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It broke his fucking heart that doing so wasn’t going to be as easy as it should’ve been. Ever since he found out that she was still alive—that, for the first time in years, there was hope—Maddox expected some part of his bond to come back.
It, uh, it hadn’t.
After the accident, their mate bond had been razor-sharp, both jagged and raw from where he believed her death had severed it. And while he refused to let any of the prison’s witches try to take it from him, he had buried it deep down inside of him as he suffered all alone in the Cage.
The remnants of their bond were all he had left of Evangeline—of his Angie—and he treasured it. No doubt about that. But it was too painful to experience around the clock, and he tucked it deep where he could hide it and kept it close without being reminded that it was abruptly broken when she died.
Only she wasn’t dead. And now that he needed it? It was impossible to recall it. It was almost as if it was gone. It wasn’t, he could still sense it tucked away, but there was no way he could use their missing bond to lead him to where his defiantly not dead mate was living without him.
When Maddox admitted that to Colt during one of their last visits before the board hearing, his brother told him not to worry. That, as soon as Maddox saw Evangeline again, the bond would return. It had to. Maddox and Evangeline were fated mates who developed a bond over a year’s courtship. They might not have been formally bonded, and he’d forever regret not claiming her for his wolf when he had the chance, but the bond was there.
Don’t worry?
Ha.
Maddox didn’t just worry about their muffled bond—he obsessed over it. It was the only lead he would have when he got out and Colt knew it. That’s why his brother tried to track her down before Maddox’s release. The way Colt figured it, if he dragged Evangeline to the magic-free prison, even the stubborn board couldn’t deny Maddox his freedom.
One problem, though. And it was a biggie.
Evangeline was gone.
Colt had gone back twice to the place where he spotted Evangeline and found no sign of her. Her earlier trail was too muddied to follow and Colt couldn’t find a hint of her soft vanilla scent anywhere nearby. It was as if she had disappeared in the time since he first scented her. Colt might not have been all that attuned to Evangeline’s scent—she wasn’t his mate, after all—but he remembered it vividly from the times when she was his brother’s mate. Colt’s wolf had some of the strongest senses of the pack. If he couldn’t track her, that was a big fucking problem.
Not only that, but Colt had to resort to using human tech to search for her. No luck there, either. Her phone number had long been disconnected. The house she grew up in? It had been bought by a newlywed couple more than two years ago. When he asked, they couldn’t offer any information on the Lewises except for a forwarding address that was another dead end when Colt chased it down.
Evangeline Lewis hadn’t just disappeared after the car crash that supposedly killed her; it was like she didn’t exist at all. True, Colt hadn’t found an obituary for her anywhere online, but Maddox’s mate didn't have any social media presence. No facebook, no twitter, nothing. If she was hiding, she was doing a damn good job at it.
But why was she hiding?
It was o
bvious that Colton had his suspicions. He refused to acknowledge them, though, and would change the subject whenever Maddox brought it up. Considering how Maddox nearly bit his head off when Colt told him she was missing, he didn’t blame his brother for evading the topic.
After a couple of tense visits, Maddox stopped talking about it, focusing all of his energy instead on getting out. All he was doing was torturing himself while he was still trapped in the Cage and, eventually, it didn’t matter. Both of the Wolfe brothers knew that, despite whatever had happened to sever it in the first place, as soon as the mate bond snapped back into place, Evangeline would never want to leave Maddox’s side again.
Of course, that meant nothing until he managed to find her again.
So, fresh out of the Cage and without his mating instincts or a fully formed bond to guide him to her, Maddox had to do something no self-respecting bonded shifter ever wanted to do: he had to ask for outside help in finding his mate.
There was only one place that would be authorized to help him.
He groaned just thinking about it.
If you thought the D.M.V. was bad, you’d obviously never been to the D.P.R. Short for the Department of Paranormal Registration, the D.P.R. was a government-run agency that kept track of all blood bonds, matings, and claimings, issued and regulated Paranormal I.D.s, officially changed a ghost’s birth certificate into a death certificate… basically, if, as a Para, there was something that you had to take care of, the D.P.R. was where you went to do it.
You just better make sure you have all day to spend there.
Once he walked inside the sterile building with its plastic chairs and warded glass enclosure, all Maddox wanted to do was grab one of the D.P.R. workers and have them use their fancy computers to give him Evangeline’s address. He knew it wasn’t going to be as easy as that, but he hadn’t been prepared for all of the administrative bullshit.
It was almost enough to make him homesick for his cell.
First, while attempting to sign in with the receptionist, Maddox discovered that he no longer had a valid P.I.D. Before he could even ask about Evangeline, he was sent to Window C with a stack of paperwork about two inches thick. He struggled to answer the increasingly ridiculous and invasive questions—how the hell was he supposed to know how old his grandfather had been during his first shift?—and finally just started to jot down the first thing that popped in his head, accurate or not.
After he was done, he was off to Window A, where they snapped his picture and created his Paranormal ID. The Maddox glaring back from the stupid piece of plastic looked pissed off. Pretty spot on. His mood only worsened from there on out.
Window H was next. The woman perched at that counter gobbled him up like he was a piece of candy. There was a come hither look in her big blue eyes that made Maddox’s wolf sit up and snarl because they weren’t Evangeline’s forest green shade. This woman wasn’t his, and his wolf took the arousal it scented through the thick glass shield separating him and the D.P.R. worker as an insult.
Once he wrangled his beast back, he managed to explain his situation through clenched teeth while she listened too attentively to his request. The blonde leaned forward, pushing her breasts up high as she crossed her arms right beneath them. Maddox could feel her lust like an oil slick coating his fur. He shook it off, reminding himself that this woman might be able to help him find Evangeline.
