Chapter 144
Kara
The world came back in fragments—cold metal beneath my cheek, the acrid burn of chemicals in my nostrils, and a throbbing ache that radiated from the base of my skull through every nerve in my body. I tried to move and discovered my hands were bound behind my back with something that bit into my wrists like steel teeth, my ankles wrapped so tightly in rough rope that my feet had gone numb, and my mouth sealed with industrial tape that tasted of adhesive and fear.
The vehicle beneath me lurched over what felt like rough terrain, each jolt sending fresh waves of nausea through my stomach. I forced my eyes open despite the way the motion made my vision swim, trying to catalog every detail through the fog of whatever they'd used to drug me. The smell—sweet and sickly beneath the chemical sharpness—had to be chloroform, the same scent that had filled my lungs on the roof before everything went dark.
Asher. Blake. Cole.
I reached for our bond desperately, trying to push past the strange numbness that seemed to muffle everything. The connection that should have been bright and immediate felt like trying to shout through water, my mental voice barely a whisper against whatever was blocking me. "Asher... Blake... Cole... help me..." The words echoed in my own head, pathetic and small, and I had no way of knowing if they reached my mates or simply dissolved into the void.
My throat tightened with panic. Don't think I ran away. I didn't leave you. Please find me. The thought repeated like a mantra as I struggled to keep my breathing steady through my nose. They had to know I wouldn't choose this. After everything—after the marking, the engagement, the promises—they had to understand that this silence wasn't rejection.
The three points where their teeth had claimed my neck began to burn, a sharp counterpoint to the dull ache everywhere else. Even through whatever was suppressing our bond, the marks responded to my distress, sending pulses of heat that felt almost like their presence. Almost, but not enough. Not nearly enough.
I tried to shift position and felt something cold and heavy around my throat. My fingers, numb and clumsy behind my back, found the edge of what felt like a metal collar, its surface slick and chemical-smelling. The moment I touched it, my wolf—who should have been raging, should have been tearing at whoever had done this—remained eerily quiet, pressed down by whatever technology encircled my neck like a vice.
The realization hit me with the force of a physical blow: they'd found a way to suppress not just my ability to shift, but to cut me off from the very thing that made me whole. Without my wolf's strength, without the bond to guide my mates to me, I was just a human girl bound and helpless in the back of a moving vehicle, being taken somewhere I might never return from.
No. I forced the word through my mind with all the determination I could muster. No, I'm not giving up. I survived ten years in that house. I survived their cruelty and Victoria's hatred. I survived being thrown in that frozen river. I will survive this too.
The truck hit another pothole and I bit back a whimper as my shoulder slammed against the metal floor. Through the pain, I tried to focus on gathering information. The engine sounded like a diesel, probably a cargo van or truck. The cold was intense even through my thin dress—we were still in Alaska, then, or somewhere equally frozen. The journey had been going on for... how long? Twenty minutes? An hour? Time felt elastic and strange, my drugged mind unable to track it properly.
Voices filtered through from the cab, speaking rapid Russian. I strained to catch the words, grateful for the months I'd spent teaching myself the language from library books, driven by some instinct I hadn't understood at the time. Now, lying bound in the dark, that decision felt like fate.
"Boss wants her alive and intact for delivery," came a high, nervous voice that made my skin crawl. "But he didn't say we couldn't make the transport a little... uncomfortable."
"Don't even think about it, Alexei." This voice was deeper, colder, carrying the weight of someone used to violence. "Remember what happened with Scarlett Reeves? Boss just wanted to question her and you got too rough. She died, and we had the entire West Coast packs hunting us for months. This one is the fated mate of Silver Frost's three Alphas. Her value is a hundred times that washed-up actress."
My heart stopped. Scarlett. They were talking about Scarlett Reeves, the actress who'd gone missing, whose disappearance had been linked to my mother. These were the same people. The same monsters who'd—
"Those three spoiled Alpha princes, Viktor?" The nervous voice—scoffed. "What are they compared to—"
"You can tell Marcus Sterling's sons that to their faces if you want to be torn apart in three seconds," the cold voice—Viktor—interrupted. "Now shut up and focus on the route. If we're intercepted before we reach the safe house, Boss will do worse than kill us."
The conversation lapsed into tense silence broken only by the rumble of the engine. I lay there in the dark, processing what I'd heard with a clarity that cut through the drug haze like ice water. They knew exactly who I was. They knew about my mates, about Scarlett, about everything. This wasn't random. This was targeted, planned, professional.
And somewhere in the web of connections—my parents, Scarlett, Konstantin's criminal empire—I was a piece they thought was valuable enough to risk infiltrating Silver Frost territory to steal.
The vehicle began to slow, and my pulse spiked with fresh terror. Through the ringing in my ears and the pounding of my heart, I heard the crunch of gravel under tires, then the squeal of brakes as we came to a complete stop. The engine cut off, leaving only the howl of wind and the settling tick of cooling metal.
Heavy boots hit the ground outside. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to prepare myself for whatever came next, even as every instinct screamed at me to fight, to run, to do something other than lie here waiting like prey.
The back doors of the truck screeched open, flooding the space with harsh light that stabbed through my eyelids. I forced myself to look, to see my captors clearly, to memorize every detail that might help me survive this.
Two figures stood silhouetted against the grey Alaskan sky. The one on the left was lean to the point of gauntness, his movements jerky and nervous as he pulled out a cigarette with shaking hands. Alexei. The one on the right was massive, easily taller than Blake, with shoulders that blocked out the light and eyes that looked at me with the same detached interest one might give a piece of furniture. Viktor.
"Well," Alexei said in accented English, his gaze sliding over me with an expression that made my stomach turn. "The future Luna doesn't look so impressive all trussed up like a Christmas turkey, does she?"