Chapter 255 255
Sabine POV
Something had changed.
Something had snapped, shifting the air inside the lake house from calm and peaceful to sharp and terrifying. The tranquillity was gone, replaced by frantic movement and an undercurrent of fear that prickled along my skin like static before a storm.
Oh shit.
Had he escaped?
“I want to know how this is possible,” Damien roared into the phone, his voice echoing through the space. “My cells are impenetrable.”
Maurice all but shoved me inside, and panic clawed at my chest. I didn’t want to be here. The atmosphere had turned hostile thick and volatile, like thunderclouds gathering before a violent strike.
I didn’t need a wolf to know Damien was furious. This was a dangerous kind of anger.
I watched Aurélie rejoin him, returning from the lounge where she’d turned on the television for the children. She didn’t flinch once at the shouting or the profanity spilling from Damien’s mouth. She simply took her place beside him, calm and steady amid the chaos.
I moved instinctively toward the children, who were thankfully being kept out of it, when Maurice’s hands clamped firmly around my hips, halting me in place.
“I’m just going to sit with the kids,” I said quickly. “I can’t really help here.”
He studied me for a moment, his gaze sharp and searching. My heart pounded so loudly I was sure he could hear it but he must have chalked it up to shock, because he eventually released his grip.
I went to the lounge.
Florence was already seated with the children. I stood behind the couch, pretending to watch the cartoon playing on the screen, though my attention was fixed entirely on the voices behind me.
“What’s happened?” Aurélie demanded.
“He’s escaped,” Damien said tightly. “I felt two pack links snap. He’s killed two of my men.”
My stomach dropped.
Oh no. I hadn’t meant for this to happen. Maybe this hadn’t been such a smart idea after all.
“What? How?”
“I’m finding out now. I want guards on full border patrol around the lake house. Notify our alliances put everyone on alert. Why does this shit keep happening?” He slammed his hand onto the table.
I flinched despite myself, even though I knew I wasn’t supposed to be listening.
“I don’t understand,” Aurélie said. “He was chained. Do you think there was an internal breach? One of your warriors?”
“No!” Damien roared. “Not after Geneviève and that weasel. I made sure my men were loyal watched closely.”
Geneviève.
And that weasel.
The young man who had taken me from my apartment was that who he meant? Geneviève had never said he belonged to Damien’s pack.
I kept my face turned toward the television, forcing myself to focus on the animated dogs bounding across the screen. They were loud anyway. There was no real way not to hear what was happening.
“I told you we should have killed him before we left,” Aurélie hissed, her voice low and lethal.
“I know, sweetheart,” Damien replied. “I’m sorry. I should have listened.”
“If the kids are in danger”
“I won’t let anything happen to you or the children,” Damien said firmly, trying to soothe the edge of panic creeping into her voice.
“Alpha,” Lucas interrupted, and I had to fight the instinct to turn around.
“CCTV picked him up five miles from our pack lands. The bastard’s fast. It’s him he’s getting into a vehicle.”
“Zoom in on the driver,” Damien ordered.
I couldn’t see them, but I knew they were all clustered around a laptop. The lake house was a retreat, not a command centre. It lacked the technology and infrastructure of the main pack house.
“Fuck me,” Damien growled. “It’s her. It’s Geneviève.”
My heart slammed violently against my ribs.
Why was she so close to the Bloodnight pack lands? Why had she picked Stéphane up? He was supposed to disappear to start over. To hide.
“I want everyone on full alert,” Damien snapped. “Aurélie, we need to return to the Darkvale main pack house. It isn’t safe here.”
“I’m always safe here, Damien,” she replied. “She wouldn’t dare come here. I just don’t understand how he got out.”
The blood roared in my ears. My body went rigid as awareness washed over me someone was looking at me.
I didn’t turn.
I didn’t look.
I didn’t want to see the disappointment waiting in his eyes.
“Bee?” Maurice’s voice cut through the room, calm amidst the rising panic. “Do you know something?”
The silence that followed was suffocating. Every gaze burned into my back.
“Bee,” he said again, more carefully. “If you have something to say… say it now.”
He must have felt my heart racing, the panic flooding my body.
Slowly, I turned to face them all.
At first, I couldn’t speak. My tongue felt too large, my mouth too dry.
Then Damien growled low and threatening and the sound forced the words from me.
“I just wanted to give him a fighting chance…”
I didn’t know what happened next. I never got to finish the sentence.
The air was ripped from my lungs.
A hand huge and unforgiving clamped around my throat, cutting off my ability to breathe as my body was slammed backward into an internal brick wall. Pain exploded across my back.
“What the fuck did you do?” Damien roared inches from my face, his eyes a dark, stormy blue, his teeth bared ready to tear into my flesh.
I tried to speak, but his grip was iron. I clawed desperately at his hand, fighting for even a shred of air.
From the corner of my eye, I saw Florence scoop up the children and bolt for the stairs
and then my head was slammed back against the wall.
White-hot pain detonated through my skull.