Chapter 104

Dane… I wish… I snapped my head to the side. The voice was soft, barely more than a strand of spiderweb floating on a breeze. It sounded like Aurora, and it came with a feeling of fear.

I shook myself. She had no wolf. Our mate bond had been severed for years. She wasn’t even in my pack. There was no way I could hear her.

I went back to searching the woods. We were in one of the deepest, oldest places in the woods, a place that felt… off. Strange. I didn’t like to come here, but I had to search this place.

Remington said the Reeds wanted my blood. Even though Waylon had denied it, my grandfather had mentioned it, too. And Aurora. Whatever it was needed for, this was the place it would have to be spilled, because this was the place the relic was supposed to be. Just a patch of woods at the bottom of a ravine with one, huge standing stone right at its center.

I looked up at the stone. It was about five feet wide and maybe twice as tall as me. It seemed normal until you got close. That’s when you noticed two bands of symbols ringing the stone. They were about the height of my eyes, only two or three inches apart. I stared too long; they started to move and twist. Just like the writing in Aurora’s book.

I was in human form, but my ears were partially shifted, pricked for any sound. Another reason my wolves generally avoided this place was because it attracted strange things—creatures even wolves liked to avoid. We were near the edge of Broken Forest land. According to Trajan, Evander DeVere was still over there. When Trajan woke, I’d want a full report on what the other wolf had found.

Meanwhile, I had other contacts—people in law enforcement who were searching every traffic and security camera for a hundred miles around. So far, they had nothing. Which was why I was still here, and here in particular. If whoever took my children was going to do something with them, and that something had to do with the things Aurora and I had gotten into these last months, they would need to bring them here. It all connected back to this place.

Suddenly, fear blazed through the pack bond. “Alpha,” came the panicked voice of one of the younger pack warriors. “Luna—heir DeVere—is missing!”

I staggered. The breath felt like it had been knocked from my chest. What? “I… she said she was just going to the bathroom. But she didn’t come back, and now she’s gone… and so are the wolves from Fall Line.”

I couldn’t breathe. My parents. My grandfather. Piper. My children. Aurora. “No,” I whispered.

“There’s something else, Alpha,” came another wolf’s voice. This was one of the women who worked in the pack offices, monitoring news and communicating with the other packs. “We’ve just heard from Cave Springs and two of the packs down south. They’re all reporting attacks by shadow monsters.”

I growled and made myself absorb the news. Aurora was missing, and whatever we had done to wake up these monsters, they were no longer contained. Our secret was about to be out.

Chapter 104

Aurora

I woke in a dark room. Candles flickered all around. I lay on something hard and raised. The room smelled like a cave, all age and damp stone.

I moaned. Then I caught movement at the corner of my eye. Holden appeared. He was shirtless. His skin was gold in the flickering candlelight. Under different circumstances, he might have taken my breath away. The way the light caught on the muscled planes of his chest, arms, and abdomen could have made an artist weep.

I moaned and tried to turn my head to see where I was. I had a feeling, wherever it was, I was deep underground. It wasn’t a natural cave, exactly. The walls were smooth, and so was the floor. But it looked like it had all been carved out of black stone.

Holden looked down at me. There was no smile on his face. “It didn’t have to be like this,” he said. “You should have just agreed to be mine.”

“Are you ready?” he asked.

I turned my head. A hooded figure moved out of the shadows near one of the walls. As they approached, the air around me got the crackling feeling of magic.

“Yes,” said the figure. Its voice was low, in that way that sounded like it could be either masculine or feminine. “Do you have what you need?”

“Yes,” Holden held up his hand. In it, he held a silver ribbon.

My stomach dropped like a stone. I recognized that ribbon. It was the same kind that was used in mating ceremonies.

Holden leaned down and started to wind the ribbon around his wrist and mine together. “Once we’re bound, I’m going to hide this ribbon in a place you’ll never find it,” he said. “You may have cut your bond with Dane Montague, but I will make sure you can never escape me.”