A rumble vibrates through the ground beneath me, shaking the building’s foundation, and along with it, my rage ignites. Embers crackle like kindle on my skin, it travels in jagged dark lines up my arms as flames erupt alongside them. My body grows and expands to make way for my hound.
Or one of them.
I grit my teeth, squeezing my eyes shut for a moment, and push back the shift before I destroy the entire building and everyone in it.
Not that me or the boys would die. Thanks to our mate, we are pretty much indestructible now.
I’d be lying if I hated the upgrade, but our abilities were not the only thing that grew. Our beasts also became… more.
More powerful. More dangerous. More fucking terrifying.
My hound always had two sides. One more vicious than the other, but this… new side, awakened from our bond, is more deadly than them both.
He wants our mate—the only thing we can agree on at the moment—but he also wants out, and even I fear what he will do when fully unleashed.
As if hearing me, a ripple of dark power seeps over me, the new beast inside wanting revenge and destruction for our lost mate.
Soon, I promise us both.
Soon, it agrees. It sounds more like a threat than a deal.
The dark power slowly retreats, releasing its grip on me and halting the near shift about to happen.
I pull back the rest of the shift bit by bit, until it’s completely back inside me, focusing only on the present and what we need to do to get Kiarra back.
What she needs is us focused, not running around destroying everything in our path. Burning the world down when she’s still out there isn’t the way to do it. At least… not yet.
The deteriorating building gradually slows its shaking. Dust and chunks of concrete fall around me before it comes to a halt.
What was once an old hotel is now nothing more than a barren construction site that sits on the edge of Manhattan.
Glancing around the silent crumbling building, I move to find the others.
A thunder-like whip shatters the silence, cracking what’s left of the walls around me. They rip and tear open.
Axel slams into the ground beside me, cracking the floor beneath us while leaving a large gap in the ceiling above from his landing. Ripples of scales slide over his skin, slowly retreating along with his wings, but his eyes tell the truth to his emotions.
He’s not in control. His dragon is trying to force its way to the front to take over.
We’re lost… again. Without our center, without our mate, we’re hanging on to whatever we can, trying in vain not to lose it and take out everyone and everything around us. Add heightened emotions and new powerful abilities, and you have one psycho group of alphas on the loose.
With Axel’s gold eyes now red-rimmed, I can tell it’s only going to get progressively worse if we don’t find our mate soon.
Until then, we need to stay focused.
We need her.
“Go. Before you take down what’s left of the building.”
We still need to find the traitor for lying to us. He won’t be getting off easy now that we know he betrayed us.
Axel growls out a warning, smoke seeping from his breath as he tries to intimidate me, but we both know who will be the first to yield, should it come to it.
I narrow my eyes on my brother, releasing a bit of my alpha power around us before he attempts something stupid, like trying to challenge me.
“Axel. You need to get a hold of yourself before you destroy what’s left of this building and those inside it.” My words have authority, a command, as I take advantage of my alpha power again to reach him before he becomes too lost in his rage and despair.
We’ve all been hanging on, barely holding it together as we wait and watch for the first one to snap.
Believing we were closer this time to finding her, only to have it ripped away from us, might be the thing that makes one or more of us break.
Axel steps forward, a look of challenge lighting up his eyes as he sizes me up.
“Who gives a fuck? It won’t kill us.” Axel’s voice grows deep, his dragon now completely in control. His eyes flash a deeper gold, the red bleeding into his irises, and he gives me a smirk that tells me he’s too far gone to care what happens. “They lied to us. They deserve the graves we dig them.”
Something we can agree on, but I’m not about to lose my brother because he’s a stubborn fool, nor am I about to throw away the opportunity to find out any further information about our missing mate.
That sleazeball knew something about Kiarra; I know it.
“Agreed, but we need them alive. For now,” I tell him. “Besides, if they lied to us, they deserve a much worse fate than a building falling on them.”
Axel takes another step closer, not hearing the truth or promise behind my words. Frustration builds inside me at his pushing, consuming all my senses. I usually avoid using more than small amounts of my alpha abilities on them, but the idiot needs to be taken down a notch.
I need him to get a hold of himself and snap out of it. More alpha power seeps out of me this time. It spreads out around us, hitting him like a swift punch to the chest.
He stumbles back a step, grunting at the impact. Squeezing his eyes shut, he shakes his head a couple of times before opening them. Still unfocused, he grapples with his dragon. A flicker of gold pulses, and his eyes turn hazel, then back again.
I watch him battle with his dragon, fighting it to take back control. Each of his conflicted emotions display across his face as he tries to subdue the beast.
“Come back to me, brother. We need you. She needs you.” I take a step closer, releasing the hold on my alpha abilities, knowing he’ll always come back to us, come back for her.
