Chapter 172 172

Chapter 172 172
  MILLICENT
  Liam walked in with this composed aura. His hair was slightly messy, his shirt rolled at the sleeves like he’d been trying too hard to look casual. He saw me, smiled wide, and slid into the seat across from me like we had been doing this forever.
  “Told you this school is crazy,” he said, dropping a notebook onto the table. “I swear half these rules are written in another language.”
  I laughed under my breath. “That’s because half of them are.”
  He leaned closer, elbows on the table, chin tilted like he was studying me instead of anything academic. “So… show me your world then. Since you’ve lived here longer.”
  “We’re in a library, Liam. Not a tour bus.”
  “Still counts,” he grinned. “Teach me something.” I rolled my eyes but opened my notebook anyway. “Okay fine. So this section—”
  “No wait,” he said, nudging my hand lightly. “Before school stuff… are you okay? You’ve been off since earlier and I meant what I said. Your wolf is restless, I can tell.”
  “It’s nothing,” I lied, rubbing at my temple. “Just everything happening at once.”
  “Well,” he shrugged, “I’m good at distractions.”
  And somehow, we slipped into this weird bubble of banter where he kept saying ridiculous things about how the school “smelled like arrogance and generational trauma,” and I kept snorting louder than I meant to, which earned us three librarian glares and one throat-clearing from a guy trying to read.
  But halfway through a story Liam was telling me about a history class he barely survived, something shifted.
  My vision that was already really fuzzy got worse. Like someone kept adjusting a lens in my brain.
  I blinked hard. Then again.
  My skin prickled, an itch crawling under it like tiny sparks were dancing across my arms. I rubbed at my wrists but it only got worse, spreading to my shoulders, my spine, my whole body.
  Liam paused mid-sentence. “You okay?”
  “Yeah,” I breathed, swallowing. “Just… itchy.”
  “You look pale,” he said, leaning closer. “What’s wrong?”
  “My wolf,” I mumbled, trying to stay upright as the table blurred for a second, then steadied. “She must be… acting… up—”
  The itch turned into heat.
  The heat turned into tightening.
  My lungs forgot how to pull air properly.
  Liam stood, panic flickering in his eyes. “Milicent. Look at me.”
  “I’m fine,” I whispered, grabbing the edge of the table as the floor swayed under me. “Just… give me a second… I think it’s—”
  The words tangled in my throat. My heart thudded fast and before I knew it, everything dipped sideways.
  Liam’s voice echoed from far away. “Milicent!”
  I tried to answer. But the world slipped. Like someone turned the lights off inside my skull.
  And I fell straight into the dark.
  ZAYNE
  The plan was simple; get in the car, leave Silverfang behind for a few hours, head toward Dranox territory, gather intel, get back before dinner. Clean. Efficient. No distractions. Except Milicent wasn’t answering my texts and that already took the “no distractions” part and threw it into the nearest fire.
  I sat in the passenger seat, fingers tapping against my thigh as I stared at my phone for the millionth time, waiting for her name to pop up on the screen. Nothing. Not even a stupid emoji. She never ignored me this long. Not unless she was mad. And she wasn’t mad. At least… she wasn’t before I left the dorm.
  Xander slid his sunglasses up onto his head and started the engine, but he wasn’t humming like he usually did before a mission. He kept glancing sideways at me like my panic was leaking into his skin.
  “You’ve been checking your phone every five seconds,” he muttered. “Did you piss her off or something?”
  “If I pissed her off I’d know. She’d have sent me a three-paragraph rant with zero punctuation.”
  Xander snorted. “She really texts like she’s charging per full stop.” But his smile faded fast, replaced by that unsettling frown he only ever got when something felt wrong down to the bone. “Zayne… I’ve got a bad feeling.”
  I lifted my head. “About what?”
  “About… everything,” he muttered, gripping the steering wheel tighter. “Maybe I should go to Dranox alone. You stay behind. Watch Milicent. I don’t like—”
  “No.” His brows shot up. “That was fast.”
  “We need to go back,” I snapped. He blinked. “What? Why?”
  “Do you feel that?”
  “Feel what?” I stared at him and he stared back.
  Then he froze. Exactly.
  The connection.
  Our bond.
  The thing that always hummed in the back of my mind like a heartbeat that wasn’t mine.
  It was gone. Like someone cut the invisible cord between me and her with one precise slice.
  Xander’s eyes widened. “No. No, no, no, don’t start. Zayne—try again.”
  I reached for it.
  For her.
  For that familiar warmth that always settled on my chest when she was near.
  Nothing. Just a hollow, cold nothing.
  “Turn the car around,” I ordered, voice cracking. “Now.”
  Xander didn’t argue. He spun the car so fast tires screeched across the pavement, and we shot back toward Silverfang like something was chasing us. Or like we were chasing something we already knew we were too late for.
  We parked halfway on the curb in front of the school because there was no time for neatness. Xander didn’t even shut the door. We ran—across the courtyard, through the front entrance, past a group of freshmen who jumped out of the way when they saw our faces. I didn’t care about the stares or the whispers. I only cared about finding her.
  “Milicent!” I called, pushing open every classroom door on our path. Empty. Empty. Empty.
