Chapter 26

Jaxson

It’s nearing a week without a sign from my mate. My wolf is ready to bite off anyone’s head who tries to tell me to stop looking for her. I have patrols sent out in droves at all hours of the night, every hour during the day, and I refuse to let it stop until she is found. I pace the ballroom, my father talking to his advisers, his beta, and Philip brought his daughter Stella.

Stella is Aurora’s age, a year away from feeling the mating pull, but that never stopped her from having feelings for me in the past. I hate to admit that I used to entertain the idea if we never found our mates but now that I have, I’ve kept a purposefully long distance away from her. I don’t have it in me to talk to her now, moving away when she approaches to speak with me.

I wave her away and she abides, nervously braiding her long, brown hair. She moves back to her father’s side, beta Phillip speaking to my father in hushed tones for my benefit even though I make no effort to listen to a thing they say.

Unless someone comes with the news that she is found, I don’t want to hear it.

“Sire,” a warrior hums, barging into the ballroom that has been set up like a war-room. He holds a small box in his hands, the scent hitting me instantly, before he even has time to hand it off to my father.

I grab for the box, uncaring as I rip into the cardboard, a small note placed in the box while a trinket of some kind bounces out. Stella reaches for the crystal I see has fallen to the floor, holding up a small, silver opal necklace. My wolf tenses at the sight. I take the necklace into my palm, my father grabbing for the paper note in my hands.

She had been wearing the opal necklace I gave her on one of her first nights here. I wanted to make her feel welcomed, feel loved by the mating pull, and I didn’t even notice her wearing it.

My father clears his throat, holding up the note to the light that pours in from the courtyard. “I’m growing impatient. She is growing weak. If you want her suffering to end then you will step down from your title and hand it to me or there will be a war.”

I growl a noise so loud that it echoes in the large ballroom.

“Son,” my father gusts, his face tired and concerned, same as mine, as he and I haven’t slept, so much as ate, since she was taken from me. He holds out the note and I grip the necklace in my palm, taking the letter with wide eyes. “The ink,” he points out.

I swallow my anger, seeing the red ink disgrace the paper, pulling it to my nose before I crumble it up and throw it aside. “Her blood,” I breathe, my voice no longer my own. “He used her damn blood.”

“We have to figure something out, and soon,” Philip says. “He will try to rush the palace if we don’t find him. He will try to take it by force.”

“He will die,” I snapped back, showing my teeth. “Like he should have after the first time he attacked my Luna.”

My father looks aside.

I hope he feels guilty, as he should.

But I have just as much to blame. I should have never entertained Luke and his antics the night of her birthday. I just wanted her to have one good night to remember for her birthday and instead Xander has wounded her at both attempts. It would have never happened if I kept my temper under control.

I will work on that later, but my anger is all that keeps me going currently.

“I will go out there myself,” I snarl, gripping the necklace so tight it may shatter.

I’ll buy her a new jewel when she is back in my arms, I’ll get her anything she needs, whatever it is, and I will never deny her anything in life once I get her back. Even if that means she gets to see her old friends, even the one I hate the most, I don’t care. It doesn’t pale in comparison to how badly I need her in my arms.

He rushes into the ballroom now, taking shifts with my warriors while searching for Aurora on the ground while we’ve stayed behind bunkering down in case we would receive information leading to capture my excuse of a brother.

“We’ve done it,” Luke says, huffing each breath while he tries to button up his pants. He must have recently shifted back. “Tracked the asshole who dropped off the correspondence back up the side of the mountains. He is held up in a cabin and from what the warriors and I have seen, it looks like there are more than one defects of your guards staying in there.”

“Any sign of her?” I inquire.

“Not for sure,” he huffs. “But it’s the best lead we have so far. I say we surround the place, rush into it, and see if we can get any of them to talk about where she is.”

“Let’s go,” I growl, marching out of the ballroom.

My father stops me. “You are exhausted, son, you shouldn’t even shift in this state. You haven’t slept or eaten in days.”

I yank myself away from him, my eyes burning holes through the mind link. “I wouldn’t have to be this way if you got rid of Xander the first time. He has my mate and is doing unspeakable things to her right now. If you don’t let me go, and one more horrific thing happens to her, I’ll personally hold you responsible.”

He holds his hands up in surrender. “Fine. Go.”

I don’t wait for his permission.

Luke and I shift out in the tunnel in front of the palace and race into the town, toward the cabin he had mentioned, and I won’t stop until I get there. Not until I have her in my arms.

Luke leads the way up into the mountains, a place we have searched tirelessly every day since she ran. It’s the same range that attaches to her old pack lands, but it’s far too vast to explore in a few days. I know for fact there are peaks we haven’t attempted to climb, to search, merely because it’s so incredibly large that it would take months to comb over each one.

My warriors are following closely, a group of at least twenty following Luke and into the mountains, up a peak and down another, repeating the process until the sun is down and all that is left is a brightly lit cabin in the middle of nowhere, a small stack of smoke filling up into the night sky.

Luke shifts, hunkered down a few hundred paces away from the cabin, just close enough to where our scent won’t travel to the occupied house. I notice a few familiar faces in the cabin from afar, all of them old trainees from the royal guard, close confidants of the second prince.

The sight makes me furious.

“Spread out,” I mumble to my warriors, my crew still in wolf form. “Stay far enough away to not be sensed until everyone is in formation. At my call, charge in. Do not touch my mate under any circumstance. If anyone gets in the way, kill them. I only need one to give me information if she isn’t inside.”

They all agree and move out to surround the cabin, Luke and I left to watch the ex-warriors meander inside the house. I picture any one of them harming Aurora, even touching her the slightest, and it makes my body tremble with ferocity.

I have to get her back. I will get her back. I don’t care who I have to kill to make that happen, either, just so much as long as they suffer for what they have done.

“We will get her back,” Luke mumbles, staring at the cabin in the distance. “Just focus on that, nothing else. Not even dismembering Xander. Focus on her.”

I lower my gaze, feeling my eyesight turn bright red in hue. “I will do both,” I say, sure of my words. “She will come home to me, unharmed, and I will rip him limb from limb, mainly so I never have to deal with this again. I know she is in that house,” I say, not even confident of that claim but needing to say it out loud, needing it to be real. “She is in there waiting for me to storm through the house and get her back.”

“Exactly,” Luke says, nodding with my claims, even if they will probably end up false. “We just have to be smart, fast, and above all, we have to work together.”

I want to scoff at his offer, but he is right, we have been at least docile with each other's presence. I know Aurora would smile if she were here to see us in such proximity, without fear of us biting at one another to wound. I hold back a smile, refusing to grin until I find my mate.

Let’s go, I send through the link.