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By the end of the movie, she had cried herself out and felt exhausted and drained. As the next movie began, this time a dark noir mystery, she closed her eyes and drifted.
When she roused and rose from the couch an hour later, her gaze locked on the French doors that led to the private porch. As she semi-slept, she had made the decision that she could not allow Toren to put his foot down like he had without pushing back. She was not a child, nor was she as stupid and vulnerable as he seemed to think. She had lived long enough to learn how to take care of herself.
After going into the bedroom, she pulled out her suitcase and changed from the dress into a pair of black jeans and a deep purple t-shirt with a big sunflower on the front of it. Once she’d pulled her cowboy boots back on, she grabbed her small wallet and car keys from her purse and slipped them into her jeans pockets.
As far as she knew, her car was still parked next door. She would go over there and use it to drive into town. Let Toren deal with that.
Moving out onto the porch, she looked down and then at the fence that separated her from her property. Her first challenge would be to get from here to over there.
Chapter Seven
The alarm sounding through the house tore Toren’s attention from the paperwork that covered his desk. Rising, he glanced at the grandfather clock in the corner, surprised to see it was nearly dinnertime.
Where had the afternoon gone?
He hadn’t gotten nearly enough done to take the next day off to take Katee into town. He would have to come up with something else to keep his mate busy.
Entering the foyer of the big house, he frowned. The pack was gathered in a circle around Duck and Clarey. Clarey was crying, and the men all looked fierce as the alarm continued to blare.
“Someone turn that damn thing off,” Toren ordered, looking around and not seeing his mate.
Why hadn’t Katee come down? The alarm blared in every room, loud enough to wake even the deepest sleeper. He stepped into the circle between two of his soldiers but froze when Clarey dropped to her knees and covered her head as if in terror.
“What’s going on?” he asked Duck, who looked from him to the little shifter on the floor.
Instead of answering him, Duck turned to the men gathered around them. “Search the grounds. She might be lost or hurt on the mountain. Call me the second you find her.”
Once the men dispersed, Duck took his arm and pulled him away from Clarey, who was still curled up in a ball on the floor, whimpering as if in pain herself.
“Duck? What the fuck is going on?” Toren’s patience had reached its limit, and if he didn’t get answers soon, he was liable to shift and go hunting for whatever had the pack in an uproar.
There was a reason he was alpha, and it wasn’t because he had a laidback, sweet disposition.
“Katee’s missing,” Duck said.
Toren shook his head and glared at Duck. “She was going to help Clarey in the kitchen. What do you mean she’s missing?”
“Clarey says she hasn’t seen Katee, except for meals, since yesterday morning when she offered to help with the laundry. Clarey said she refused her help and told her that alpha queens never did such menial chores,” Duck said. “When was the last time you saw her?”
“Just after lunch she came into the office, and we had a disagreement about her going into town alone. She said she’d see if she could help Clarey with the cooking and left.”
Pulling out his phone, Toren checked, but there were no texts or messages of any kind from Katee or anyone else.
“Maybe she’s still upstairs, waiting for me to collect her for dinner,” Toren said.
Turning, he raced up the stairs with Duck a step behind. Clarey remained on the floor, but her crying had become soft sniffles and whimpers. He would deal with the little shifter once he found his mate.
The doors to his suite were locked. It only took one kick from his heavy boots to have the doors swinging wide. Stepping inside, he looked around. “Katee? Where are you, dancer?”
The sitting room was empty, and there did not appear to be any signs of struggle. Crossing the room, he entered the bedroom and then stopped. The blankets were on the floor, and the sheets were missing. He checked the bathroom, and the walk-in closet, but his mate was nowhere in the suite.
Storming back into the sitting room, he went to the French doors that led to his private porch. After he’d pushed them open, it took a moment to make sense of what he saw. Crossing the porch, he looked down and saw one black sheet had been tied to the porch railing, allowing her to climb down to the ground below.
His gaze lifted to where he could see the second black sheet wrapped around one of the finials that topped the fence at regular intervals around the property.
She’d left him like a captive escaping prison.
As he threw his head back, Toren’s roar of pain echoed off the mountains. In minutes, the entire pack raced into view, more than half in shifted form. They gathered in the yard below him and stared in concern up at him.
