Chapter 109 The Echo of Erasure.

Chapter 109 The Echo of Erasure.
Abel Stone.

The pain hits me and it's like a grenade going off right behind my eyes and I hit the floor hard, my knees cracking against the hardwood but I don't even feel the impact because my skull feels like it's splitting open.

I scream, sounding like a dying animal and my hands claw at the rug trying to anchor myself but everything is spinning, the room is tilting completely out of control and it burns, god it burns like white-hot fire in my veins.

"Evie," I choke out and there's blood in my mouth, I bite my tongue that tastes like copper and rust and ash.

She's in agony, the bond is just screaming and thrashing and ripping me apart from the inside and I don't know what they're doing to her, I just know she's trapped and hurting and I can't reach her.

My wolf is howling, just throwing itself against the bars of my ribs trying to get out and tear his throat out but I'm completely useless, I'm miles away and she's drowning in pain.

I can't breathe. I can't think. I can only feel her terror like it's my own.

They're doing something to her mind, it feels like scraping, like someone dragging broken glass across my brain and trying to cut the tether.

I push back.

I throw every ounce of my strength, every bit of my Alpha power down the tether, flooding the bond with my energy to hold her down, to anchor her soul against whatever is tearing at it.

Hold on Evie, just hold on to me.

I push and push until my vision goes completely white and my heart is hammering so fast it feels like it's going to explode out of my chest.

And then it stops.

The screaming just stops completely and the silence hits me so hard.

For a second, for a horrifying second, I think she's dead.

I stop breathing and my heart stops beating and the world goes completely black like I'm falling into a grave and everything is just cold and empty and terrifying.

But the tether is still there.

It's quiet and it's heavy but it's there, throbbing with a slow steady pulse right in the center of my chest but it's so faint, like it's buried under a mountain of concrete.

I don't know what happened, I don't know if she's unconscious or if they broke something inside her mind and not knowing is tearing me apart.

I let out a ragged breath and collapsed onto my back, staring up at the ceiling while sweat dripped into my eyes and my whole body shakes.

The door bursts open, crashing against the wall like thunder.

"Abel!" Oliver is there and he drops to his knees beside me with his hands hovering over my chest like he doesn't know where to touch me.

"Alpha what happened? The wards just spiked and the whole house shook!"

I push myself up on my elbows and my arms are trembling so badly I can barely hold my own weight.

"They did something to her," I say and my voice sounds wrecked, like gravel grinding on glass. "A psychic attack, they were trying to sever something in her mind."

Oliver goes pale and he sits back on his heels. "Did it work? Did they break the bond?"

"No." I sit up fully and scrub a shaking hand over my face. 

"No, the bond held, I pushed my energy through and anchored her but now she's just gone silent, completely silent."

I push myself off the floor and stagger to my desk, leaning heavily against the dark wood because my legs feel like water.

"I need to get her out of there Oliver, I need to rip that building down to the foundation."

"We will," Oliver says, standing up and coming to stand beside me. "But we can't just storm Serenity Hills, Abel, it's a fortress and Margaret is there and they have security protocols we haven't mapped yet."

"I don't care about protocols!" I roar and a lamp on the desk shatters from the force of my voice, glass raining down on the papers.

"She's locked in a concrete box with a monster who just tried to fry her brain! I can't leave her there!"

"You have to for right now," Oliver says and his voice is calm but his eyes are terrified. "If we attack blind we risk her life and the pack's lives, we need a strategy."

I hate him for being right.

I hate the logic and the strategy and the waiting, it feels like drowning in tar and every second that ticks by is another second she's in Kane's hands.

"Get Marcus," I say pacing behind the desk like a caged beast. 

"Get Freya. I want blueprints of that facility, I want patrol schedules and ward signatures and I want them ten minutes ago."

Oliver nods and pulls out his phone, already dialing and barking orders into the receiver.

I walk to the window and press my forehead against the cold glass, closing my eyes and reaching down the tether.

I can feel her heartbeat, slow and steady and suppressed, but there are no emotions, no thoughts, no fear or anger, just a blank empty void.

