Page 163

Despite everything ripping through me, my jaw tightens.

"Every last one who touched her."

I turn to Rylan, who has pulled himself together enough to give orders to the warriors now gathering around us.

“Every available wolf,” he commands, his voice carrying across the clearing. “I want every tracker, every scout, every warrior who isn’t essential to border security searching for our Luna and Beta. Contact every allied pack. I don’t care what it takes or what it costs. Find them.”

The warriors scatter to carry out his orders. Rylan turns to me, and for a moment, the Alpha mask slips, revealing the raw terror beneath.

“We’re not losing them again, Darian.”

Again.

He doesn’t have to explain. I know enough of Rylan’s first life to understand what that word carries, just as he knows what it means for me.

“No,” I say. “We’re bringing them home.”

Our mates.

Rylan's eyes flash as his Lycan pushes close to the surface, and my own wolf answers with a growl.

Our females. Our family.

We stand together in the blood soaked clearing, surrounded by the sixteen rogues my mate killed to protect our Luna. Four surviving abductors. Two missing mates. Evidence of powerful magic.

And absolutely no idea where to begin looking.

41

Arlene’s POV

Iwake to the smell of damp earth and rust, and my body knows before my mind does.

No.

Not here.

My eyes open to a concrete ceiling, water stained and cracked, and every cell in my body screams because I remember this ceiling. I remember staring at these cracks while Darian and I were prisoners here for three years. I remember these cells even longer than that. Four years of opening these doors and helping wolves escape whenever I could.

My wolf.

I reach for her immediately, desperately, and find almost nothing.

The connection is there, barely, a thread so thin I can barely feel it. She's alive. Somewhere far beneath the surface, she's alive. But she's weak. The poison from that dart is still working through me, keeping her buried somewhere I can barely reach, and the terror that tears through me is so old it feels like it's always lived in my bones.

Not again.

I won't lose her again.

I force myself to breathe. In. Out. The way Darian taught me in that first timeline when the panic would swallow me whole. In. Out. My wolf is still there. She's weak, but she's there. I cling to the thread of her presence and refuse to let go.

"Stay with me." No answer. “Please."

A faint pulse. Nothing more. Relief loosens something in my chest. She's there. Weak, buried beneath whatever was in that dart, but there. Darian. I close my eyes and reach for the mate bond. It's still there, warm and solid beneath everything else. Intact. He's alive. He knows I'm alive. But there's nothing coming through it.

"Can we mindlink Darian?"

Silence stretches so long that I think she doesn't have the strength to answer. Then her voice reaches me, faint and broken.