“Ava, please! Stop running; I can explain,”I say through our mental link, following her scent through the pine trees, my paws sinking in the melting snow.
“Go to hell, Logan! And stay there,”she snaps venomously, and then I feel her through our bond getting further and further away. How the hell is she running so fast?
“Care to explain what that was, Lo?”my sister asks, following right behind me.
“Not right now. Help me find Ava first, and then I’ll tell you everything.”
“Fine,” she grumbles. I feel she wants to ask more questions, but she doesn’t push me. Not now. Not when she hears the desperation in my tone.
Only, we don’t find Ava. We follow the scent trail until it endsabruptly near a creek. We circle the perimeter over and over again for hours, but nothing. Somehow, without training, she managed to mask her scent and block me mentally. The absence is an all-consuming void inside me, cleaving my heart in two and filling my chest with lead.
“We have to go,” Emily says as the indigo sky gives way to purple and the cottony clouds get drenched in pink.
“I can’t leave her here, Em, what the fuck?”
“We’ve been at this for almost seven hours, Lo. She might have already left the national park for what we know. She clearly found a way to mask her scent, and we need to smooth things over with the pack. I haven’t even had the chance to tell you the good news.”
“Just give me half an hour more to search for her, please, and you can tell me later. I need to concentrate on finding her.”
“’Kay,”she relents.“But after that, we need to go and sort things out.”
One hour later, we are fully dressed, and we get into my truck without Ava. This time, Emily doesn’t insist on driving, probably sensing how on edge I am. The responsibility toward my pack wraps around my lungs like barbed wire as the desperate need to find my mate twists my insides into painful knots. I feel trapped between a rock and a hard place.
I can’t believe how quickly everything crumbled. With a sharp curse, I punch the steering wheel. It doesn’t lessen the anger bubbling under my skin, ready to seep out of my pores and consume me. I could blame Emily, of course, for barging in with no filter on her mouth and ruining everything, but I know it’s only my fault I’m in this position because I didn’t tell Ava everything about me.
“The kids woke up,” Emily says, looking at me from the passenger seat with a bashing grin. “That’s what I was trying to tell you earlier.”
My eyes widen. For a few seconds, I forget about Ava completely. “What?”
“The children touched by the weakness all woke up Monday night. I tried to contact you, but you were out of reach. It was the weirdest thing. They just opened their eyes and started calling for their parents. They’re all good. It’s like nothing happened to them.”
Of course, they woke up. I found my fated mate, and we completed the mating bond. The pack is at full strength again. I just haven’t thought about this at all; everything and everyone seemed to disappear when I was with Ava. “It’s because I have found my fated mate, Em.”
This time, it’s her turn to look at me like I’ve grown two heads. “What? But who?” She tilts her head, and a weird expression takes over her face. “No…don’t tell me…”
“Yeah, it’s her. Ava’s my fated mate.”
An incredulous laugh bubbles out of her. “You’re joking, right?”
I shake my head and sigh. “No, I’m not joking.”
“But, I don’t understand. How the fuck is that even possible? I’m so confused…she wasn’t a wolf shifter when I met her. I would have smelled her immediately. And then I saw her shift right before my eyes. What the hell is going on, Lo?”
I tell Emily everything that has happened since I left her in charge of the pack Sunday night, and her emotions change from devastated to completely shocked.
“I can’t believe Tony is gone. He was my favorite person to work with, and he was such a good friend,” she sniffles and wipes at her tear-streaked cheeks. “What a clusterfuck. I’m sorry for barging in, Lo, but you got us so worried. You left abruptly when we were hunting, and you only texted me once to tell me you’ll be off with some Conclave business. That’s so not like you. Then you wouldn’t answer any of my calls. I had to hunt down Malikto tell me where you were, and he refused to let me know what was happening. He said it wasn’t his place.”
She pauses, biting her lip. “And Mom was going crazy, then the party started, and everyone arrived but you. Conrad almost blew a fuse when Mom told him we don’t know where you are. Half of his pack arrived yesterday for the engagement party, and they are still here. Mom managed to calm him down eventually, telling him that the Conclave business is of utmost importance and that you wouldn’t miss your engagement party if something major didn’t happen. Mom said we’ll just resume the celebration when you get back. What are you going to do?”
I roll my neck until it cracks, trying to get rid of the tension that accumulated in my muscles since Ava ran off. “I’m going to tell them the truth, that I have found my fated mate and can’t get engaged to someone else. Then I’m going to get Ava back.”
I tap myfoot on the hardwood floor of my study, grinding my teeth as I look for the thousandth time at my watch and start to pace the room like a caged animal. Conrad was supposed to be here an hour ago. He is surely punishing me for missing the engagement party. Fuck diplomacy and pack politics. I’m about to lose my shit because every single minute I spend not looking for Ava deepens the gaping hollow in my chest. Even if Emily and the pack are scouring the national park looking for her, it’s not enough. I need to be there. Being separated from her cuts me deep, like someone ripping my heart from my chest with their bare hands. If Conrad doesn’t show up in the next five minutes, I’m going to wring his fucking neck.
The sound of the front door closing and three sets of footsteps coming in the direction of the study echoes through the quiet of the house. I heave out a deep sigh, ready for this meeting to be over already. My mother enters the study first, her disapproving gaze settling on me as her lips draw into a thin line. It’s clearly written on her face that my absence has angered her. Grace follows quickly behind my mother with her father at her back. Her ocean-blue eyes glimmer with hope when they meet mine. I lower my gaze and gulp nervously because I know I’m going to break her heart, and she seems to be such a sweet girl. Even if I never felt an ounce of attraction to her, she still doesn’t deserve to have her hopes and dreams crushed.
“You better have a good motive for missing the engagement party and making fools out of me and my daughter in front of both our packs,” Conrad grits out, and a muscle feathers in his jaw.
My mother’s nostrils flare as her head whips toward Conrad at her back. “Now, now, Conrad. I told you my son would never miss such an important event if not for a good reason.” Her tone is short, clipped. She might be mad at me, but she will always put me and Emily above anything else.