I don't know how she's surviving it, I don't know if she even knows who she is right now and the thought makes my chest burn with panic.

My claws lengthen and score deep grooves into the windowsill, the wood splintering under my hands.

I picture Kane's smug face, leaning over her and whispering his sick lies and a red haze drops over my vision.

I'm going to kill him.

I'm going to take him apart piece by piece and I'm going to make it last for days.

Freya sweeps into the office ten minutes later with her robes flying and her mismatched eyes wide with panic.

"I felt the surge," she says, dumping a heavy leather bag onto the conference table. 

"The ley lines warped, what did they do to her?"

"I don't know," I say , turning away from the window. 

"It felt like they were trying to rip her mind apart and I pushed my energy through the bond to anchor her and then everything just went dark."

Freya curses in something that sounds like ancient Latin and starts pulling maps and crystals out of her bag.

"That's high-level coven magic," she mutters, shaking her head. “They could be using old blood spells, probably trying to wipe or suppress her neural pathways."

"Did it work?" Oliver asks worriedly.

"I don't know," I tell them, walking over to the table and leaning my weight on my hands. "The bond held but she's completely silent, I can't feel her emotions anymore just a faint heartbeat and I'm terrified they broke her."

I hate this, I hate entirely and absolutely everything about this.

I stare at the map, feeling the cold desperate weight of reality crashing down on me.

She's in there right now and I don't know what state she's in or if she even remembers my name.

Marcus runs into the room carrying three thick rolls of blueprints and he dumps them on the table next to Freya's crystals.

"Serenity Hills," Marcus pants, pointing to the sprawling architectural lines. "Built like a bunker, electrified fences and sub-levels with solid steel doors."

"I don't know where they're keeping her in there," I say. "But we are tearing it down."

"That's a high-security fortress," Marcus frowns, tracing a finger over the blue lines. "The walls are lead-lined and enchanted, magic doesn't work well down there and getting a team inside will be a bloodbath."

"I don't care," I say coldly. "Find the weak point."

"The weak point is the mother," Freya says softly and we all turn to look at her.

"Rachel is in that facility somewhere too," Freya taps a blank spot on the map. "Kane moved her to Blackwood but the transfer was a decoy, Margaret wouldn't let her prize leverage out of her sight, she's keeping Rachel close to keep Evelyn compliant."

"If we can find her mother, we can break Kane's leverage completely," Oliver says slowly. "But we have to get inside first without triggering a lockdown."

"How much time do we have?" I ask, my voice sounding hollow and dead.

"A few days," Freya says, packing her crystals back into her bag. "Kane will want to observe her, make sure whatever spell they cast took hold, but he won't be patient forever."

The thought of him touching her, looking at her while she's vulnerable and confused makes my vision go red again.

"Three days," I say and it's an Alpha command, heavy and absolute. "We hit the facility in three days."

"Alpha, that's not enough time to gather the northern allies—" Marcus starts to argue.

"I don't care!" I roar, slamming my fist on the table and the wood splinters under my knuckles. "I am not leaving her in that hellhole for a week, we will go in three days, get the strike teams ready and load the armory."

Marcus bows his head. "Yes Alpha."

He and Oliver scramble out of the room to start the preparations and Freya gives me one last sympathetic look before leaving me alone in the ruined office.

I sink into the leather chair behind my desk and bury my face in my hands.

The silence in the room is heavy and oppressive.

I reach down the tether again, very gently this time so I don't hurt her if her mind is fragile.

I can feel her there, a small warm spark in the middle of a vast freezing ocean.

She's completely silent and I don't know if she's sleeping or drugged or wiped clean and it's literally killing me.

I close my eyes and focus all my love, all my protective instinct, all my desperate yearning into a single thought and I push it down the bond.

I'm coming for you Evie.

Just hold on, I'm coming.

I don't know if she can hear me, I don't feel anything pushed back against the dark.

I sit up straight and wipe the sweat from my forehead, my jaw setting into a hard unforgiving line.

Kane Hellboud is a dead man.