He makes his mistake when he hunches down to grab me, and I let him catch me. His arms wrap around my waist and he squeezes until it’s painful. Breaking my stick on his arm, I grab his hair and pull him toward me. Over and over, I stab his neck with the pointed end where his jugular is, my lips twisted in a sneer as he yells and tries to get away from me.
He finally throws me across the room before he drops to his knees, and my body rolls until I reach the far end. Raising my head while I breathe hard, I watch as blood pours from his throat.
“No,” Avery whispers.
Fuck being naked.
Jumping up despite the pain in my ribs from his big hands crushing them, I make my run for it, hoping the darts will miss me as Avery screams at her guards to catch me. I don’t stop as I careen around the corner, running for my life.
Good help is hard to find, huh?
Chapter Thirty-Seven
PABLO
God,I really want off this ride, please.
My eyes heat uncomfortably as Nico’s body heaves as he throws up into a garbage can. He’s not doing so hot, and Nina’s mate keeps glancing at him worriedly as I rub my alpha’s back as his body expels bile.
Rosa has been gone for four hours, and Nico has felt like he's drowning, electrocuted, and screamed from blinding pain. I’m fucking terrified of what they’re doing to Rosa if this is what Nico is experiencing.
We’re outside in Pack Mayor’s backyard because there’s more ventilation, and it helps Nico while he fights against something no one can see without breaking anything.
“I’m fine,” Nico wheezes insistently, breathing hard. “My men lost the signal to Rosalia’s ring. What could do that? One of my hands hurt, but I don’t feel like I’m missing a finger.”
For some reason, the person who took Rosa drove in circles around the city, giving our men a run for their money as they chased them before disappearing. I followed the signal, searchedthrough the security camera footage around the city, but it didn’t do any good.
There’s absolutely no trace of my girl. Not from the traffic cameras or businesses nearby, and no one has seen shit. The police don't want to help us, and I can feel the weight of searching for a needle in a haystack at the moment. When I go back through the footage, I’m finding that it’s all been erased. It doesn’t make any fucking sense!
The signal from Rosa’s ring simply stops in an area full of dilapidated warehouses, where many of them are empty. Nico’s men also report that others are being used by the homeless to sleep or get high in. Either way, they’re on foot searching the area as we speak.
They haven’t found shit.
God, the fact that Nico believes the only reason Rosa would no longer wear the ring we presented her when we were happy is because they cut it off is horrifying.
Though, knowing Rosa, she’d fight to keep something we gave her. Even if she’s not wearing it anymore, the signal would still project with the location of wherever the ring was. None of this is natural and shouldn’t be possible.
“I’ve never seen bond sickness like this before,” Silas breathes, his skin pale.
“It’s gotten much worse since we bonded,” Nico admits, his voice unrecognizable from what I’m used to.
“Jesus,” Easton grunts.
Our allies have gotten more and more somber with each passing hour, and Cassidy kept rubbing her arms as she shivers from a cold that doesn’t exist. The shadows were deep in her eyes as the memories haunted her, the scars no one else can see but her pack raising unbidden to torture her. From what I can piece together, Avery almost killed her, and she’s still suffering from repercussions of those events.
Abbott sent her home twenty minutes ago, and I don’t blame him.
The Five Packs believe this is the same person they’ve been having problems with for months, an omega who left Minnesota in an effort to continue her business here. Drugs and the selling of humans for profit isn’t someone we should be entangled with, but here we are.
Cassidy is having trouble with the memories of the hell she recently went through with Avery, and her alphas keep muttering about how they should have made certain Avery was dead.
Everything is a mess, and from the stories I’ve been told, if this is Avery, she’s a fucking psychopath. The problem is we don’t know what the fuck we’re dealing with because Pack Mayor only saw the men who were attacking Rosa and nothing else. The only thing I can do is continue to throw shit at the wall and hope something sticks.
“There could be a signal blocker,” Ansel grunts, his voice low and gravelly. “There’s no way there’s anything underground in the part of town the signal dropped off at. We’re going to need to join your guys, Nico, and beat down doors.”
The only reason we haven’t joined them yet is because I’m still hoping technology will be able to do us a solid. Shiloh has his computer open and is working as well, trying to pull a rabbit out of a damn hat.
“I’m going to call in a favor, Lyle,” Easton announces. “Do whatever you need to do, but it’ll be illegal as fuck.”
