Declan looked at his sister Rose. She stood near the window, face wet with tears, eyes haunted. They and other surrounding packs had suffered through similar disappearances over the years. None of the children had ever been recovered. He prayed they would find Ronnie. His sister wouldn't survive losing her child, not after having lost her mate only a year ago in a car accident. He crossed to the window and dragged her into his arms, holding her tightly. A sob broke free and she shuddered. "I can't lose him, too, Dec."
"I know, Rose. We'll find him. I know we will. Is there anything else you can remember?"
"No. One minute he was there and the next gone. I turned my back for two seconds, Dec. Two seconds! I'm a horrible mother."
"Stop it, Rose. You are not." Declan stroked her hair and pressed a kiss to her forehead. "Did you notice anyone watching you? Following you?"
"No. I stopped to talk to Brigette from the flower shop for a second. He'd been playing a game on his handheld computer thingy."
Declan couldn't help but smile. She'd never been very good with technology. Declan remembered buying Ronnie the Nintendo DS as a gift a couple of Christmases ago. "Okay. What else?"
"When I looked back, the game was on the ground and he was gone!" she wailed, crying even harder into his broad chest.
He rubbed his hands in circles on her back, teeth clenched so hard they could have shattered. He would gut whoever had taken his nephew. "Shh, shh. It's going to be okay, honey. Michael is asking the businesses in the area for security video footage to see if we can find anything that way. I'm sure they must have picked up something."
Rose sniffled and nodded, but her shoulders still shook. Ronnie had been missing for eight hours, seemingly a life time to a distraught mother, Declan knew. One of the streak enforcers, Michael, had tried to locate a scent, but the trail went cold in an alley, meaning the son of a bitch had taken Ronnie to some form of vehicle and driven from there. Ronnie was smart. If the boy had a chance to get away, he would, but the knowledge of just how many shifter children had gone missing in the last so many years caused sweat to break out over Declan's brow and a chill to race down his spine. None of those children had ever been found again.
The thought didn't have the chance to become a litany of nightmarish ideas of the boy being hurt or worse when a cry went up outside, far into the forest, and another, alerting the nearby streak members something, or someone, had been found. The cacophony of sounds were good, noises of joy getting closer to the house, meaning Ronnie had been found. Rose started crying again, tears of happiness this time, and Declan couldn't stop a smile from breaking across his tanned features, grateful the gods had been listening this time. Rose raced to open the front door, meeting Ronnie at the top of the porch steps with open arms, Declan just behind her.
"Mama, Mama!" Ronnie cried, shifting midstride, throwing his skinny arms around her neck. "Uncle Declan!"
Declan caught a whiff of Ronnie's scent mingled with another and suddenly froze, eyes dilating and fangs dropping. "Mine!" he snarled. Fur sprouted along his forearms and his hands half-shifted, fingers becoming claws. Mint and fresh earth tantalized his tiger, sending spirals of lust straight to his cock. Declan growled, his entire body vibrating with the sound.
Rose startled, cradling Ronnie close. "What the hell, Dec?"
It took all of Declan's alpha strength to rein in his instincts to tear through the forest to find the source of the scent clinging to Ronnie. He knew without a single shred of doubt the smell on Ronnie's skin belonged to his mate, the one person he'd been waiting for his entire life, the one person he wanted more than anything. His blood sang with joy while his body rose to the occasion.
"Uncle Declan, you have to help them! Please! You have to help Sean and the others!" Ronnie tore free from his mother and rushed to Declan's side, grabbing his uncle's hand and tugging. "Please, hurry!"
Declan dropped to one knee in front of Ronnie, ignoring his tiger spirit demanding he forget all reason and listen to the boy. "Slow down, Ronnie. What happened to you? Tell me, who is Sean?"
Ronnie scowled, his usual spunk showing through the panic and fear. "Some bastard-"
"Ronnie!" Rose admonished.
"-grabbed me while I was playing my game. He took me to this really creepy place out in the forest where there's all these shifter kids in cages. Sean helped me get away. He's really nice, Uncle Dec. We have to help them. Please."
Declan's heart beat fiercely against his ribcage. His mate was in trouble. "Do you think you can show me where?"
Ronnie furiously nodded his head. "I marked the trees on the way, Uncle Dec. Like you showed me. We have to go right now though! I think-I think he's going to do something bad to Sean for helping me. He-he was hurting one of the girls when I got out."
Declan wanted to race off into the forest, to find the son of a bitch hurting his mate and grind the fucker into the ground, but he knew he couldn't handle the situation alone. "We need to get a few members of the streak, Ronnie."
"We have to go right now. It may already be too late. It took me a lot longer to get here than I thought it would," Ronnie muttered ashamed. "The sun wasn't all the way down when I left."
Heart stuttering, Declan calculated the two or three hours the sun had been down and clenched his jaw. "All right. Rose, tell Michael to gather some of the enforcers and follow after us. I'll take Victor with us."
"Do you really need Ronnie to go if he marked the path?" Rose asked, clinging to her son's shoulders.
"Mom!" Ronnie protested, twisting around to glare up at her. "I'm not a baby anymore. I need to go. They know me. They won't know Uncle Dec or the others!"
"He's right, Rose. I promise to bring him back in one piece." Declan glanced down at Ronnie. "Why don't you go inside and grab Victor?"
Ronnie gave a serious nod and went into the house. Declan pinned Rose in place with a serious stare. "My mate is one of them, Rose."
Rose gasped, her eyes going wide. "Are you sure?"
"Yes. I can smell him all over Ronnie. I'm fairly certain it's the one who helped him escape, the one named Sean." The knowledge that his mate was kind and cared for others caused his heart to swell, but it only made sense of course. The fates wouldn't pair him, an alpha, with anyone other than a suitable match, someone to compliment who he was and what he stood for. Declan smiled slightly. "I finally found him."
Rose gripped his forearm. "Then go. Hurry, Dec. But be safe."
"I will. Don't worry. I'll bring Ronnie home, sis."
"You better," she growled at him.
Declan kissed her temple, shed his clothing, and shifted the moment his nephew and Victor exited the front door. He impatiently waited as they followed suit and then the three of them were off, running into the forest. The scent of Ronnie on the trees leading south of the streak’s grounds was strong and Declan outran the other two, his large paws eating up the distance between him and his mate. When a house appeared, where the smell of his mate slammed into his entire being, Declan almost growled to the heavens, but it was the muffled sound of screams coming from somewhere within the house that wrenched an earth-shaking roar from him.