Chapter 150

Dane

I reached out through the pack bond and learned that Evander was in the infirmary again. After leaving the twins, Celia had gone there to look him over. Piper was there with them.

“I don’t understand,” she was saying. Evander sat on his bed being checked over. “You just…woke up?”

Evander nodded and looked away, as if he could hide from Piper’s soft gaze.

“Evander, we need to talk.” My voice was harsh, and I fought to get it under control.

“Yes, Alpha?” Evander was the kind of man who liked to flirt, who always had a laugh in his voice. This is what the pack had reported to me in the time he’d lived here.

Now, though, his voice was subdued. His lilac eyes were haunted. I didn’t blame him. His beating and near-murder at the hands of Broken Forest were etched in the scars on his face, a brutal reminder of their violence.

He wasn’t my pack, but I wondered what I would sense if he was. Were his wounds beyond the physical? Had his experience created a darkness within him?

Too many questions that I didn’t have time to answer right now. The sight of his scars reminded me that those same wolves had had my children.

I was now the Alpha of that pack. I cast my mind through them, searching for the wolves who’d beaten Trajan and imprisoned the kids. I saw their faces. I learned their names. But they were all wolves who’d left the pack with Esther Reed. They must have known I’d kill them.

I returned to the present.

“I have to go to Europe,” I said. “Aurora is there.” I raised a hand before he could say anything. “Don’t ask how I know. It’s complicated. I’m going to get her back. Have you heard of a place where…something dark might have a lair? An ancient place the wolves in that part of the world all know to avoid?”

Evander thought for a moment, his eyes distant and hazy. “Maybe. But nothing I can say for sure. You’d be better off to ask my father, Winston DeVere. He’s got an…eclectic set of interests. Magical history is one of them. If anyone would know, it’s him.”

I nodded. “Get me his number. I’m going to want to speak with him.”

Evander met my gaze, his eyes pained. “Aurora is family. Do what you can to bring her back.”

Aurora

The High Alpine pack house was a castle near the peak of a mountain in the Alps. The top was a ruin, all cold stone and decayed opulence. Below, underground, was the real pack house. Plush and warm and rich—one of the richest werewolf packs in the world.

I didn’t go down right away. Instead, I wandered the halls of cold, broken stone. I drifted, floated. Simply…was. My memories were distant and fogged. There was only my childhood—a time when I had been taught all the rituals and sacrifices I would need to serve the Nameless—and there was now. The moment where I would take all I had been raised—chosen—to claim.

The Nameless explained it all to me. My mother, Celeste, was one of the most beloved wolves the moon bitch had ever created. That meant when I was born, I was, too. A useless legacy if there ever was one. But my mother had fallen into the hands of people who knew better. The Reeds.

Something flashed in me at the thought—a hot strike of pain across my heart. Some almost-lost part of me crying, No! The Reeds are evil. This isn’t who I was meant to be! I’m not a pawn of the gods, I get to choose my own life!

Then my heart froze again, and the voice disappeared into the silence. I paused by a window. Outside, the mountains were covered in thick, deep snow and more silence. I loved silence. It made it easier to be the empty, drifting vessel the Nameless wanted me to be. A place his shadows could hide.

I lifted my hand in a twisting motion, and a wolf made of shadows rose from the ground. Behind it another, then another. I smiled as my shadow wolf army grew.

Because one memory did stand out. One of an old woman who told me I would be good enough—as soon as I had a wolf. Well, I had wolves now, thanks to the Nameless. I had dozens of wolves. Maybe hundreds. I hadn’t tried out my powers to their full extent yet, but soon I would.

When my army of wolves took up the top floor of the castle, I went to the hidden door that would lead down into the rest of the pack house. It was time for me to step up as Luna of the High Alpine pack. All I had to do was ignore the part inside me that kept weeping for Dane Montague and my children.

Aurora DeVere was dead… Wasn’t she?

I shuddered, unable to shake that last sliver of warm light that wouldn’t go. A kiss. A claim. You’re mine. The last goodness. The last hope.

Dane… that hateful part of me whispered, Please find me…