnor looked exhausted, the last sibling holding it together. Kallum could be dead, Kara was gone, our parents were broken, and his brother and Alpha was a half-mad wolf whose Luna was on the run.
“We piled on you after you shifted and I broke your neck to take you down. I’m sorry, it was the only way to?—”
“You did the right thing.” If I’d jumped I could have died too and then it wouldn’t have mattered if she’d lived or not. With me dead, the Gulfs would have killed her sooner or later.
My wolf snarled in my ear, angry that I’d caged him once again.
I tried to soothe him, to remind him that we’d been a team once, but he was a pissed off animal pacing in his pen.
My hands shook with the effort of keeping him in and I gritted my teeth, focusing on her, her hair, her scent, her pulse…
I pushed to my knees, drained but determined to push on. “We have to catch up to them.”
“Don’t take my head off, but I don’t think you should shift right now.” My brother sat on a rock a careful distance away, watching my every move.
What must he think of me?
Humiliation burned bright, that I, Alpha, needed a minute to catch my breath when my mate could be dying. But I had to be smart. I’d gotten out of that limbo twice now. I might not make it a third time.
“Besides, Siobhan called while you were out.” He lifted the phone in its plastic case.
Jake must have given it to him before they took off after Iona.
“They found the fucker that hurt your mate. He was unconscious so they couldn’t get anything out of him.
” My wolf crawled under my skin, writhing like a snake to be let loose.
“They took him back to the pack and they’re on their way to us now. We should wait for them to catch up.”
That was good ? seven of us searching for her would be better than four ? but I knew that wasn’t the only reason he wanted to wait for them. He didn’t want to be alone with me.
“Fine. We wait.”
I stood, walking to the cliff edge where my mate had chosen death rather than me. The breeze was crisp but it didn’t bother my heated skin. My nakedness didn’t bother me either. It was an unavoidable element of our lives.
I looked down at the water. When I was eight, I’d fallen in rapids much like these.
I’d only made it out when my father’s wolf dove in after me and dragged me out by the scruff of my neck, before dumping me on the bank and leaving me to find my own way home, my punishment for not being more careful.
The panic as I struggled for air, the shock of ice water on my skin…it had haunted me for months. I wondered if she’d been scared, if she’d panicked and fought for air like I had.
I wanted her in my arms. I wanted to check her body for harm, and warm her skin with my own. She was alive but she could be hurt, lying on an embankment with a head wound, broken bones. She could be fighting off a wild animal. I imagined her freezing, shaking in wet clothes, afraid and alone.
Guilt weighed heavy, so dense it suffocated me.
I hadn’t known she was so desperate. I knew she was angry but I thought she’d adjust, the Elders assured me…I felt like a fool. Fooled by them, fooled by my wolf, fooled by my own ego. Had I been blind or had she been too good at hiding how terrified she truly was?
It didn’t matter now. What mattered was finding her, not just for my sake but for hers.
She would die out here. This part of Yellowstone was as wild as it could be.
It was rare to come across a ranger, rarer still to come across tourists.
She had no food, no way of catching it. This river would give her water but the rapids sped her downstream into bear country.
Not the Gulf bears, the giant ones that she’d wanted to photograph, but still, an average size grizzly could kill her without much trouble.
I had to find her, before something else did.
Maybe she wanted me to. If she was hurt, maybe she would let me take care of her. Maybe she was hiding somewhere, injured and hoping I would come.
My father had said a human Luna was either a blessing or a curse. Their love wasn’t automatic like a wolf mate, it had to be earned. That was the price paid for the fertility brought to a pack.
How did you make someone fall in love with you?
I had no idea. I was a wolf, not a human.
She should have responded to me, my dominance, my touch.
She should have softened as I’d fed her, found comfort in my scent, but instead she’d grown colder.
I’d thought it was working when she’d asked about having a party, but it had just been a lie.
She’d fooled me and mine into thinking she was coming around.
Konnor hovered, his energy thrumming with tension. He was afraid of me, my wolf, and after what I’d done to Kallum, I couldn’t blame him.
“You can approach.”
He hesitated, but after a moment, he came, pressing his shoulder to mine. My wolf hummed at the contact. Very little soothed him these days. Just her. Sometimes my family.
“I’m sorry about Kallum,” I whispered.
“Don’t.” He clenched his jaw. “Kallum has been looking for a way out for years, but he’s not dead yet. We’d know if he was.”
My world was so broken. I thought of my parents, grieving Kallum, grieving me, grieving Kara.
My sister…
Had the Beta caught up to her yet? The thought of her submitting to Alpha Carson turned my stomach.
His Luna, Alma, would hate her, and the Gulf females would never accept a Maclay as their Beta’s mate.
She would be ostracised. My heart hurt for her, but my wolf wanted her blood.
He wanted to tear her throat out the same way we’d thought the Beta had. I’d never seen a marking so brutal.
Brutal.
The same way I would have to mark Iona. Was I any better than him? I’d imagined the ceremony a million times. Would she accept me by then? Would she fight me? If she fought me, my wolf would hurt her. Should I tie her down? My mother had suggested a sedative but I couldn’t…I wouldn’t.
The thought of that ceremony sickened me but what choice did I have? I didn’t have time to keep my wolf or the Gulfs at bay long enough to make her fall in love with me. Was trying to save my family so wrong? No, it wasn’t. But hurting her was.
My mind was weary but I held in the sigh, refusing to let my brother hear it.