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“How far do we have to walk?” I asked quietly, yet my voice still felt like it carried through the dark forest… Wait, dark forest? Cillian had talked about this place, but we hadn’t gotten to continue the conversation because we’d been in public. This had to be the same one he referenced.
It would have certainly been creepy enough to keep me out as a child.
“Are you scared?” he asked haughtily.
Playing the damsel could make him underestimate me, but I didn’t have it in me to keep my mouth shut.
“I’m an alpha wolf,” I deadpanned. “Very little scares me.”
He made an odd noise, keeping his eyes directed ahead. “I’ll remember that.”
ChapterThree
CILLIAN
It had been over an hour since the connection I’d felt to Dawsyn had disappeared. My fingers were numb from holding the steering wheel so tightly, and my head was raging. I wasn’t sure what I was going to find back at the academy, and I knew there would be little chance of forgiving myself for leaving my mate, but I had to get to her.
My phone finally rang, and I recognized Justine’s number from when she’d texted earlier. “Did you find her?
“No, but I have River,” she replied. “He was beaten pretty badly and said Dawsyn was indeed taken.”
The growl that echoed around the cab of the truck wasn’t intentional, but also couldn’t be helped. “Does he know by who or where they took her?”
“He’s not really coherent yet, but he said ‘someone like Cillian’ and something about how only you could find her,” she said. “Does he mean another hybrid took her?”
Fuck. No, he didn’t, and I’ve just wasted hours turning around. Again.
“And you caught no scent of her anywhere?” I asked before I made a U-turn on the highway for what felt like the hundredth that day. I assumed River meant Dawsyn had been taken to Drago, but if she had been, then that meant… I couldn’t even think about what that meant when combined with the fact that our bond no longer thrummed inside my chest.
“Nothing that was fresh once I left Baker House,” she answered.
I was going to lose my damned mind. I didn’t know who had come here or how they knew about my connection to Dawsyn, but I was going to fucking kill whoever took my mate.
It didn’t matter that the tether between us had been reduced to ash. Dawsyn Chase was still mine, and I would get her back. No matter the cost.
“I’m not coming back to the academy,” I said. “Have River call me when he can talk more.”
I wouldn’t be able to answer once I was in Drago, but hopefully he’d recover from whatever they’d done to him by the time I got to the portal.
What made me most furious was that I could have caught them. If I understood what little River had said, I could have been at the entry point at the same time if only I’d stayed on my path.
Everything inside me burned brightly with a fury unlike anything I’d ever known, but this news had also put me into an odd sense of calm. I knew I had to keep my shit together for Dawsyn. She needed me now and I would find her. The rest we could figure out later.
Whatever had happened, I at least knew her heart. She’d told me what she wanted, which was me. I believed her.
That was what I needed to focus on. That was what would help me find her again.
* * *
Too much later,I was at the entry point to Drago and the scent of Dawsyn was nearly overwhelming. She’d been here and not that long ago. She had to have been. Or I was going crazy. Honestly, that possibility might not have been too far off.
It was snowing here, but there were still faint imprints in the ground—three sets of footsteps that didn’t start until further up the mountain. So far up that they would have had to teleport in to make that happen. Whoever took Dawsyn was working with a witch.
I really fucking needed River to wake up and tell me everything he knew.
A flash of red caught my eye, and I bent down to the ground, wiping the snow away. My stomach sank and scales pushed closer to the surface.
Dawsyn’s shirt.
