Page 124 of The Alpha’s Unclaimed Mate

“Marc?”

“Something’s wrong.” I’ve got the engine turning over already. “Adrian’s not answering, and Jessa’s phone’s dead too.”

“Where do you need us?”

“The town markets. Bring Tomas.”

“On our way.”

The second market eats ten minutes I can’t spare. I scent my way down every aisle, past the checkouts, out into the front lot, and there’s nothing of them here either. By now I’m talking out loud, to no one, telling her pick up, Jessa.

Adrian’s car sits crooked near the doors of the third market when I swing in half out of my mind. I’m out of my car before it’s stopped rolling. Relief comes up stupid and fast, loosening something behind my ribs. If he’s been parked here all afternoon with a dead phone in the console, I’ll drag him out through the window myself.

The car is empty when I reach it. The wind swings around, and every hair on my neck lifts at once. Under the gas and the hot asphalt, there’s something wet and wrong.

Blood.

It’s coming off the trunk. My heart’s slamming hard enough that I feel it in my teeth. I get both hands under the lid, wrench it up, and the sound that tears out of me isn’t a human one. Adrian’s crammed into the space, barely breathing, his throat opened along one thin red line. His skin’s gone gray under the lot lights, his lips near white, and the mat beneath him is soaked black with everything he’s lost.

Not him. Not him too.

I press two fingers under his jaw and find a pulse, thready, gone then back, but beating. He’s alive. I’ve got a healer dialed before I’ve chosen to move, my voice scraping out of me. “Badly hurt shifter, his throat’s cut, he’s bleeding out. I need you now.” I rattle off the store and the lot number. Then my eyes cut to the glass doors, and the floor drops out from under me.

Jessa. The girls.

They’re still in there. They have to be.

“Help’s coming, Adrian,” I tell him hoarsely and lower the trunk lid just enough that a passerby won’t see him but the healer will catch his scent. Walking away from him is the hardest thing I’ve done all day.

Inside, a girl at the customer desk asks if she can help me. “The manager,” I tell her. “Right now.”

She’s gone and back with a woman in a store vest, keys on a lanyard, a name tag I don’t read. “Sir, what’s this about?”

“Your lot cameras. I need to see them.”

Her face closes over. “I can’t do that. We don’t show security footage to the public, that’s a police—”

“A man was attacked in your parking lot in the last hour. Two children were taken.” I get in close, and my voice drops to something that isn’t quite human. “You’re going to walk me to that footage.”

“I understand you’re upset.” She’s backing toward the desk, one hand up. “But I could lose my—”

“You’ll lose more than your job.” I plant a hand on the counter between us. “I own half the property this chain leases in the county. You keep me out of that room, and I’ll have this store dark by the end of the day. Every one of these people out of work. Now show me the tapes.”

The blood goes out of her face. Whatever she sees in mine, she quits arguing. “This way.”

She takes me back through a door marked staff, past the break room, to a desk with four monitors, and pulls up the footage while I brace both hands on the desk to keep them from shaking.

I start on the outside feed. Jessa and the girls go in a little after two, Adrian parked with his eyes on the doors. A man walks up to his window and points at the store urgently, waving for him to come. Adrian hesitates.

“Stay in the car,” I tell him under my breath, hours too late. The manager glances at me sidelong.

He’s timed the whole thing. He waits until a delivery cart rolls between the parked cars, until a knot of shoppers crosses the hood, and for two seconds, every line of sight goes dark. Adrian gets out. I watch the blade cross his throat, one flicker on the tape, there and gone. The man catches him before he drops, tips him into the trunk, and strolls off across the lot with his hands in his pockets. My own throat closes.

“Inside,” I get out. “Show me inside.”

She switches feeds. I already don’t want to see it, and I make myself look.

Jessa moves through the aisles with Mia at her hip and Bella trailing. She turns to reach for something on a shelf. Her foot skids, and she goes down hard into a display, cans scattering across the floor. I’m on my feet off the desk before I know why. In that same breath, a figure in a puffy jacket, cap pulled low, scoops Mia off the floor and runs for the far exit. Half a second, and my daughter’s gone off the edge of the frame.