23. Two Mates in a Trap

23

Two Mates in a Trap

GLEN

I 'd thought the worst day of my life was the one where both my parents had almost died. I'd been wrong. This was the worst, and it felt as if it might turn out to be the longest.

"Tell me exactly what happened," Mom snapped, taking a corner in her Lotus, the one Dad had given her for their twenty-fifth mating anniversary.

"Turn here," I shouted, my eyes on the tracking app on her phone. The air filled with the scent of burned rubber, and I careened into the side of the door. Mom drove like she'd learned on a Formula One racetrack, but I didn't care if she rolled the damn car as long as she got me to Flor.

Brand had woken me up from my drunken sleep, shouting that Finn was chasing Flor. I described the scene to Mom as she drove through the pre-dawn gloom of the forest.

Screams roused me from a dream of running in my wolf form alongside Flor and my brothers. We were on our way to Southern, to save Luke.

Then Brand's voice from outside had me on my feet. "They took her!" I tumbled from my bed and was in the hallway just as he came racing past, wearing sweats and nothing else.

He yelled again, when he saw me. His breath heaved in and out of his lungs, those massive shoulders moving like he was barely suppressing his shift, his expression feral. "Glen, they took my mate. I fucking listened to her, and they took her."

"Took Flor?" I was suddenly stone-cold sober, grabbing his arm. I had to know who the enemy was. "Who would dare?"

"Traitors." He wrenched away, heading for the front door.

I sniffed the hallway, and my heart felt like a metal trap had closed around it. It reeked of chemicals and faint traces of blood. Flor's blood. The rest of the scents were jumbled together, just shifters who used this hallway often.

I ran to catch up with Brand. "Finn?"

"He woke me, calling out. He's not here; I heard his howls, moving away. He's tracking them." Brand grunted as he threw open the front door, scenting the air. "They took a car."

I felt the bands of pain around my heart loosen slightly. Finn may have acted like he wasn't as attracted to Flor as the rest of us, but I'd seen him watching her. Stalking her from the shadows.

A cry went up in the wing my father was in now, and I wondered if this night was about to get worse. But I didn't feel the dissolution of the Alpha bond, so Dad was still alive, at least. And he had Mom. Flor had no one.

Brand obviously had no time for whatever was happening there. He had shifted abruptly, leaving the torn fabric of his sweatpants on the floor.

His wolf was enraged and frantic, and I thought he might attack when I told him to wait. I thrust my phone into his enormous jaws. "Hold onto this. Finn might not be able to keep up, but you can find her through the mate bond. I'll track you this way, and bring reinforcements. We'll get her back," I vowed. Brand snarled and raced away, the phone in his jaws.

I almost ran into Mom on her way out of Dad's room. She was pulling on her fighting clothes, strapping her leather belt around her waist. The doctor was inside, and Dad was sitting up, more than alive. He was awake.

But there was no time to celebrate.

"Glen, what's happened? I heard Brand."

"Flor's gone. Taken."

Mom's eyes went wide, then narrowed. "What direction?"

"Brand's got my phone. We can follow the GPS," I told her as we raced toward the garage. "He's tracking her along their bond." I described the general direction he'd gone.

"He'll go straight to her, run straight into them. He'll be slaughtered," she murmured. I felt myself begin to change, needing to go to her, to Brand, to be there to protect them.

She'd said slaughtered. "More than one? Is it rogues?" I managed to ask with a mouth full of sharp teeth. "The rogue pack?"

Mom snarled. "Worse."

"Who?" I demanded, but Mom was barking out orders into her phone, calling Sergeant and then Patrick, putting the entire packlands on high alert as we raced for the car.

I'd been half-shifted, unable to drive and barely able to control my wolf's rage, so I hadn't argued when Mom slid into the driver's seat. It had been a solid half hour since we left the Lodge, and every mile we drove took us farther away from the packlands, deeper into rogue territory.

She hadn't answered my question when I'd asked it the first time, so I repeated it now. "Who? What could be worse than rogues working together, pulling this kind of thing off?"

"Magic. Your father's room reeked of it when I woke," Mom said quietly.

"Magic?" A shiver ran up my spine.

"Yes. I haven't smelled anything like it since the war. It filled the room. I think it kept me asleep while Flor was taken. Your father was trying to pull out his breathing tube when I woke. He's healed, almost entirely."

