Chapter 24

24

HUNTER

It's been three fucking hours.

Three hours.

And still, no one knows where Emma is. No one has slept. The sun is just rising. My brother, Will, and I are going over every possible lead at the station. Her phone was dead, so we couldn't even track that.

My wolf lets out a loud whimper. To make this worse, I haven't felt anything from her side of the bond in hours. I haven't heard her voice. I can't fucking touch her. I whimper again. My brother shoots me a pitiful look.

I think about the scene I drove up to as my stomach turns and tears fill my eyes.

Jackson had Trevor out on the ground doing chest compressions. He was banged up pretty good but started healing and regaining consciousness. Someone hit them from the driver side, pushing his truck into a tree. Emma's side seemed untouched. Except the door was left open, her medical kit spilled out over the floor of the truck, and her cell phone was dead on the ground. The mud shows where someone attempted to drag her. Eventually, the tracks disappear into the tall grass.

The throbbing in my chest is debilitating. Trevor was our best lead; he says he didn't see anything and was out cold.

"Fuck." I bang my hands down on the table, pushing out of my chair.

Jackson asks, "What about the cams? Those guys you saw. Did you replace that cam with a live feed?"

Will's voice is soft because of the rush of blood in my ears, and I don't hear what he's saying.

Jackson slams both hands down on my shoulders, blocking my view, "Hunter, she fucking needs you to stay calm and think. Use all of those big instincts and try to connect with her. Stop fucking whimpering and pull your shit together. We are going to find her."

His words bring me back from the hell I was falling into. I say, "Will, replaced that cam by the Sawmill."

Will cuts in. "I'm already pulling up the feed from the last ten hours."

Jackson turns to me, "Hunter, maybe you should get some sleep. We can take shifts going through the film, even at two or three times the normal speed. This is going to take a while."

I’m shaking my head. "There's no fucking way I can sleep. Let's just work on this."

“Will pull up any footage from the time of the accident until now,” Jackson says.

Within minutes we have something, a black SUV drives past the cam and disappears into a section of the Sawmill. It is a part of the building where they used to load trucks. That area isn't safe, and the metal siding swinging from the building confirms it.

"That's our best lead. Let's head to the Sawmill?" Jackson straps his gun to his belt and slides a knife into his boot. He throws a bulletproof vest at me. "Let's hope these fuckers took your girl."

Will finishes for him, "Let's hope they didn't fucking touch his girl, or they are going to have to deal with three furious feral wolves."

Jackson calls the team of enforcers and our dad on the way to the Mill. “A team will meet us at the Sawmill while Dad stays back at the Lodge to protect everyone else.”

The pit of dread that has filled my stomach roars with anger—anger that someone would touch what was mine and take what was mine.

Never again.

My low growl fills the cab as we turn onto Sawmill Road. It's bumpy and muddy. A storm is building in the mountains, and the wind whistles through the trees.

I tried to feel Emma through the bond, but nothing had happened. Just as we park, pain floods my body. It's the most intense pain I've ever experienced. The sensation causes me to fall forward over my legs. "Oh, fuck!"

Will's voice is a concerned whisper. "What the fuck is this dude? What's happening?"

The ripping sensation pulses through me as I grit my teeth and try to form words. "The bond. Ahhh." I fall forward, grabbing my thighs, as my eyes shift. My wolf is ready to take this pain away. "She's being fucking tortured. I can feel it."

Jackson curses and says something about not shifting in his truck as he throws my door open. My wolf's instincts are too strong to deny, so I shift.

She's mine. She's close. I can smell her. My feet are eating up the space between us. The pull of her goodness and light is a beacon of hope we need. She's our sun illuminating our hell. I could feel his pain and her pain shredding us. Growling, I hear my brothers behind me.

The soft citrus smell is overwhelming—all of her innocence and goodness. Our body stops beside a large SUV, and I scratch the sides violently. I let the humans take over.

"Shit." My brother says as Will hands me my jeans and bulletproof vest that I left outside the vehicle. Emma's pain has relinquished, allowing me a moment to think.

“She’s here.” I say.

Will laughs. "Yeah, we can tell your wolf went ape shit on the car."

I turn to Jackson, needing him to take the lead, he says, "We are going in, and hopefully, the enforcers will show up before we have to kill anyone."

I nod, enjoying that I don't have to wait to get my Emma back.

We follow the clear trail leading into the decrepit building. The wind picks up, and a large panel crashes down behind us, clattering through the space, "Shit." Will whispers.

The unsettling feeling that she's no longer in pain is a scary relief, one I don't want to think too long about as we follow Jackson down a set of stairs.

It's dark, but our eyes shift quickly, allowing us to see through the darkness. We descend the staircase, where light floods through a small window set in a large metal door. “A lab?” I say.

Jackson stops and looks at me as he unclips his gun. I nod at him, and Will and I pull our weapons out. Will drops to his knees and begins picking the lock. As I peek through the small window, the lights from the lab burn my eyes. It's white everywhere.

I glance down at my tanned chest and black vest, "We are going to stick out the minute we walk in this door."

A buzzer sounds at the end of the hall. Will has this door slightly cracked by now, ready for us to head in, but Jackson signals us to stop as we listen to the conversation from the men who just entered the long, sterile hallway.

My stomach drops as I hear their words. "Good news, she's actually pregnant by one of those beasts and is our best lead on replicating that shifter DNA we wanted. Sadly, the fetus isn't far enough along to perform the experiment. It'll be a few weeks before we can perform the Amniocentesis."

The other man's voice fills in. "How many weeks are we looking at? We need to find a way to keep her subdued but still help the fetus grow and deter those fucking beasts from coming to get her."

She's pregnant. My Emma and my baby are being held and hurt. Jackson's reflexes are so fast I don't even see him as he grabs me and puts me in a chokehold. I had started to shift. I was about to tear this place apart.

"Breathe. Breathe. We heard. You need to stay human. Emma…" he corrects himself, "They both need you." Those four words stop the shift.

Jackson releases my neck as the squad of enforcers comes down the stairwell. "Here's the plan…"