Chapter 19 - Mark

I came back from the mansion in even worse spirits than when I had walked into it a couple of hours earlier. Several of the wolves from both sides had gone to the designated clearing to see if they could ambush Lorelei. But by the time they’d arrived, some sort of barrier prevented them from getting any closer. Declan had described it as trying to force two repelling magnets together.

The situation didn’t sit right with me, though. Why would we have been blocked if Inara had labeled that area as the meeting place? Jameson’s suggestion was that she had created something that only Lorelei could go through to prevent exactly what we had been trying to do.

Well, if Inara had been expecting Lorelei, she had another thing coming.

I hadn’t told the others what I had done, only that Lorelei was safe. A small twinge of guilt had lodged inside me, but I kept telling myself it was for the best. I couldn’t let her go out and hurt herself like that. Just the thought of her getting injured made my wolf snarl and bristle. He had no issue with what I had done. It meant she was safe. I had done the right thing. Or at least, that was what I had to keep telling myself.

Lorelei would understand. She had to. In the meantime, we’d figure out a plan to get everyone’s mates. There had to be some way of doing so. The twelve-hour meeting time had come and gone, and we’d received no word that the girls had been injured. I was certain Inara would have shown us if she had carried out her threat. That meant she was keeping the girls alive for the time being. I didn’t want to think about why that might be, but it gave us more time at least.

As I walked back to check on Lorelei, all of this information swam through my head. I didn’t know how she was going to react to my locking her up, but she had to be relieved the girls were still safe.

I knew something was wrong the instant I got to the front door.

It was too quiet. My wolf snarled, his hackles raising. He also sensed something was off. My fingers lengthened to claws as I pushed open the door. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, but that didn’t stop all my senses from screaming at me that something was off.

I ran down the steps, relaxing when I saw the door was still locked.

“Lorelei?” I asked, unlocking the door. “I’ve got news—”

I cut myself off as I pushed open the door and found nothing beyond it.

I tore through the living room, sprinting for the bedroom, praying that she was just sleeping and this had all been a huge misunderstanding.

Empty.

My wolf panicked, growling as we both tried to figure out what had happened. Then I saw the open window. My stomach lurched. Frantically, I sniffed the air. No scents but Lorelei’s. That should have been comforting, but all it meant was that she had run off on her own, which was arguably worse.

“Fuck,” I snarled. I didn’t have to guess to know what had happened.

I wanted to be furious with her, and I was. At the same time, I knew this was partly my fault. If I had listened to her, we might have been able to come up with a plan that kept her safe but involved. She wouldn’t have felt the need to run off on her own to solve the problem she saw as her fault.

I closed my eyes. Even if this was partly my fault, I couldn’t let that stop me. I could fix this. I knew where she was. But I couldn’t rush off on my own, even though my wolf wanted to run off right this moment to protect her. I needed backup.

Ignoring my wolf’s urge to go now, I pulled out my phone as I hurried upstairs to get the pack I always carried as a shifter.

“Lorelei’s missing,” I said as soon as Jameson picked up.

“What?” Jameson replied, then said something to someone further away from the phone. I had no doubt it was Declan. When his voice returned, he asked, “Did Inara take her?”

“I think she left on her own,” I explained, rummaging through the pack to make sure I had everything. I couldn’t find the hammer I had used to break enchantments, but I was fairly certain Jameson still had one, so I wasn’t going to waste time rummaging around for it.

“What?” Jameson repeated. “Why the hell would she do that?”

“Because she likes this place and the girls,” I said. “And I think it’s partly my fault.”

“What do you mean?”

I paused, even as I was taking off my clothes, preparing to shift the second I was off the phone.

“I kind of locked her in the house,” I admitted.

A long pause on the other side of the line. “Seriously?” Jameson asked, somewhere between exasperation and disbelief.

I closed my eyes. “Yeah.” I could have kicked myself. Maybe if I had just listened to her and her plan instead of deciding I knew what was best, she might still be here and safe. Or maybe we could have come up with a better plan that didn’t involve her running off on her own into danger. Instead, I had tried to control the situation and pushed her away in the process.

“Right,” Jameson said. “I’ll round up some of the others. We’ll meet at the rendezvous point. There’s a chance she’s still there since the twelve hours aren’t up.”

It was a feeble hope, but it was still hope at the very least. “I’ll meet you there.”

