Page 87 of Rejected By the Winter Wolf

Instinctively, I call on my magic.

It’s not there.

I close my eyes and concentrate harder, fighting my growing panic. All I feel is the echoing drum of my heartbeat, but besides that? There’s nothing. Not even the bond with Kian.

And all I feel is empty.

Chapter 21

Kian

She’s gone.

There’s a dull rushing in my ears, and a blip as the fragile mate bond in my chest extinguishes. Not all the way—but enough to freak me out.

I press my hand to my chest, trying to make sense of it. Trying not to panic.

I have shifter blood under my nails, and flecks across my neck and chest. The wolf that challenged me is dead, but the fight took too long. By the time his heart stopped, Astra was too far away.

It was a clever trap, and I fell right into it.

Shame on me.

Jessamine and Roman pick me up on the side of the highway.

We’re on our way back to my territory, to be surrounded by the Silver Ridge Pack who all felt the sharp ripple of my agony. They’re in the back of my head always, but now they’re louder than usual. They want to know what happened and if I’m okay.

I assure them that I am, and then I mute them out.

Roman and Jessamine are silent on the drive. There’s too much to say, and not a lot either. I should’ve kept them closer, involved them more. But I didn’t want them to be around Astra. I didn’t want to share her before I had decided about her.

My sister’s contempt is hard to mask, and Roman’s uncertainty doesn’t sit right with me, either. Astra’s introduction to my pack was weak, at best.

How am I supposed to tell them that she’s my mate? My hunters now know–after the Utah coven–and they didn’t take it well.

I sigh.

Gage has her. If I want to negotiate for her without tipping my hand, I’ll need to give up something big. Or…

Or I just take her back, rules be damned. Who cares that our fathers worked out a way for the two packs to coexist in the northwest? Who gives a fuck if entering his territory with intent on violence is an act of war?

I’d rip his whole pack to shreds to get Astra back.

She’s the key to saving my sister.

But I can’t feel her, and I don’t know for sure that Gage has taken her back into his territory. He could be hiding her in Canada, or they might’ve cut west after leaving the rest stop.

There hasn’t been a war between wolf packs in centuries. The last one was between two brothers. That was before the blood witch’s curse, when full-blooded siblings were more common. That war was long and bloody.

Wolf shifters can live for a long time. Over a hundred years, maybe two if we’re lucky. That’s quite a while for brothers to hold grudges, to keep fighting over and over again.

Back then, changing humans into shifters was more common, too. Especially without consent. That created angry, spiteful wolves who wanted to take their anger out on something. Or, in their case, a pack of someones.

“Maybe Gage won’t escalate,” Roman murmurs.

My sister snorts from the backseat, and I nod along with her skepticism. He’s already escalated.

My wolf is radiating fury, but I’m trying not to let that blend with my own emotions. One of us needs to be rational. And while he’s envisioning ripping Gage’s head from his shoulders, I must think about my pack.