Family chosen never leaves one behind. We become their armor and shield until they can get up and fight again.
“Don’t let yourself get lost in the dark, not when you still have a light waiting to guide you home.”
After a tense moment, the deep gold recedes, flickering once before clearing completely. We both let a harsh breath out, grateful that he isn’t lost to us. At least, not this time.
Axel gives me a look of apology before glancing around, a frown on his face as he speaks. “She’s not here. That son of a bitch lied to us.”
We should’ve known better than to trust that slimy underling, Garath. He gave us what we thought to be the closest thing to a lead. The only reason any of us even gave the slimeball a chance was the pull from the bond between us and Kiarra, telling us he was on to something.
Garath had overheard one of the bear shifters talk about a secret meet-up with one of King’s associates. A secret project that had a special type of cargo needing to be moved with discretion. He followed up by telling us he saw a girl who was similar to Kiarra’s description and knew the location where they were supposed to meet.
The same location the pull also pointed us to. But it wouldn’t be the first time we followed the bond, only to find nothing. It made us think we were going crazy.
Our bond with Kiarra allows us to sense her location, but only to an extent. The location itself could be the whole of Manhattan, but it won’t grow stronger until we are close enough to her. Every time we think we are close, feeling the bond slightly stronger, she is ripped from us completely and we have to start our search all over again.
It’s possible that King is able to manipulate it somehow. That, or he’s three steps ahead of us each time and pulls her out from under us before we even make it to where she is.
Either way, we are going around in circles, getting nowhere. Trusting Garath for even a moment made us all foolish, but none of us cared if there was the possibility that it ended with Kiarra back home with us, where she belongs.
The meeting was supposedly taking place right under our noses, on the edge of Manhattan. Another huge red flag, as King wasn’t naïve enough to try something so close to us. But with doubts creeping in from lack of sleep and being constantly on the move, it made us question if his arrogance would try something this stupid to prove how powerful he thinks he is.
He knows we’re alive. He knows we’re on to him, and he’s toying with us.
We felt the pull of the bond. But just like every other time, once we got close enough, it grew distant, like she was moving farther away from us, disappearing completely out of our reach.
King knows we are coming for him. The bastard’s been moving her, but how he’s able to tell when we’re close is something none of us have figured out yet.
A few times, the bond has completely disappeared, ripping our hearts out along with it.
Just like when we arrived here a few minutes ago to wait out this so-called meeting. Minutes into our stakeout, we knew something was off. Especially when the bond cut off minutes later.
We all know what the absence of the bond could mean and had felt it multiple times over the last few days.
It means she’s gone, that she no longer exists. Not in this world or any other.
That monster is killing her, and if not for her ability, we would have lost her by now. Lost the very heart that keeps us whole.
The thought alone makes everything around me turn dull and gray. This world is no longer vivid and full of hope or happiness without her in it; instead, it is full of despair and darkness as it swallows me up.
When her bond disappears, time becomes stagnant. Each one of us no longer anchored to her. We fracture a little, becoming less whole. The longest few seconds blend into minutes, moving by in agonizing waves as we wait for the bond it to reattach once more.
Rubbing the spot over my heart, I take a deep breath, focusing on our bond and the slight pulse that’s been weakening every day since she was taken.
It’s been seven days since King showed up and took her. Seven days with only scraps of sleep and food to keep us going. Each of us is struggling to adapt to our new abilities and forms, while becoming more beasts than men the longer it takes to find her.
“Find Garath. I want to see the life seep slowly from his eyes when I rip the truth from his throat.”
Axel gives me a savage smirk, about to turn and find him when Rion appears from nowhere, splatters of fresh blood on his white shirt, his suit jacket destroyed and tore open.
“He’s gone.”
A tremor of rage works its way through my body, threatening another shift. Glancing at Axel, I see him in a similar state, trying to push back his dragon.
“That rat bastard.” Axel punches his fist into the wall beside him, smashing what’s left of it.
I stay quiet, my own rage a split second from trickling out and becoming another problem we could not afford.
“We need to stay focused,” Rion says, his basilisk voice sending a wave of calm around us.
“On what? She’s not here. Every time we think this is it, she slips right through our fucking fingers.” Axel thumps his chest. His dragon is not fully subdued, and his rage turns to anguish and despair.
“It’s getting weaker.” Axel’s words are broken, making me think he might be the first of us to break.
“We’ll find her.” I try to pacify him.
Rion yanks the shredded jacket off him and throws it to the ground, meticulously folding his sleeves as he attempts to rein in his own temper. Out of us all, Rion is the one who has always remained calm and collected even in the toughest of times, but the fine tremor in his hands and the distant look in his eyes tell me otherwise. This was pushing even his limits.
Kiarra.
