The drive to the hotel should have taken forty-five minutes.I made it in twenty-three, running red lights, weaving through traffic, my wolf barely contained beneath my skin.My claws had shredded the leather of the steering wheel.Blood from Max’s unfinished mark ran down my chest in slow rivulets, the half-carved symbol still weeping where he hadn’t completed the final line.I didn’t feel any of it.
All I felt was absence.
Somewhere behind me, Max was probably already making calls.Putting out the word.A price on my head and hers, every wolf in the organization ordered to hunt us down.By morning, we would both be dead if any of them found us first.
I didn’t care.I would deal with the bratva after I found her.If I found her.
The bond was silent.Dead silent.Not the comfortable quiet of distance, when I could still sense her presence like a hearth fire in a distant room.This was different.This was the terrifying emptiness of nothing.As if someone had blown out the flame entirely.
Either she was unconscious or she was dead.And if she was dead, I would burn this city to ash and salt the earth where it had stood.I would tear through anyone who stood between me and the man who had taken her, and when I found him, I would make his death last for days.
She’s not dead.My wolf’s voice, certain and savage.We would know.The bond would break.It hasn’t broken.Just… quiet.She’s quiet.
He was right.The bond was still there, stretched thin and muted but present, a thread of connection where there should have been a river.She was alive, unconscious probably, drugged or knocked out, but alive.
For now.
I called Petrov.
He answered on the first ring, and the fear in his voice told me everything before he spoke a word.That particular note of dread that meant he was about to deliver news that would destroy me.
“Sir.We lost her.”
The world stopped.The car kept moving, the traffic kept flowing, but inside me everything went still and cold, frozen in the moment before impact.
“What do you mean you lost her?”
“Michael intercepted her in the service stairwell.Took her to the basement.The door locked from inside.”Petrov’s voice cracked.Professional, composed Petrov, whose voice never cracked, whose control never slipped.“By the time my team broke through… she was gone, sir.The room was empty.Michael’s car left the parking garage ten minutes ago.”
Michael.The general manager.The man who had been in that hotel every day for years.The man whose scent was so omnipresent I had dismissed it as part of the building itself, as unremarkable as the smell of cleaning products or coffee.The man I had watched, suspected, ordered surveilled.
The man who had been the stalker all along.Who had been hunting my mate while I hunted shadows.
“I ordered you to watch him.”My voice came out as a growl, barely intelligible through the partial shift.“I told you to keep him away from her.”
“He knew the building better than anyone.Every camera blind spot.Every back stairway and maintenance access.”Petrov paused, and I heard him swallow.“He knew we were watching and he slipped through anyway.I failed you, sir.I accept whatever punishment?—”
“Find him.”I ended the call before I said what I was thinking.Before I blamed him for my own failures.
Michael had taken her.Michael, who I had dismissed as a nuisance while I hunted for external threats.Michael, who had smiled at my wife and brought her coffee and offered to help with the wedding planning.Michael, who had pretended to be her friend, her trusted general manager, her right hand in running the hotel.
I had killed Joe.Beat him bloody in the basement of that same hotel, feeling righteous and satisfied.Believing I had eliminated the threat.Believing my mate was safe because I had destroyed the man stalking her.
I had killed the wrong man.
The realization hit me like Konstantin’s fists, sharp and brutal.Joe had been a patsy, a distraction.Michael had used him, manipulated him, pointed him at Lena like a weapon, and I had fallen for it completely.I had been so certain, so satisfied with my kill.
And the real monster had been watching the whole time.
My phone rang again, and Dmitri’s name flashed on the screen.
“I’m coming.”His voice was sharp, urgent, with that particular edge that meant he was ready for violence.“Viktor is handling Max.Where do I meet you?”
“The hotel.”
“She’s pack, Rafa.”Dmitri’s loyalty was simple, violent, absolute.The kind of loyalty that asked no questions and demanded no explanations.“We find her.”
The hotel lobby was chaos when I arrived.Staff scattered at the sight of me, their faces going pale as they registered the blood, the partial shift, the murder in my eyes.Someone screamed and someone else dropped a tray of glasses, but I didn’t slow down.