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“Shut up.”
“Did he tell you that if you did this, he would choose you?”
“You don’t know. You don’t know anything!”
There was an unhinged quality to her voice now. I was getting to her, I could tell. I took a few steps toward her.
“Lelani, you know, my ex was a lot like Curt,” I said. “Charming and confident, in that way mean men can be sometimes. Curt’s approval is like a drug, isn’t it? When he smiles, when he tells you you’ve done a good job, or says you’re cute while he tugs on a lock of your hair—”
“Stop. It,” she said, but her voice was breaking. She pushed her palms into her eyes. “Stop it. You don’t know him.”
“I think the truth is that I know him better than you do,” I said quietly, daring to take a few steps closer.
I looked around for anything I could use as impromptu bindings, but came up empty. If I was going to tackle her again, I needed to make sure I could keep her subdued this time. I wasn’t going to have another chance to capture her.
“No, no,” she whimpered. “He’s been doing reminiscence. Anything he can to get your pack off the map.”
I stepped closer. “So why did he have you try to seduce my mate?”
It was hard to keep the anger out of my voice as I said that. The urge to tear her to shreds was impossibly strong, and I was finally getting a real taste of what that protective possessiveness felt like. But I knew I needed to keep my temper. If I didn’t, I risked losing her.
“Shouldn’t an alpha who wants you so desperately do anything they can to keep you away from other shifters?” I asked. “Especially other alphas? Cole doesn’t like me anywhere near other men.”
A little white lie. Cole could be a little possessive, but not to the point of cordoning me off from people who were my friends. But I needed to try to sell this—it was the truth, after all. I knew Curt well enough to know that he didn’t like to play around when it came to anything he felt belonged to him. He didn’t like the experience of having what he deemed his territory encroached on.
Lelani sniffed, beginning to weep into her cupped hands.
“Do you know what I think?” I asked, only a few inches from her now; if I wanted to, I could reach out and touch her. “I think Curt is using you to try and get between Cole and me. I think he wants you to make Cole want you so he’ll leave me. Then I’ll be so heartbroken that I have no choice but to go to him.”
She cried harder, the tears of a woman being forced to face an ugly truth she’s known all along.
Sirens sounded somewhere in the distance, and she brought her head up, looking toward the office building. I followed her gaze, watching Curt run out of the building and get into a blacked-out van. The vehicle tore off into the night, and Lelani screamed, trying to lunge for it. But before she could run, I wrapped my arms around her, squeezing her arms tight against her sides.
She thrashed in my arms and started to shift, but just as I was forced to let go of her, Ashton crashed into her from the side and pinned her down, his large maw wrinkling as he gave her fluffy neck a warning shake. She whimpered once, but stilled.
I felt all of the tension drain out of my body, my arms and legs left sore and achy. I sank down to my knees, almost ready to lie right down on the pavement and fall asleep.
But there would be no rest. Not yet.
Travis ran over to me, his face pallid and drawn. My stomach dropped. I’d never seen him with such a distressed expression.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. “What happened to Cole?”
Travis shook his head, swallowing dryly. I could hear the uncomfortable stickiness in his throat as he spoke.
“They…they took all of them,” he said. “They took every single child who was here. Every single shifter kid. Even the human ones.”
I got up to my feet and ran, thinking only of Cole, of Noah. I hurried into the building, as if moving fast enough would render the horrible truth Travis had told me false. As if my urgency could make my son materialize.
The air was thick with desperation and fear as I rushed through the dimly lit corridor, searching for any sign of Noah. Panic had seized the parents around me, each one consumed by the same primal instinct to protect their own. But amidst the chaos, my focus was singular—finding our son.
Then, I saw him. Cole, with his shoulders hunched, his hands trembling as he clutched a crumpled note. His eyes, usually steady and resolute, were now filled with a vulnerability that shattered my heart. I reached out to him, and as my fingers brushed against his arm, he turned toward me, his expression a mosaic of grief and helplessness.
Without a word, I knelt beside him, wrapping my arms around his trembling form. His sobs reverberated through me, and I found myself crying with him. In that moment, we were two souls bound by the anguish of a parent who couldn’t protect their child.
“It's Noah,” he whispered between choked breaths. “He's taken Noah.”
A shiver ran down my spine, and a sickening dread settled in the pit of my stomach. “I know,” I said through tears. “Cole, I’m so, so sorry. I’m so sorry I wasn’t here to help protect him.”
