He dipped his head in affirmation. “Your school gave them the perfect place to pick off girls. By the time we realized what they were doing, they had already managed to take a few.”
“Maren, Kit, and Jayla.” Just saying their names made me flinch. Norwood and Long Mesa were friends, so I highly doubted they were being treated like royalty.
“Yeah.” He swallowed and heaved a long sigh.
“Can we get them back?” I demanded, my voice hardening.
He smiled at me. “I sure as hell hope so.”
2
Remy
I braced my hands against the railing on the back deck, focusing on the sounds of the wind whispering through the trees, rustling the full branches heavy with new spring leaves. So much life thriving in front of me as the morning sun warmed the yard and deck.
So much death in the house behind me.
I scrubbed a hand over my jaw, feeling the prickle of stubble, but shaving hadn’t been a priority. Fielding phone calls from betas from most of the midwest and Canadian packs had taken its toll. Every time I learned another Alpha had died, the hole I was standing in got a little bit deeper and a little bit darker. Thank God for Michael, who had stepped in a few minutes ago to give me a break.
How the fuck was I supposed to have answers for thousands of shifters when I was still wrapping my head around what had happened myself? Or, better fucking yet, when half of my damn soul had been torn away from me.
My wolf rippled under my skin, pressing for answers I didn’t have.
He wanted Skye.
We both needed Skye.
I swallowed the urge to kick the deck railing. Breaking shit wouldn’t fix the epic fuckup of my life right now or help me find Skye.
I needed a plan for my pack and my girl.
The back door slid open and closed a second later.
I lifted my head and turned to see Katy step up next to me.
“We’ll find her,” she said softly, firmly. A breeze ruffled her red hair. “We’ll find them all.”
Skye.
My eyes slid shut, the agony that gripped me every second since I lost her fresh and raw. I almost reached into my pocket for the broken necklace that I carried.
Finding that in the rubble had almost killed me.
Had it really been a little more than twenty-four hours since Skye was still in bed with me? I would have given anything to turn the clock back to that moment. If I closed my eyes, I could still smell the citrus scent of the shampoo she used. It clung to her and our sheets, the scent forever embedded in my brain.
Walking by the bowl of fruit Mom kept in the kitchen on my way out here had nearly sent my wolf and I into a tailspin.
I inhaled deeply through my nose, filling my senses with pine and woods and sunshine. Anything to cauterize the gaping hole in my chest.
If Katy felt a fraction of the pain and panic that constantly clawed at me, eating me alive, since Maren went missing, I was amazed she was talking to me.
“I was an asshole,” I muttered, turning away from the rail and leaning my back against it. “I’m sorry, Katy.”
I owed her a million apologies. I had done what I thought was best for the pack, and part of me still knew that keeping her out of the search for Maren had been the best move for us all. Especially since the first chance she got, she almost was kidnapped by the same people who had taken Maren and the others.
But I still felt like shit knowing it had broken her heart and carved a divide between us bigger than the Grand Canyon. Katy and I weren’t as close as our twin brothers, but we were pretty damn close. That made the rift between us even harder to endure.
“We’re not focusing on that now,” she said, shaking her head firmly. Her jaw was set in a way I knew since we were kids—she was ready to kick ass and take names. “Right now we need to find Skye and Maren and Tate. They’re out there.”
I couldn’t help but smile a little. The last few weeks had sucked without her in them. I had missed her like hell. No one was more loyal when it came to her friends.
She truly believed Skye and the others were out there. Her confidence was comforting.
I knew Skye was out there, but not knowing where, or with who, was what was killing me.
It wasn’t a coincidence that Linden and Damien had disappeared before the explosion.
My stomach twisted at the idea of Skye being back with her uncle, but Preston had confirmed Linden was around right before the explosion. And Skye was missing when I went to find her.
It wasn’t a huge reach to know her uncle had taken her in the chaos, and I hadn’t been there to protect her.
The first thing I had done was reach out to people we knew in New Mexico when we got home hours ago. They had been watching the Long Mesa pack for me since, and there hadn’t been a single sign of Linden there. No one had come in or out of the compound, so Skye wasn’t there.
But that still left a lot of the country, namely the Norwood territory in New York. Damien and Trace were there. We had confirmed their plane was landing as the bomb went off. But there was no sign of Skye or her uncle yet.
At least Preston was dead. The metal I-beam that fell when the lodge exploded had pinned him to the ground, half of his arm ripped clean off and a piece of rebar speared through his leg.
Grim satisfaction settled in my gut, remembering the way he had begged for his life before I impaled him on a piece of rebar. The weak gurgling from his throat was the last noises he ever made.
It made me sick thinking about how many times Skye had begged him for mercy.
His death was the highlight of the last twenty-four hours, which was more than a little fucked up.
The back door slid open again, this time Rhodes and Dante stepped out onto the deck.
Dante gave me an indecipherable look. The only emotions he gave away was the red tinge around his eyes from when he broke down earlier when we got the news.
Luke’s death had hit him hard. Tate’s disappearance was hitting him harder.
He cleared his throat and joined me at the railing. “I just spoke to Ryder. The plane landed outside of Brooks Ridge an hour ago. They’re working on getting the first group onto it.”
I watched him carefully, looking for cracks. He had lost his girl and his Alpha on the same day. At least he still had Ryder, even if he was a few hundred miles away for a few more hours.
“Good.” Rhodes rubbed his jaw with a nod, his dark eyes sweeping across me. “The sooner we get everyone here, the sooner we can make a plan.”
“Do we have a plan yet?” Katy asked.
“First we need to get everyone here, safe,” I said, my tone calmer than I felt.
Dante and I had decided to move the Brooks Ridge pack here on the flight back. They were too small and unprotected in Alaska. Dante could have gone there, but right now we needed to pool our resources to find Skye and Tate.
Any hesitation was squashed when Luke died in the early morning hours.
It had been a miracle he had survived the explosion at all. By the time Dante and I found him, he had been pinned under a beam that crushed his pelvis for several hours. He never regained consciousness, but we brought him back to Blackwater and prayed for a miracle.
It seemed we were out of miracles.
Luke was dead. Skye and Tate were gone. And Dad was …
“Any change?” I asked Katy, knowing she had come from the med center in town.