Chapter 135 The Price of Rescue pt 1
Lucian
Vibrations carried up my legs as my paws beat the ground, dirt kicking up behind me. The few warriors who came with me were barely keeping up as I raced south, following the tug of the bond with Seren. Urgency beat in my blood as I pushed forward, every minute stretching into an eternity. With Duncan comatose, I was Seren’s only hope, and I refused to let her down.
I nearly stumbled over my own paws when her voice drifted through my head.
‘Lucian?’
‘Thank the Goddess! Luna! Are you okay? I’m coming for you now. I’ve been tracking you through the bond. Please tell me you’re okay.’
Relief flooded through me when she said she was mostly unhurt. I suspected Alpha Brian’s involvement, as the bond was leading me toward his pack, but having her confirm it was solid reassurance that I wasn’t going in the wrong direction. That feeling was quickly replaced by shock when I learned she was being held in a silver cell and still able to reach out to me. Our bond was defying all recorded instances of a Gamma-Luna bond, and was just more proof that our Luna was beyond special. The conversation finally broke, and I immediately reached out to those with me.
‘Luna Seren is being held in Alpha Brian’s dungeon. We’re heading towards Silver Rain Pack, so be on your guard for their scouts and patrols. We’ll need to figure out how to infiltrate and get her out.’
‘Is she okay?’ Sebastian asked.
‘She said she’s mostly unhurt, for now. We need to make sure it stays that way.’
We all put on a burst of speed, anxious to get to her as quickly as we could. After about forty-five minutes, we approached the outer edges of the Silver Rain pack territory and slowed, finding a spot where we could stop and shift back into human form. I pulled my cell phone from my pack and immediately called Julian.
“Lucian. Tell me something good.”
“She’s in Silver Rain, Julian. Alpha Brian’s behind the kidnapping. She managed to reach me through mindlink about an hour ago.”
“Thank the Goddess for that, at least. What do you need? Wait, let me put you on speaker. Gideon just walked in.”
“Where’s my sister, Lucian? Do you have her?”
“I know where she’s at, Prince Gideon. She’s in the dungeon in Silver Rain. She said she’s mostly unhurt.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” There was rustling on the other end of the line as whoever was there with them moved around.
“It means that I was able to mindlink her despite her being in a silver cell, and she was able to tell me she’s okay. I feel her exhaustion and fear through the bond, but very little pain, so I’m going to assume she’s not lying to me to keep us from worrying. We just got to the outskirts of the territory. I need to know what intel we have on Silver Rain’s pack patrols, the territory map, and dungeon access. I’ll go in blind if I have to, but I was kind of hoping that we wouldn’t.”
“If I remember correctly, Lucian, the dungeons are directly behind the pack house at Silver Rain,” Alpha Aidan’s voice came through, muffled as if he was sitting the farthest from the phone. “I visited there years ago. It’s definitely a separate building. And the pack house is on the northeast edge of their pack. It’s close to their main gate.”
“How far is that pack from here?” Gideon asked.
“Three hours by wolf, give or take. Double that if you go by car,” Julian answered.
“We’ll leave now and meet you there. You can’t infiltrate with four men,” Gideon said, his movements echoing through the phone as he made to do just that.
“We’re heading in as soon as we see a window, Gideon. You can head our way and back us up on the way home, if nothing else, but I’m not letting her sit in that cell longer than necessary if I have an opening to get her out.” Iason was pushing at me to move, to get to our Luna, and I knew there would be no way we could just sit outside the territory waiting.
“Fine. We’re still on our way.”
The background noise quieted as Gideon and whoever was with him left. Julian spoke. “Duncan’s still out; there’s been no change. I’ll pull what we have and send it to your phone. Don’t get caught, but if you can get her without waiting, then do it. There’s no telling what Alpha Brian will try to do to her now that he has her.”
“Bring our Luna home safe, Lucian. And you and our men, too,” Alpha Aidan signed off, and the line went dead.
A few minutes later, I had the most recent intelligence on the Silver Rain Pack in the palm of my hand. I was grateful that we had been looking into the pack because of the trafficking ring already—it meant we were armed with more information that we typically kept on other packs. We had an aerial map, tentative patrol routes, and a schedule. I pulled up the map, my men circling around me.
“Luna is being held here.” I pointed out the dungeon behind the pack house. “From what I can tell, we’re here. So we need to move further east to avoid the main gate. It doesn’t look like they have any fencing around the territory beyond the main gate, so we just need to slip past patrols.”
The men examined the map, then the terrain. I took a moment to check in on Seren again.
‘Luna?’
‘I’m here, Lucian.’
‘How are you doing?’
‘As well as expected. Where are you?’
‘Just outside the territory now. We’re trying to develop our plan to get to you. Have you been able to observe anything about the guard patterns there?’
‘I’ll do better than that. I’ve got a Forest Lake pack warrior in the cells with me. She’s been here for a month. She said there are three rotations, eight-hour shifts, two guards on each shift. Electronic locks—one guard mans the locks while the other handles the prisoners.’