Chatper 147

Chatper 147
AUSTIN

I feel it before I see it.

The bond detonates inside my chest like a struck match—panic, white-hot rage, terror so sharp it steals my breath. It’s Aria. And it’s not fear for herself.

It’s fear for the twins.

I’m already moving before my mind catches up, boots pounding stone as I break from the perimeter and sprint toward the main building. Behind me, I hear Adam shout something—my name, maybe—but it blurs into the roar of blood in my ears.

No. No. No.

Aria is faster than I’ve ever felt her through the bond, a streak of fury pulling me forward like a leash. I take the steps two at a time, shouldering past a delta who barely has time to register me. The door to the residential wing is open.

That alone makes my stomach drop.

I reach the nursery seconds after she does. I don’t need to look at the cribs to know.

They’re empty.

The room feels wrong—too quiet, too untouched, like a stage set after the actors have fled. Aria stands in the center of it, shoulders rigid, breath coming in short, savage pulls. When she turns to face me, my heart stutters.

Physically, she’s the same woman I love. Same dark hair pulled loose, same blood on her knuckles, same wild eyes.

But something inside her has shifted.

There’s a stillness to her rage now. A terrifying clarity.

“They took them,” she says.

Not screamed. Not sobbed.

Stated.

The bond flares again—raw grief, molten fury, an iron certainty that makes my chest ache.

Adam arrives behind me, skidding to a halt when he sees the room. I feel his pain hit the bond like a shockwave. But Aria doesn’t look at him. She doesn’t look at me again either.

She’s already turning away.

“We’re going to find Alaric,” she says. “Now.”

And then she runs.

Not blindly. Not recklessly.

Purposefully.

I chase her back out into the night, heart hammering, fear clawing at my ribs so hard I think it might crack them open. My sons. Matteo. Leon. Their names echo through my skull like a prayer and a curse.

Outside, the battlefield is still chaos—fewer attackers now, retreat already starting—but Aria doesn’t slow. She hits the open ground and then—

She shifts.

I’ve seen her transform before.

This is different.

Her body moves with lethal grace, bones shifting seamlessly, power rolling off her in waves. Dark fur ripples along her arms and spine, eyes burning with silver fire. Vampire speed coils under werewolf strength, controlled, honed, terrifying.

She doesn’t roar.

She doesn’t lose herself.

She becomes something else entirely.

A weapon.

Pride slams into me so hard it almost knocks the breath from my lungs.

“That’s my mate,” I growl, and then I shift too.

The world snaps into sharper focus—sounds crystal clear, scents layered and precise. Adam is beside me a heartbeat later, his own transformation just as controlled, just as devastating.

We fall into formation without a word.

Aria is ahead of us, a force of nature carving a path through the remaining attackers. But I notice something immediately—something that tightens my chest even as it terrifies me.

She’s not killing them.

She disables with brutal efficiency. A snapped wrist. A shattered knee. A precise blow to the throat that drops without ending a life. Vampires go down stunned, werewolves pinned and restrained.

She’s hunting information.

She’s hunting him.

I take down a vampire lunging for her flank, ripping him off his feet and slamming him into the ground. Adam handles two more in fluid, merciless motion. Around us, the deltas close ranks, momentum shifting fast.

Minutes pass. Or seconds. Time fractures.

The attackers begin to retreat in earnest now, pulling back toward the treeline, dragging their wounded, abandoning those they can’t save. Others are captured, forced to their knees, bound by Fares’s men with practiced speed.

I track Aria constantly, every sense locked on her.

Fear coils tight in my gut—fear that I won’t be fast enough, strong enough, ruthless enough to protect her. Fear that somewhere, right now, Alaric has my sons in his hands.

But alongside it, something else burns.

A fierce, unshakable pride.

She is magnificent.

Not reckless. Not broken by grief.

Focused.

When the last attacker falls or flees, I snap orders into the comms without slowing.

“All prisoners separated. Individual cells. No contact between them. Not a word exchanged.”

Acknowledgments crackle back instantly.

Aria skids to a stop near the edge of the clearing, chest heaving. She scans the dark horizon, nostrils flaring, searching.

He’s gone.

I feel her realize it through the bond—feel the disappointment, the fury sharpening again.

Adam and I come up on either side of her, flanking without touching. She doesn’t pull away. Doesn’t lean in either.

“He wanted this,” she says quietly. “The chaos. The distraction.”

“Yes,” Adam agrees, voice deadly calm. “And he wanted us to see what he could take.”

My claws dig into the earth.

“I swear to you,” I say, voice rough, feral, “I will rip the world apart to get them back.”

She finally looks at me then.

Her eyes are burning—but they’re steady.

“I know,” she says. “But we’re doing this my way.”

There’s no challenge in her tone.

Just truth.

I nod. Because she’s right. Because this isn’t about who’s strongest or fastest. It’s about who Alaric underestimated.

He thought her love would weaken her.

He was wrong.

As the last prisoners are dragged away and the night settles into an uneasy quiet, I stand there between my mates, heart torn open and reforged all at once.

I am terrified for my children.

But I have never been more certain of one thing in my life—

Alaric has no idea what he’s unleashed.

And when we find him…

He will learn.