A violent pang shoots through the right side of my chest. Where the hell is she now?
Seeing my family break in front of me snaps something inside me. We can’t go through this, not again. We barely made it through the first time.
I push back my own emotions, determination lighting my veins to keep my family together and find our lost mate. “He’ll get what’s coming to him. We need to find out where King has taken her now.”
Rion and Axel subconsciously rub the same spot in their chest.
“I can’t tell where she is anymore. It’s too faint.” Axel bows his head.
Rion swallows hard, staring off into the distance.
I reach for the bond and the pull, hoping to have better luck and get any lead in the direction we could go, but it’s like a limp rope loosening and fading off into nowhere.
Clearing my throat, I push back the panic and try to come up with another way. “Let’s stop and think for a minute. Where could he have taken her now?”
The bond has led us to a ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, a couple of islands around our cities, and a small town in New Jersey.
He’s picking places that are secluded, with no civilization around. But apart from where she’s been, no other secluded places exist near us. At least not on any map we’ve seen.
“What about The Cardinal Three?” Axel asks. “He might’ve taken her back there?”
I shake my head. “I have my contacts out, watching for anything unusual. It’s been on full lockdown since he took Kiarra. No visitors are allowed in or out. There’re swarms of shifters guarding the borders making sure no one leaves or enters.”
Rion frowns, giving me a look. One that tells me he’s worried. I know what he’s thinking, King leaving the Cardinal, but having an army guarding it, means he’s had something in the works before all this.
“He could be using portals?” Axel pushes.
It’s also something I thought of but crossed out as soon as one of my contacts came back with an update.
“Whatever invisible shield he had blocking the use of powers showing up is gone. My contacts have been monitoring it and can sense even the smallest of spikes of abilities across the entire cities. No portals have been used in the Cardinal Three since King took her.”
“How or where does someone like King get that kind of power in the first place? To be able to shield entire cities and block others sensing powers and then take it down like it’s nothing, with no one being the wiser?” Axel asks.
None of my contacts knew what King was or where his power came from, but I had a feeling we’d soon find out.
“I don’t know, but what I do know is that if he’s brought down that shield, his focus has shifted. He’s got other plans. Plans that involve Kiarra on a larger scale. We need to find them both before it’s too late.”
“We need to be smart about this. We’re getting nowhere with the way we’re going,” Rion tells me.
“What are you suggesting?”
King somehow knew we survived. Whether it was a hidden mole or betrayal, I don’t know… yet. But he also seems to be one step ahead of us, even with the help of the bond. Any time we think we’re close, she’s yanked out from under us.
As if a lightbulb turns on, the answer comes to me, making me feel like an idiot for not thinking of it sooner. It was right in front of us the whole time.
“Concealment spells.” Just like the one he was using to shield the Cardinal. He might have diverted the spell to conceal her location instead.
But he never took into account how powerful the bond would be, or our determination to get Kiarra back.
“Know anyone who can unblock them?” Axel asks us.
“I might. I’ll need to contact a few people, call in a favor or two,” Rion tells me.
I didn’t care if we had to call in every favor, every contact we had, if it meant getting her home to us.
“Do it. We’ll clean up this mess and follow you back.” Rion nods, silently slipping out before disappearing among the rubble.
I turn to Axel. “Where are Jax and Luka?”
A loud boom shakes the building. The floor beneath us cracks further, tearing open. We move out to the hall just as the entire room crumbles, leaving a large, open gap.
Axel shares a look, knowing damn well who caused it.
“Jax?” I ask.
Axel nods his head, agreeing. “The fucker thinks he’s immortal now.”
If we thought Jax was a handful before, he was ten times worse now, causing chaos whenever he felt like it. The boost in his abilities only added to his anger and pain, fueling and feeding it to wreak havoc across the city. No matter who or what was in the way.
“He isn’t wrong.” Axel shrugs. “It’s not like we can die.”
We make our way through the destroyed halls filled with shattered glass and equipment covered in concrete. What was once a five-story office building is now nothing but crumbling rubble.
I pay the destruction no mind, my focus on locating one of my idiot brothers.
“No, but it doesn’t mean we can push our limits, either. He doesn’t need to test just how far they go.”
I wasn’t losing another family member simply because he wanted to see how indestructible he was.
His way of dealing with Kiarra being gone was nothing more than an added distraction. One we didn’t need right now.
“Luka won’t let him go too far.” Another complication building like a silent storm. Luka wasn’t far off snapping himself, and with his shadow side gaining power, it only made things worse.
I rub the spot on my chest where our six threads rest, trying to ease the deep ache telling me something is wrong, that something is coming, and that we needed to be together. We need to find her soon, before it’s too late.
“Let’s go get him before he destroys any more of the city.”
