Chapter 140
Asher
Empty wasn't the right word.
Violated was more accurate.
I stepped onto the terrace, my wolf's senses cataloging the scene with the cold efficiency of a predator assessing a kill site. The fresh snow had been disturbed—badly. Drag marks carved through the white powder, leading from the doorway to the iron railing that overlooked the four-story drop to the north gardens.
But it was what I smelled that made my blood turn to ice.
"Chloroform." The word came out flat, factual, even as my insides twisted. I crouched beside a patch of disturbed snow, bringing my face close enough to catch the sickly-sweet chemical scent that shouldn't exist anywhere near my mate. "High concentration. Enough to drop an adult wolf in thirty seconds."
My eyes started watering involuntarily—chloroform's effect on tear ducts—and I had to blink rapidly to clear my vision. There, half-buried in the snow: a black tactical cloth, the kind used to deliver chemical agents. The fabric was still damp, reeking of chloroform and something else. Something male.
I picked it up with careful claws, my ebony-tobacco scent flooding the terrace with enough Alpha rage to make the aurora overhead flicker and pulse. Every instinct screamed at me to shift fully, to hunt, to kill.
But I forced myself to stay analytical. To think like an Alpha, not a terrified mate.
"Blake. Cole." My voice came out strangled despite my best efforts. "Tell me what you see."
Blake was already at the railing, his massive frame silhouetted against the dancing green-and-purple lights of the aurora. His hands gripped the iron bars hard enough to make the metal groan, and when he spoke, his voice shook. "Claw marks. On the roof tiles."
He pointed, and I followed his gesture to the slanted roof section above us. Deep gouges in the old slate, four parallel lines carved by something—someone—with claws far larger than any Silver Frost wolf I'd ever seen. I pulled a tape measure from my tactical vest, hands steady through sheer force of will, and measured the spacing.
Fifteen centimeters between the outer claws. The average adult male in our pack measured ten to twelve centimeters.
"Two hundred pounds minimum in wolf form," I calculated aloud, my brain retreating into facts and figures because the alternative was screaming. "Probably more. This wasn't some rogue omega. This was a trained fighter."
"Asher." Cole's mint scent had gone sharp and brittle, all the warmth leached out by fear. He knelt in the snow near the railing, his pale fingers hovering over something I couldn't see from my angle. "There are boot prints. Human form. Military-grade tactical boots, pattern doesn't match any of our inventory."
I moved to his side, and my wolf's vision picked out what Cole had found: a clear boot print in the snow, treads designed for ice and stealth operations. Beside it, more disturbed snow. And in the center of it all...
Handprints.
Small, delicate handprints with five fingers splayed wide, pressed deep into the snow like someone had been clawing for purchase. Trying to fight. Trying to escape.
Kara's handprints.
The mate bond pulsed once—weak, distant, barely there—and then went completely silent. Not blocked, not shielded. Just... gone. Like the other end had been cut off, severed, erased from existence.
"No." The word tore from my throat, more animal than man. "No, no, no—"
I threw my consciousness at the bond with everything I had, pouring every ounce of my Alpha will into that silver thread that connected us. KARA. Answer me. WHERE ARE YOU?
Nothing. Just void. Empty space where her presence should have been, where I'd felt her confusion and fear just minutes ago. The silence was worse than any pain I'd ever experienced, worse than the wolf-bite that had nearly killed me at fourteen, worse than watching my father beat a challenger to death in the Alpha trials.
This was the silence of loss. Of having something vital ripped away and being powerless to stop it.
My legs gave out. I dropped to my knees in the snow where her hands had been, my own fingers fitting over the imprints like I could somehow reach back through time and grab her, pull her to safety, keep her.
The cloth fell from my grip, landing in the snow. Black fabric against white snow, soaked in chloroform and failure.
And then I broke.
---
Every window in Midnight Estate blazed to life simultaneously, the mansion erupting in light like a fortress preparing for siege. In the forests surrounding us, nocturnal predators fled in terror:
—A parliament of snowy owls exploded from their roosts in the pine trees, their panicked shrieks adding to the cacophony.
—Arctic hares bolted from their burrows, leaving erratic tracks in the snow as they fled my rage.
—A bull moose bellowed from somewhere in the northern woods, his challenge call trembling with instinctive fear.
Behind the house, the frozen surface of Ice River Bay cracked. The sound echoed across the valley like artillery fire, spider-web fractures spreading across the ice in response to the vibrations of my howl. In the distant mountains, I heard the low rumble of an avalanche—snow loosened by the sonic assault, tumbling down slopes in a white cascade.
Even the aurora seemed to respond, its colors intensifying until the entire sky burned with green and violet fire, writhing like something alive and wounded.
Through the pack's mental link, I felt the response: hundreds of voices crying out in confusion and terror as they jerked awake from sleep.
"Alpha what's happening?"
"That's Asher—something's wrong—"
"Luna—where's Luna—"
Low-ranking wolves collapsed in their beds, trembling under the weight of my grief-soaked pheromones. I felt them submit, felt their wolves bare their throats in instinctive deference even though I wasn't there to see it. The pack bond vibrated with their fear and confusion, but I couldn't bring myself to care.
Let them be afraid. Let them all be afraid. Because if I'd lost her—if she was gone, taken, hurt—then there was nothing left in me but the monster I'd always been.
Strong arms wrapped around me from both sides. Blake's gunpowder-leather and Cole's mint-ozone crashed over me in waves, my brothers' scents trying desperately to contain the explosion of my ebony-tobacco rage. They held me as I shook, as the howl finally died in my throat and left only broken gasps.
"I can't feel her." The words came out shattered, barely recognizable as my own voice. "The bond... it's empty. Cole, Blake, I can't feel her. Is she—" I couldn't say it. Couldn't even think the word.
Dead.
"No." Cole's mint wrapped around my senses, cool and absolute. "No, Asher. The bond is still there. I can feel it—just... blocked. Maybe it's the chloroform, maybe the distance, but she's alive. She has to be."
Blake's grip on my shoulders tightened to the point of pain, grounding me. "We'll find her. We'll tear this whole fucking territory apart, and we'll find her."
But the fear in his gunpowder scent betrayed him. We all knew what that chloroform meant, what those massive claw marks implied. This wasn't a random attack. This was planned. Professional. Someone had come to our home—our territory—and taken our mate right out from under us.
And we'd been too busy chasing shadows at the border to protect her.