Chapter 7: Kieran

The scent hasn’t faded. That’s what’s fucking with me the most.

I can still smell her. Even now, as I pace the corridor outside the west wing, just a level down from where she’s supposed to be locked up tight, her scent clings to my senses like smoke after fire.

The bond is still quiet, but there. Latent. Humming under my skin like the soft click of a trigger that hasn’t been pulled. Every time I draw in a breath, it coils in my chest and burns like a warning.

My jaw aches from clenching it too long. The stone under my boots has worn thin where I keep dragging my steps back and forth, as if the motion will grind this chaos into something useful.

The guards are posted. The lock was reinforced. The warding runes are still etched into the doorframe. Every measure was taken to ensure she stayed put. I gave her until nightfall. A deadline, not a threat.

But it’s nightfall now.

And she’s not where I left her.

“She couldn’t have fucking vanished,” I mutter under my breath, running a hand through my hair, frustration building in waves sharp enough to drown in.

She was there this morning. She was still wrapped in that sheer gown, staring at me with defiance in her voice even as her hands trembled. She mouthed off, because that’s what she does. Because that’s what she is: a contradiction wrapped in sarcasm, layered under something I haven’t figured out yet. She makes jokes when she should be afraid. Smiles like she knows something I don’t. Stares at me like I’m a story she’s already read the ending to.

And now she’s gone.

I turn fast, my fist slamming into the stone column beside the window with enough force to send dust raining down from the arch above. My knuckles crack. Blood smears across my fingers, but I don’t feel it. Pain doesn’t register when my entire body is already crawling with tension that won’t ease.

The guard who was stationed at her door is kneeling now. Shaking. “Alpha, the door was untouched. The chain remains. She couldn’t have gotten past—”

“She did,” I growl, voice low and dangerous. “So unless you’re telling me the Omega grew wings and flew out a sealed stone wall, she had help. Or someone got sloppy.”

“No one entered,” he swears. “We would’ve seen it. No scent. No sound. Nothing.”

“She doesn’t have a scent trail,” I snap. “You all keep forgetting that. She came into this world without one, which means she can move through it without one. That makes her dangerous. Unpredictable. And it makes you a fucking idiot for thinking the usual protocols would apply.”

I stalk down the hall toward her room, my boots hitting the stone like gunshots. The corridor narrows near her door, lit only by the flickering light of the sconces on either side. I reach the threshold, grip the handle, and push the door open so hard the hinges scream.

The bed is empty. The chain is snapped—not unlocked, snapped—like someone ripped it with brute force. The cuff still dangles from the post, the metal twisted. No blood. No sign of a struggle. The room smells like her. Not just her scent, but her. The heat of her skin still lingers in the bedding, her breath caught in the air like she’d only just risen and left.

I take a step in and my eyes scan everything—every misplaced cushion, every crease in the sheets, every detail out of place—and I know.

She planned this.

She waited for the moment I let my guard drop, and she took it.

Clever. Braver than she should be. Stupid enough to think she could disappear from someone like me. And yet, something doesn’t fit.

I crouch by the bed and touch the snapped chain, running my thumb along the torn edge. It wasn’t sawed or cut. It was torn. That’s not Omega strength. That’s something else entirely.

The fire in my chest flares hotter.

I rise slowly, turning to face the door just as it creaks open and Kellan steps inside. His expression is unreadable as always, calm and cold like winter in a graveyard. He glances once at the chain, then at me.

“She’s gone,” he says. Not a question. A statement of fact.

I nod. “She’s not just gone. She vanished without a trace.”

“You sound less angry than I expected.”

I grit my teeth. “Oh, I’m furious. But this wasn’t clumsy. It wasn’t a panic move. She left like someone who knew exactly how far she could push before the cage bit back.”

Kellan crosses his arms. “Then she’s more dangerous than we assumed.”

“She’s something else entirely,” I say quietly. “She knew too much. From the moment she woke, she knew things no outsider should. And she’s not lying about that.”

“You think she’s not from here.”

“I know she’s not from here.”

Kellan watches me for a moment, then walks slowly to the window. He stares out into the night, where the estate grounds are cloaked in moonlight and silence. “Killian’s out tearing up the south quarter. He’s convinced she has accomplices. That this is a deeper attack.”

“If it is, it’s the strangest fucking one I’ve seen,” I mutter, jaw tight. “She didn’t act like a spy. She acted like she stumbled into the middle of a story she was already tired of reading.”

“And now she’s out there. Alone.”

I shake my head. “No. Not alone. Not really. The bond hasn’t broken.”

Kellan turns back to me, brow slightly raised. “You felt it.”

I nod. “Still do. Which means she didn’t reject it. Didn’t try to sever it. She’s running, but not from me.”

“Maybe she’s looking for something,” Kellan finishes for me.

My hands curl into fists again. “She’s not done here. Whatever this is, wherever she came from, she hasn’t found what she needs. She’s not finished.”

Kellan’s quiet a moment longer. Then he moves to the door. “We’ll find her.”

I follow him out, back into the corridor, the fire in my chest burning hotter with every step. Not just anger now, not just the need for control, but a hunger that hadn’t existed before her. A bond I didn’t ask for.

And underneath it all, the knowledge that no matter where she runs, no matter how far she gets, she won’t escape me.

She’s mine.

And I always get back what belongs to me.