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“You can do without them for the day,” I insisted. “This is more important.”
“More important than saving your empire?” she breathed.
“Just send them to me,” I told her.
Vivian also came to stand guard at the compound. It was her pleasure to face off with Jesse and his guards.
“Why don’t you come out and play?” Vivian jeered at Jesse, who remained tucked behind his gate. “Don’t you remember me, Jesse? You tried to make me one of your virgin wives?”
“Are you sure we should leave her there?” Petyr asked nervously. “She might kill him.”
“We could be so lucky,” I sighed, wishing she would. I also knew that even Jesse wouldn’t be so stupid as to go face to face with Vivian again.
It was precisely why I’d put her at the compound.
“You go west. I’ll go east. Virgil, go to the north,” I instructed them. “Howl if you find her or if you run into trouble.”
With that, we separated and started our daylight run of searching.
Come on, Bianca. Where are you?
Noon came, lifting the sun higher into the sky, but the day remained chilled. I worried that she was cold or hungry. Had she been hurt?
A whiff of someone else caught my nostrils, and I stopped mid-step, neck arched.
My ears rose, and twigs snapped to my left. In the only brush I’d found for miles, someone else was walking. But it wasn’t Bianca. That, I knew for a fact.
I crouched low, my chest to the ground, eyes peering over my snout as I took in the man ambling through the dying thicket.
A low growl formed in my throat, but I choked it down. I didn’t want to warn him of my presence. I wanted to see where Eugene was going.
Quietly, I stood, careful to put distance between us, and I followed the man who seemed to know the area much better than me. Several times, I lost sight of him, hurrying through the brush to catch up with him until he was again in the open, leaving me in the ravine. I hesitated as he marched onward, the shotgun slung on his shoulder.
If I continued after him, he would undoubtedly see me. If I didn’t, I’d lose him.
I decided to give him space before tracking him again. Antsy, I waited until he was little more than a speck in front of me before dashing out to keep stride. The noon sun had sunk down, brilliant reds attacking the browns of the ground to clash with the evening blues.
A low hillside appeared, and Eugene moved beyond it, disappearing from my view before I even registered what was going on.
Shit, I thought, sprinting forward once more.
But when I passed the side of the hill, I still couldn’t see him, and a mild panic set in—particularly when I smelled Bianca in the air.
I jerked my head one way, then the other, but there was no sign of her anywhere. I lowered my nose to the ground, tracking Eugene’s scent, which I eventually picked up, but it was faint.
By the time I found him, evening was fully on us, and he was almost a mile ahead of me. And he was not alone.
I broke into a run, paws bleeding as they caught jagged rocks against the ground. A shotgun blast permeated the air, and I stopped dead, shocked by the noise. Bianca screamed and fell to the ground as her father grabbed her by the hair and dragged her toward a waiting Jeep.
I started to run again, faster than I’d ever moved in my entire life.
Chapter32
Bianca
“Get in there, you little whore!”
The door slammed, but my foot jammed between the door, forcing it back open.