I hung up, stuffed my phone into my bag, and shifted. As soon as I had my pack situated, I raced out the door, running through the woods, hoping that I wasn’t too late.

As my paws pounded against the forest floor, my mind ran over everything I had done. Lorelei’s angry and betrayed face, the way she screamed when I locked the door, the look in her eyes when she told me she wanted to turn herself in. I should have listened. I should have tried to help. Maybe if I had done that, she would be safe right now.

Why had I become so controlling? What had it been about Lorelei that made me and my wolf want to protect her to that extreme?

Because I loved her.

The answer came so quickly that I came to an abrupt halt despite myself. The instant I thought it, the instant I realized it was the truth. I loved Lorelei. I might have fallen in love with her the second I had seen her again after all those years, or maybe I’d loved her since we were kids. Or maybe it was a slow, gradual thing, something my wolf understood on an instinctive level long before I’d figured it out.

I supposed it didn’t matter. I loved Lorelei. I loved everything about her. Her tenacity, her independence, her strong moral code, the fact she had been willing to help others even though she could have been justifiably selfish any number of times. I liked how blunt she was, and I liked the way she called me out on my bullshit. She was unlike any other woman I had ever met. I wanted her with me always, not just because my wolf wanted to protect her. I wanted to be with her because I loved her and her company.

And I realized that by protecting her the way I had, by taking her agency away, I had inadvertently driven her away. If I hadn’t tried to control her, if I had tried to help her instead of stopping her, maybe she wouldn’t be in Inara’s clutches right now.

All of this slamming into me at once only intensified the need to get to her as soon as possible. At the very least, I needed to tell her how I felt before it was too late. I pushed forward again.

Crashing sounds echoed all around me, and I sniffed the air as my paws continued to race across the earth. The smells of a dozen shifters filled my snout—the Silver Wolves and Declan’s crew. Soon, I caught them out of the corner of my eye as we formed into one group, all barreling toward the clearing Inara had indicated. We were close now.

As we neared, I caught a whiff of Lorelei’s scent, giving me a surge of hope. Maybe she was still there. Maybe we weren’t too late.

But when we got to the clearing, all we saw was an empty expanse. Lorelei’s scent lingered in the air, but the trail ended here. I shifted back to human, as did the others. “Any idea where they might have gone?” Oliver asked.

“If they portaled? No idea,” Tannen responded.

“Lorelei!” I yelled.

The only thing that answered was the caw of crows.

“Fuck,” I growled, running my fingers through my hair. My eyes swept the area, and my nostrils flared. But there was nothing but Lorelei’s too-stale scent. They were long gone.

“Maybe they took her to the rest of the girls,” Sam said. “If we can find out where she is, we’ll know where the others are.”

“Even if that’s true, we don’t know where that is,” I snapped, unable to keep my temper under control.

“Cool it,” Tannen growled. “You’re not the only one who has someone they’re worried about right now.”

“No shit,” I snarled back. “But right now, if we don’t get to Lorelei, then none of that is going to matter.”

A low growl rumbled in Tannen’s throat. His fingers lengthened to claws, and I could tell he was ready to jump at me the first chance he got. Honestly, I welcomed it. I wanted to attack something, anything .

Declan’s words pulled me back to reality. “Mark’s right. If we don’t get to Lorelei soon, Inara’s going to get exactly what she wants,” Declan said, coming to stand next to me. “And the girls and Lorelei will be as good as dead.”

“I’m very aware,” I snapped.

“Calm down. I’m siding with you,” Declan said. The calm in his words cut through some of my own spinning anxiety.

“We need to get to The Trove,” Jameson said. I could see the panic in his eyes, his worry over Georgia, but he kept his cool regardless. He turned to Declan. “Do you have any idea where it might be?”

“She said it was by her house,” Declan said. “If they aren’t there yet, they will be soon. I’ll bet if we get there, we can catch their scent and track them from there.”

“Great,” I said. “That’s useful, but only if we have a witch who can open a portal.”

Jameson frowned. “The witch on the side of town might have something. The one we bought the amulets from. She offered to sell us something that could form a portal as well, but it was too expensive. I think it was a knife.”

“Whatever the price is, I’ll pay it,” I growled. “Let’s get to her before it’s too late.”

Jameson gave a curt nod, already shifting back to a wolf. I was about to follow suit when a hand went to rest on my shoulder. I turned to see Declan.

“We’ll get her,” he said. “I promise.”