My heart leaped. "Dad's going to live? How?" The doctors had given up. Mom had all but given up.

"He is. I dreamed… I thought I dreamed that he was healed by the Alpha from the Borderlands. But it wasn't a dream."

Joaquin? "The black wolf? He took her?" He'd been sneaking around the borders of Northern, and we'd caught scent of him once or twice inside the packlands.

Had he been planning for this? Hunting her for weeks?

"It's the most likely explanation," Mom said. "He did claim her at Southern. He believes she's his mate."

The car went quiet, save for the engine's roar. Was it possible that Luke, Brand, and Joaquin were all her mates? And me as well? Could one young shifter truly have multiple mates? I shook away the thought, even though it came with an insidious thread of hope.

"The hallway smelled of blood and chemicals. It wasn't just magic, Mom. Someone turned off the alarms."

Mom's phone lit up in my hand. I accepted the call, and Mom spoke. "Sergeant?"

"Head Enforcer, we've secured the main Lodge. Everyone is safe and accounted for, except… your niece is missing."

"Vanessa?" Margarette gasped. "Taken?"

"No. A servant says she saw her dressed in black, waiting in a hallway near your son's room. Vanessa ordered the girl to return to her rooms, threatened her." Sergeant's voice dropped. "Vanessa's involved, Margarette. We believe she took the chloroform from the pack medical supplies as well."

Mom's jaw went hard. "She will be punished accordingly." She shared our location with Sergeant, who swore when he realized where we were.

His voice bristled with rage. "Working with rogues? How could she dishonor her mother like this?"

"I don't know," Mom answered at last. "But be watchful for anything suspicious. From outside the packlands, or within." Sergeant agreed and hung up.

I breathed deeply, trying to keep my wolf from emerging, and watched Brand's locator dot moving more slowly. "You think it's a conspiracy? That Vanessa, maybe others, are working with the rogues to take Flor? To weaken us somehow?"

"It would weaken us, to lose Flor," Mom said quietly. "She's your true mate, after all."

I closed my eyes, overcome by emotion. Somehow, hearing it out loud made it more real. Made it inescapably true. "She is."

Mom spoke again after a long moment. "There may be some conspiracy at work. There have been rumors about the rogue activity. They installed cameras in some of the trees on our hunting grounds."

I blinked. "That takes money. A lot of money." The type of cameras that didn't give off any hint of sound, even a tiny electronic whine, were prohibitively expensive.

"It does. And they've shown excellent strategy, with well-coordinated, small attacks."

"Testing us? Or preparing for something?"

"I don't know. It doesn't add up. I don't know that Vanessa's clever enough to have accomplished this on her own. With your father sick until tonight, there was unrest in the pack. It seems convenient that Vanessa chose this moment to do… well, whatever she's doing."

"Betraying the pack," I supplied.

She nodded. "The rogue presence at our western border doubled while we were at the Conclave. Sergeant informed me last night that they've been seen taking to the trees, apparently. We can't get good numbers, but he believes there are a lot more than we'd first suspected. Vanessa must have known, must have been in contact with them, since she headed straight toward them."

It seemed unthinkable. Then I thought about how Vanessa had looked when Mom stripped her of her rank. How Clara had mentioned something about Flor's "betrayal" of me.

"Mom, watch Clara as well." Her jaw clenched tighter. "She was pissed about Flor mating with Brand. Said she betrayed me."

"She did no such thing. We betrayed that girl." Mom's voice broke. "I did."

"And we'll save her now." I laid my hand over one of hers. "But you need to know, I'm not giving up. Even if I can never be with her in the way I want, even if it means abjuring Northern and leaving the packlands, I can't be without her."

"We won't have an Heir," Mom whispered.

"Patrick is more than worthy. And if Dad is truly healed, he'll have time to prepare."

"What if she doesn't…" She went silent, unable to speak the worst possibility aloud.

I was trembling now, my nails shifting into claws at the need to be with her. To save her. "She'll make it, Mom. If she doesn't… I'm not sure any of the packs will have Heirs."

Mom sucked in a breath, like she wanted to say something else, but then changed the subject. "Flor's the best fighter I've seen in decades, since my sister. She'll survive. I have a feeling that when we find her, she'll be the last one standing."

I agreed. "Finn's with her. Brand's on his way. All she has to do is make it until help arrives." I glanced in the rearview mirror. We'd left all the others far behind.

