Chapter 37 37
Aurélie POV
I couldn’t focus. Not truly. Every second I remained like this, restrained in human skin, I risked exposing our entire shifter community. My wolf needed out needed to scour the area, to scent the air for clues only she could find. She clawed restlessly inside me, frantic and insistent, while I fought to keep her contained.
She whined in my mind, her distress raw and aching, desperate to have her pup back in her arms.
I had never been away from Dominique or Delphine like this. Not once. Not even for a single bedtime.
I was always there. Always the one who tucked them in. Their constant. Their safe place.
Was he alright? Was he hurt
No. I cut the thought off sharply. I couldn’t afford to think like that.
My gaze drifted back to the fallen warriors sprawled on the ground before me. Cold. Still. Why hadn’t I felt it? Why hadn’t the pack link screamed in my chest when they died?
I was supposed to feel it. That was one of my duties as Alpha to feel every member of my pack. Their joy. Their pride. Their pain. Their sorrow.
Their deaths.
How long had they been lying here?
“The note, Théo. Take the note,” I ordered sharply.
He had placed it on the ground, his movements sluggish, his focus shattered. His eyes were locked on the bodies of his comrades skilled warriors cut down execution-style, shot cleanly through the head.
The note had to come with us. We could have it examined by our own forensic contacts. If the police found it, they would escalate this into a kidnapping investigation involving a child. That would slow me down. Interfere. Distract from what really mattered finding Dominique and destroying whoever had done this.
“Alpha, Fabrice is here.”
Théo’s voice brushed against my mind-link as a warning, though I had already heard it the heavy, rapid footfalls approaching. Sirens wailed in the distance, already starting to fade as the authorities closed in.
I needed to go.
I needed to find my son.
“Aurélie?”
Fabrice’s eyes flashed briefly, his wolf surfacing, before he slid his sunglasses on. He said nothing. He didn’t need to. His gaze lingered on the two murdered pack members lying motionless at his feet his warriors.
“There was a note,” I said coldly through the mind-link.
I felt something inside me harden, darken. The soldier resurfaced. The ruthless, unyielding part of me I had buried for my children’s sake.
That part would get my son back.
That part would bring home the future Alpha of the Darkvale pack.
“What the fuck happened?” I roared later, my voice echoing through my office and around the circular meeting table. “Why didn’t I feel the link break? Why didn’t I feel their deaths?”
I had called an emergency council the moment I returned to the pack grounds.
But not before seeing my daughter.
I needed to hold Delphine to see her, purely for my own sanity. She didn’t understand why I was being so strange, why I kept kissing her cheeks and the top of her head, why I refused to let her leave my sight.
She was in the kitchen with Miss Lambert, both of them guarded by two warriors I had personally ordered to stay with them at all times. No exceptions.
“This was a targeted attack,” I continued tightly. “Did they know where Dominique was going? Or was it sheer chance?”
Dominique and I had only planned the cinema today. No one else should have known. Unless someone inside the pack was leaking information or someone had been watching our movements closely.
“We don’t know yet, Alpha. We’re still trying to source intelligence” Théo began.
“That’s not good enough!” I snapped, cutting him off.
I forced myself to breathe. In. Out.
Slowly, I took my seat again, though my hands trembled violently from the adrenaline still coursing through me.
“Are we absolutely certain our borders are secure?” I asked more quietly. “That we haven’t been watched?”
I leaned forward, pressing my face into my hands as a sharp ache pulsed behind my eyes.
Fabrice remained at the scene. He was coordinating with the police before shifting discreetly into wolf form to track the area searching for anything they might have left behind.
Anything that could lead me to my son.