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“It’s all right,” Midas said. “Maya is getting a massage and some other spa treatments, and I’m lounging by the pool.”
“It could have waited until you got back,” Romeo said. That was only a week away, after all. Romeo hadn’t reached out to Midas, but he’d apparently been bored at the pool and decided to check on him.
“I said it’s fine,” Midas said. “Now tell me what’s going on. You could definitely have reached out to me.”
Romeo hadn’t said anything because he wasn’t sure what to say. He’d found his truemate, but she was lying about who she was and what she was doing. She’d been honest with him about her sister and her feelings about wolves, but then he’d done his own digging, and what he’d unearthed had shaken him to the core.
“I’m sorry,” Romeo said. “But I’m handling it.”
His eyes were unfocused as he stared at the dead grass peeking out from the melted snow, and then he sighed, rubbing the back of his neck and turning away from the yard. He was unsettled, and he couldn’t really put his finger on it.
“You’re not telling me everything. You can handle it, and I trust you to, but I still need to know.”
He walked to the couch and sat heavily. Pausing for a moment, he gathered his thoughts. As he opened his mouth, he gasped sharply as fear flashed through him.
What the hell?
“Romeo?” Midas prompted.
Romeo rose to his feet and let out his cat a little. Something was very wrong, but he didn’t know what. It was like he was afraid, but there wasn’t anything going on that would make him fearful.
A bolt of fear hit him again and nearly took his breath away.
Was it…Ashley?
He snarled.
“Midas, I’ll call you back.”
“What? What’s wrong?” Midas demanded.
“I don’t know. But I promise I’ll call you back.”
Romeo ended the call and raced for the front door, not even bothering to grab his coat. His feet hit the driveway and he paused, looking wildly around. The fear ebbed a little, giving him a moment to catch his breath. A vehicle drove by and he saw Ren and Thomas, two of the security team. Ren waved at him, and Romeo frowned, looking down the street.
His chest ached, his heart was working overtime as panic filled him. Then, just as swiftly as the panic had come, it disappeared and was replaced with profound loneliness.
Midas’s house.
He just had a feeling that something was wrong at the king’s home.
Romeo jogged toward the house, his worries confirmed as he saw Ashley’s car parked in the driveway. The front door was locked, as it should have been since Midas and Maya weren’t home. Romeo looked in the front window and saw nothing. He turned, inhaling and searching for Ashley’s sweet scent, but he didn’t find it.
“Ashley?” he called. He focused his hearing, wondering where she could be.
He stared at her vehicle. If she wasn’t in the house and she wasn’t outside, where was she?
Then a thought dawned on him.
No…they couldn’t have.
Could they?
He walked around the side of the house to the doors of a rarely used underground cell block installed by a previous king to punish ambush members. Midas had never used the cells, as far as Romeo knew.
The door was locked. He entered the code into the keypad and waited for the mechanism to unlock, and then he opened the heavy door, which creaked loudly.
“Oh no,” a soft, feminine voice whispered as fear, thick like a blanket, hit him.
