The blade bit again, and Lena’s panic slammed into me like a fist.Her heart racing.Her breath coming fast.The frantic rhythm of prey fleeing a predator.
Her voice along our connection, not words exactly but emotion shaped like my name.Confusion.Wrongness.Dawning horror.The taste of her fear flooded my mouth, sharper than the blood running down my chest.
Raphael.
My head snapped up.“Wait?—”
Max pressed the blade deeper, starting the final line of whatever symbol he was carving.But the physical pain was nothing.A distant echo.Because the bond was screaming now, flooding with terror so pure and overwhelming that my vision went white.
Terror.Pure, consuming terror.
My wolf exploded against my control.I wrenched free of Konstantin’s grip with strength I shouldn’t have had, heard his grunt of surprise, heard Max’s blade clatter to the concrete as I spun away.My eyes blazed amber, claws punched through my fingertips, the bones in my face trying to shift.Lena was screaming across our connection.Not words.Just raw, primal fear flooding every cell of my body.Her terror became my terror, her panic my panic, until I couldn’t tell where she ended and I began.
“Raphael.”Max’s voice cut through the chaos, sharp and commanding.“Control yourself.”
I couldn’t breathe.I couldn’t think.Her terror was everywhere, inside me, around me, drowning me in wave after wave of primal fear.My mate was in danger.My mate was terrified.My mate was fighting and losing and calling for me and I was here, forty-five minutes away, being punished for loving her.
Mate.Danger.Go.Now.
The bond went silent.
Not gradually.Not fading.One second her fear was a hurricane tearing through my soul, and the next there was nothing.Emptiness.A void where she had been.Like someone had reached into my chest and torn out the warmth that lived there.
“No.”The word ripped out of me, barely human.“No, no, no?—”
I reached for her, reached with everything I had, but the mating link returned only silence.Cold, terrible silence where her presence should have been.
“You’re in the middle of your punishment.”Max’s voice was ice.“Stand down.”
I was already moving toward the door, toward my car, toward her.
Viktor stepped into my path.His eyes were wide, worried, his scent laced with fear he couldn’t hide.“Rafa.Think about what you’re doing.”
“She’s gone.”The words came out broken, savage.“Through the bond.I felt her terror and then nothing.She’s gone, Viktor.Someone took her.”
“You don’t know?—”
“I know.”I shoved past him, not caring that blood was running down my chest from Max’s half-finished mark, not caring that I was half-shifted with claws and glowing eyes, not caring that the Pakhan was watching with murder in his expression.“My mate is in danger.Nothing else matters.”
“If you walk out that door,” Max said quietly, “you will never walk back in.You understand what that means, Vor?Not exile.Not disgrace.”He let the words hang in the cold air.“A price on your head.Yours and hers.Every wolf in the bratva hunting you both until you’re dead.”
I turned to face him.My Alpha.The man who had saved me from the streets when I was eighteen and starving.The man who had given me purpose, made me what I was, taught me to control the monster inside me.The man who had ordered me to kill my mate or marry her.Who had given me those two options and nothing else.
I had chosen marriage because it was the only way to save her life.
Now I was choosing her again.Choosing death, if that’s what it cost.
“Then so be it.”
“Rafa.”Viktor’s voice cracked.He hadn’t moved from my path, but he wasn’t trying to stop me anymore.His eyes darted between me and Max, and I could smell the war in him, loyalty to his Alpha raging against loyalty to his brother.“Max, he’s not thinking clearly.The bond?—”
“Stay out of this, Viktor.”Max’s voice was a whip crack.“Unless you want to join him.”
Viktor flinched but didn’t back down.Behind him, I saw Dmitri shift his weight, his hand moving toward the knife at his belt.Not threatening me.Threatening the enforcers who might try to stop me.The pack was fracturing in real time, loyalties splitting down the middle, and Max saw it too.His eyes narrowed, calculating the cost of stopping me against the cost of letting me go.
I didn’t wait for his calculation to finish.
I walked out into the fading daylight without looking back.Every step was a step toward a death sentence.Every step was a step toward her.