The cell phone pinged, and I peeked at the incoming message. One of the pack's drones had picked up movement in the woods a few miles west of the Lodge. Two vehicles, and at least a half-dozen occupants. I called it in, wondering just how deep Vanessa's betrayal ran.

"Sergeant?" I shared my suspicions with him.

"We're on it," he snapped out, then hung up.

When I glanced back at the phone, we were practically on top of Brand's GPS locator dot, though it was just a little behind us. There. An overgrown track veered into the woods.

"Mom, he's close," I urged. "Turn back. There's a gravel trail on the right." Mom did a quick U-turn and tore down the road, fishtailing wildly as we reached the gravel.

In minutes, we spotted the phone on the ground, next to an abandoned pack car. I jumped out of the Lotus before it even stopped, scenting the air, listening for any noise. After a long, breathless moment, I heard a soft, distant whine and ran into the woods, keeping an eye on the trees.

After a minute of running, I smelled wolves. Traces of Flor, Vanessa, and at least a dozen more, and… Oh shit. It was Finn.

And Brand.

Both of them were injured, though I couldn't tell how severely. Finn lay on his side in human form in the shadow of a grouping of pines, and Brand as his wolf nearby. Some strange web of deep red light was wrapped around both of them. Neither one was breathing, though they were both alive. Was the magic crushing their lungs? I wasn't sure.

But it was hurting them. Bloody pinpricks oozed wherever the web touched Finn's bare skin, and Brand's fur was scorched where it met his pelt.

"Mom!" I yelled, unsure what to do. Magic had been outlawed so long ago, and no one used it. No honorable wolves did, anyway. I had no idea what to do.

Mom came running, but stopped with a short curse. "Don't touch it," she warned. "It's a trap."

Obviously. "Can you get them out?"

"Maybe. I'll need a silver blade and… Wait." She leaned down, picking up a familiar knife from the ground. Our family's crest decorated the hilt, two wolves racing around a full moon. It was Vanessa's, but had belonged to her mother. I turned away as Mom's eyes welled up. My own had to be filled with shock.

That Vanessa would use her mother's ceremonial blade to betray her own pack… I felt ill. I couldn't imagine how Mom was feeling.

Mom cleared her throat as she kneeled beside my trapped friends, then took off her wide leather belt and wrapped it around one hand. "Go. I can cut the bindings."

"You know how?" I shouldn't have been shocked; Mom had been young during the war, when the Russians and the rogues had attacked with magic, but she'd fought in more than one battle.

She nodded grimly. "I'll guard them while they recover. You need to go find Flor. Whoever did this has a lot of power and influence. You can't buy a spell like this with cash. You have to promise something to the witch."

"You really think Joaquin…?"

She didn't answer, and my gut churned with fear.

The tracks I saw were human. I'd be faster on four feet, so I shifted and ran. A few dozen yards away, the tracks changed as the shifters who had passed this way took on wolf form. I spied a small footprint that I knew. One that smelled of cinnamon.

Flor, barefoot.

Then her footprints vanished. I nosed around, using all the tracking skills I'd learned in Alpha training, and during my years fostering at Mountain. But all I could find were vague hints of her scent.

A dozen yards away, I found pieces of her clothing. That explained why her scent was so scattered—she'd stripped, maybe shifted.

Half a mile later, I came across a stretch of disturbed ground bearing some half-prints that smelled vaguely of her. At least two wolves' tracks followed her there. But then nothing.

How could she just vanish?

I thought about the Hunt, how she'd been able to hide from a whole pack of dishonorable wolves for years. She probably had more woodcraft than any other wolf I knew. She knew how to move through a forest quickly. The forests at Southern weren't anywhere near as dense as this one, but that would be to her advantage.

I noticed a tree that had new punctures and was weeping a little sap. Right. She'd shifted her claws and climbed up into the canopy.

I followed what I imagined would be a pathway through the forest if she'd followed the densest branches. Some of the leaps looked impossible, but there were no tracks on the ground. It had to be the way.

Finally, I smelled water. The lake. In the far distance, I heard a loud splash. It could be a deer jumping in, or an elk.

But I had a feeling it was Flor.

The wind shifted, and I caught a hint of jasmine, followed by the dark iron tang of blood. A lot of blood. Letting out a howl, I raced faster than I had ever run to the water.

To Flor.