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Three days later
Elena has been missing for more than a week. I have spent all that time hunting her, over a week of finding nothing. No sign of her, no sign of my car. It is as if she has just vanished. Khan is beside himself. I am beside myself. I want her back, need her back. It’s funny, kind of ironic, the saying you don’t know what you have until it’s gone. I had everything at my fingertips, and I ruined it all.
Everything.
She was my everything, and now I am paying for her loss dearly. Feeling and seeing the wrongness of my actions everywhere I look. I see it in my own reflection, see it in Eli’s disappointment, see it within my pack. They are nervous. If I can’t control my mate, how am I expected to control my pack?
“Anything?” I ask Eli as I walk into his office in the pack house.
“Nothing. We have checked every hospital, both human and in the were-cities, the councils; there have been no accidents reported or bodies found.”
“I just don’t get how she’s just disappeared without a trace. AGAIN.” Yet, my mind is going back to the town where we found her. What if another monster got a hold of her again? One worse than me?
“Because this time, she doesn’t want to be found. I warned you, I fucking warned you, Axton!” Eli growls at me.
I fist my hands; he doesn’t need to keep rubbing it in my face. “She’ll have to come back. She can’t raise them on her own. She will know as soon as she registers their births; her name will alert all the councils that she is a missing person,” I tell him.
“Exactly, she does know that. Elena is smart. She won’t register them, Axton, and you are a fool if you think she will risk losing her sons.”
“But I would never take them from her!” I snarl, and he stands up.
“She didn’t know that, though, did she? I told you to stop punishing her, but you were too blinded by your damn pride and ego to apologize.”
“Don’t fucking challenge me. She is my mate. I lost her, and you are acting as if I punished the entire fucking pack, that I punished you!” I yell at him.
“You fucking DID! A pack is only as strong as its Alpha, and you can barely fucking function without her. I have been doing all your work, taking on all your responsibilities because you can’t pull yourself together. You lost your mate and the heirs to our pack. The fucking empire you built is resting on the shoulders of sons you no longer fucking have!”
I shake my head.
“Think about it, Axton. Will Khan accept another?” he says.
I look at him. Eli falls back into his seat, his words hitting heavily. Because no, he won’t. Despite my rejecting her, Khan won’t allow someone new to take her place, but I don’t think even I could accept another in her spot beside me.
The mere thought sickens me. Women, in general, sicken me now. Even when I was flaunting the nannies in front of her, I was repulsed by their mere presence beside me, all the while aching for the woman in the room across from me.
It would be different if I hated her, yet I can’t even find the energy for that anymore, especially while Khan loves her. He’s never stopped loving her, not even when I rejected her. He’s wanted to kill me. And now, I want him to.
“We’ll find her,” I whisper, feeling the pressure not just on me.
Packs are handed down, and I have no one to hand mine to if something happens to me. If that happens, the pack will disintegrate, be pulled apart, and everything I have built will go to waste. Turning, I head for the door, needing to go home and figure out something, when I hear Eli’s laptop bing.
“Wait, Axton!” Eli calls, and I stop at the door.
“What?” I ask, turning to look at him.
“I just got an email from Louise,” he says, and I rush toward him to see. I peer over his shoulder to look at the email.
“Elena wanted me to let Axton know his sons were born healthy and they are okay.”
Attached is a picture of two little bundles wrapped in a blue cloth. I can’t see anything other than their sleeping faces and dark locks of hair, no background that could lead me to their location.
The sight of them steals my breath, and I rip my phone from my pocket and scroll through my contacts. Finding Louise’s number, I dial it. She answers after a couple of rings, and I don’t give her a chance to speak.
“Where is she?”
“Axton,” she breathes, sounding tired.
“Where is my mate, Louise?”