  We sprinted to the cafeteria. Nothing. We went to her dorm. The bed was made. Her scent lingered but faint and stale like she hadn’t been there in hours.
  “Her scent trail is cut off,” Xander said through gritted teeth as he sniffed along the hallway. “How the hell—who the hell can mask her scent like this?”
  My chest tightened. “Fiona. Call Fiona.”
  He nodded, pulling out his phone. I heard the shaky edge in his voice as he said, “Fiona? Where’s Milicent? Please tell me she’s with you.”
  A pause. Then Xander’s face dropped.
  “She was at the library,” Fiona said loud enough that even I could hear it from the other side of the phone. “She was meeting Liam.”
  My stomach plummeted. Xander ended the call without a goodbye.
  We both moved at the same time, heading straight for the library, throwing the doors open so hard they slammed against the walls. The librarian shrieked something about rules but I didn’t even look at her.
  The table where Milicent had been sitting was empty. Her coffee cup was on the floor. Her notebook shut like she hadn’t even gotten to finish her notes.
  And her scent…
  Gone. Gone like someone wiped it clean.
  I grabbed my phone, hands shaking so hard I almost hit the wrong contact. It rang once.
  Then a black car rolled into the school grounds like the universe decided to answer me before the person on the phone even did.
  General Gregory Sawyer stepped out, dressed like he walked out of a war room and never left it. His coat flew behind him like a warning flag and his eyes scanned the courtyard like he already owned every brick in it.
  Xander and I ran out to him before he even shut his car door.
  “General Gregory—wait,” I gasped, standing in front of him. “It’s Milicent. She’s missing. We can’t find her anywhere. You—” my voice cracked hard enough I had to swallow twice. “You have a tracker on her, right? Please. You have to find her. Now. Please. She could be—”
  Gregory didn’t waste time pretending to be shocked. He turned and tapped his earpiece and spoke to someone on the other end. “Activate the sweep. Lock the school. No one in, no one out.”
  The ground practically vibrated under us as security units shifted into action. I stared at him like he just handed me back my lungs. “Thank you.”
  He didn’t look at me. He was too busy listening. Then he finally answered, “She’s still on school grounds.”
  My knees nearly buckled.
  “She hasn't left the perimeter,” he added. “The tracker hasn’t breached the outer line.” Xander let out a shaky breath. “She’s here. She’s actually here.”
  “Where?” I demanded. “Tell us where.”
  But Gregory ignored me, lifting his gaze toward the headmaster who came rushing toward us, breathless and red-faced like he thought he still had power in situations like this.
  “General Sawyer,” the headmaster panted. “Oh it's an honour to meet you but you can’t just lock down my school without notice—”
  Gregory turned to him so slowly with a cold stare. “If I see even a glimpse of your stupid face before I find my daughter,” Gregory said, “I will make you an example of what happens when anyone dares my family.”
  The headmaster swallowed so loudly I heard it from five feet away. “Go,” Gregory added. “Lock yourself in your office.”
  And the man actually did it. He spun around and ran like a terrified rabbit. Xander let out a breathless laugh. “Okay… I kinda love him.”
  But I didn’t have space in my chest for humor.
  Only fear.
  Only fury.
  Only the absolute promise that if anyone laid a hand on her, I’d tear them apart piece by piece.
  “Where do we start?” I asked. “Everywhere,” Xander said. “We search everywhere.”
  XANDER
  I swear the night felt like it swallowed the world whole—thick, restless, with this bitter taste of panic stuck in the back of my tongue as Gregory’s voice tore through the hall like a whip.
   He’d ordered every patrol, every beta, every person with lungs to move, but then he dragged Zayne and I into one of the abandoned classrooms, slammed the door so hard the windows jittered, and turned on us like a storm that grew teeth.
  “What the hell is going on,” he snapped, and it wasn’t even a question. It was a demand. Like he already knew there was an uglier truth behind everything.
  Zayne and I exchanged one glance and I could feel his pulse rippling into mine, the way our wolves kept pacing inside us.
   We told him everything in a rush. Not just about her disappearance but also Liam and all we knew on him. We also informed him on how Fiona said she’d been with Liam last. The moment I mentioned Liam’s surname and pack, Gregory’s expression shifted, like someone stabbed him in the memories. His eyes widened the slightest bit.
  For the first time ever, I saw fear hit him.
  General Gregory Sawyer; man carved out of iron, nightmares flinch from him... was scared.
  “Find my daughter,” he breathed, but it wasn’t a request. It was a sentence. “Find her now. By all means. I don’t care how.”
  Zayne stepped closer, his brows knotted. “Do you know what they want with her? Why Dranox pack would target her?”
  Gregory let out this harsh exhale, like someone punched truth out of him. “It’s a family matter.”
  Zayne and I froze. A cold, crawling type of freeze that didn’t come from weather, but from the type of secrets adults bury until they rot and explode. “Family?” I echoed. “General—what family?”
  But he didn’t elaborate. He just stormed out, barking orders like gunshots firing through corridors, leaving Zayne and I staring at each other like the floor tilted under our feet.
  Milicent never talked about extended families. And now suddenly it’s a whole damn family issue?