AllFreeNovel
Share Us
When Malik pulled a robe out of the truck, I shoved myself back to my feet and allowed my body to shift back to my human form. I felt even more pathetic, more useless. Naked on the roadside. Teeth shorter and duller. Claws gone. On two feet, my muscles screamed with exhaustion more than they had when I’d been on four legs.
“Fine. I’ll go back with you,” I agreed bitterly, snatching the robe from him. I shoved my arms into it, then tied it at my waist. “But I can’t rest until I find them, Malik. If they were yours, you’d do the same.”
“They do not need to be mine.” Malik clapped a hand on my shoulder and held my gaze. “You are not the only one left restless. I will not stop searching, either, Xander. Not until your children are found.” He gave my shoulder a quick squeeze. “But you cannot waste your energy chasing the ghosts of taillights.”
I cast a final glance back down the highway before following Malik to his truck.
“You think wewillfind them?” I asked from the passenger seat as Malik made a U-turn.
It was the question on everyone’s minds—mine more than anyone’s.
I didn’t know whether I wanted him to tell me the truth or comfort me with a lie.
“They are your sons, Alexander Miller, alpha of the Evergreen pack.” Malik’s dark eyes were focused dead ahead. “I do notthinkwe will find them. I know we will.”
* * *
It took us half an hour to get back to civilization. We drove to Portersmith in mutual silence, cut only by the low hum of music on the radio and the rush of wind coming through my rolled-down window.
At the bottom of the hill, the town, bright and lively, wreathed the bay. The height of the summer vacation season had arrived. Wealthy humans drove the streets in pastel-colored jeeps and Range Rovers with beach chairs strapped to the roofs. Young couples rode around on shiny Vespas, clinging to each other’s waists, caught up in the thrill of summer love. Sailboats floated in the ocean, the sun reflecting off the bright white sails.
It was like nothing had ever happened at all.
For a place that looked like it belonged on a postcard, Portersmith felt like a nightmare that seemingly had no end.
This was Clinton Morrow’s territory—the home of my mother’s original pack. For decades, it had been the domain of my grandfather. Samuel Morrow: disgraced alpha, serial killer of humans, FBI’s most wanted, and now a wolf on the run.
I still couldn’t shake the thought that he had something to do with my sons’ kidnapping, though there was no proof of that.
Since he’d attacked Felicity and me on the day the boys were born, no one had seen him. No sightings of his crackpot doctor, either, or of Quincy Houghton, Melony’s feral father.
They may as well have blinked out of existence entirely.
And now, Melony had joined them and taken my sons with her.
As Malik slowed to take the turn toward Morrow Manor, which sat at the top of the hill and presided over it all, a round-hooded, red convertible with the top down blew past us. Two tan, blonde women in cat-eyed sunglasses and silk scarves rode up front, smiling and laughing. In the back, pudgy twin girls in ladybug print bathing suits turned to wave enthusiastically at us. Their pale pigtails whipped against their chubby cheeks as the car carried them away.
I raised my hand to wave back but couldn’t muster it.
The Amber Alert had gone out the same morning the boys were taken. All the people in Portersmith, humans and shifters alike, knew my sons had been kidnapped. They knew who was responsible. The posters were up all over town with their pictures and names, Rylan and Ryder, their tiny faces scrunched.
It was one of hundreds of pictures we’d taken of the boys. Alongside their photos was one of Melony, probably taken off some social media account. It was burned into my mind now. Her pristine blonde blow-out draped over her raised shoulder, and her eyes rimmed with thick fake lashes. Her smile was flirty in some kind of disgusting attempt at seduction as she stared at the camera, like she’d done nothing wrong at all.
All of Portersmith’s vacationers were probably gossiping about the abduction over mimosas, chatting about it between tennis matches, and speculating while they sunned on their million-dollar yachts.
To them, my missing babies were just a story. A thrilling subplot to their otherwise picturesque vacation by the sea.
Could I blame them, though? How many times had I turned on the news to a story about a missing kid or gotten an Amber Alert on my phone? That kind of thing didn’t happen in Evergreen. I couldn’t even recall the last time I’d heard of an abduction, let alone if the kid in question had ever been found.
Things like that never felt real until they were personal. Until it was your fucked-up story, your kids who were missing. And once it was personal, it was already too late.
News vans were still crowded at the gates of the manor like flies around dogshit. They’d arrived two days ago, shortly after the police showed up, and hadn’t left since. As we pulled up to the gates, reporters hopped from their vehicles and swarmed the truck, shouting questions and shoving their microphones through my open window.
“Mr. Miller! Over here!”
“Any news you can share with us?”
“Where do you think the boys could be now?”
