Chapter 46 Caught Off Guard

Chapter 46 Caught Off Guard
Bram

The storm dies at last, leaving the woods dripping. My fur hangs heavy, plastered to my body, but I shake out as much water as I can before pushing forward. Every tree looks the same in this washed-out world, bark slick and black with rain, but I find my bearings when the wind switches directions. It carries the mingled scents of Song territory, which lies somewhere to the east. If I keep running, I’ll reach it before dark. 

I push harder, my muscles burning as I leap fallen logs and splash through puddles. My paws strike a rhythm, and I’m thinking of Lyra. She’ll be pacing by now, worried I didn’t return when I said I would. I promised her I’d be careful, and I still chased a scent too far and lost myself in storm and shadows. The thought of her face, the disappointment in her eyes, drives me faster.

Then suddenly there’s a new scent drifting toward me. Definitely female and very close. My chest seizes, and I skid to a halt, mud sliding under my paws, catching the lilac-sweet thread of her scent twining through storm-washed juniper. Relief nearly knocks me off my feet. Lyra came looking for me. Of course she did.

I follow her trail. My heart is pounding as I weave through dripping undergrowth until the trees open to a clearing. She’s there, standing at the edge, hair wild from the storm, soaked clothes clinging to her. 

Why in Goddess’s name would she come like this? Alone, vulnerable, and in human form?

I bound forward, shifting mid-stride. My body shudders with the familiar stretch and snap of bone, fur giving way to skin. I pull on the clothes stashed in my satchel. 

“Lyra,” I rasp. 

We run toward each other, and I catch her against my chest, locking my arms around her, sweeping her off her feet. As I set her back down, she  buries her face in my shoulder.

“I thought I’d lost you,” she breathes, words breaking with relief. “The storm was terrible.  Bram, I was so afraid.”

I hold her tighter, pressing my lips to her wet hair. “I told you I’d come back. You shouldn’t have come out here  like this. What if you’d been caught? Or worse?” 

“I couldn’t wait any longer,” she says. Her voice is muffled against me. “I had to find you.”

Her words blur into the patter of dripping leaves. I take a moment to breathe. It’s just her and me, wrapped in this desperate relief. And then—

A coarse black sack yanks down over my head, choking out the light. I grunt, instinct driving me to fight, but a pair of strong hands latch onto me from behind, shoving me off balance. I thrash, my fists striking out, but very quickly, my arms are yanked behind me and bound with rope. Next, they tie my ankles together.

“Lyra! Are you okay?” I scream. 

“Lyra is fine. Don’t worry about Lyra,” a male voice sneers next to my ear, but I can’t see anything. 

“Get him in the cart,” another voice snaps.

“Who the fuck are you?” I roar, struggling harder. 

The ropes bite into my skin, cutting off my circulation as I’m dragged across the ground, lifted, and tossed into something solid and wooden. Slats creak, wheels rumble beneath me. My head cracks against the side, pain sparking behind my eyes.

“Lyra!” I shout through the mind-link, forcing my thoughts outward. “Where are you? Did they get you, too?”

Nothing. No answer, not even the feeling of her presence in the mind-link. Nothing but the grind of wheels and the pulse of fear pounding in my skull.

Panic claws up my throat. I fight harder against the ropes, the cart rocking with my movements. If she’s here, if they’ve taken her, too, Goddess help me, I’ll tear them apart with my bare hands.

The cart lurches forward, wheels rattling over uneven ground as men’s voices rise and fall–harsh and unfamiliar. I strain to pick out a name, a word, anything that might tell me who holds me, but their speech is muffled. I don’t know who these men are or what they want, and worst of all, I don’t know if Lyra is still with us right now or if she’s safe. 

Then I hear Lyra’s voice, not in the link, but aloud. Her words are precise, deliberate, spoken to the men around me as if coordinating and not panicked or desperate. Lyra would never speak like this. She’d be furious, shouting, throwing herself into danger to reach me. 

Dread invades my every cell. The embrace in the clearing, her scent, the warmth of her body pressed against mine—it was all a lie. I’ve been tricked. Every instinct tells me it wasn’t Lyra. My stomach twists with betrayal as the truth claws its way through my panic: I’ve been fooled.

I trusted her, I believed it was her, and that trust led me straight into their hands. My mind races, trying to reconcile what I felt with what I hear now. This stranger looks so much like Lyra she very easily manipulated me into letting my guard down, and it worked flawlessly. The woman I held, the one I thought was my mate, was a stranger, a mirage of someone I love, wielded as a weapon.

And worse, Lyra is still back in Song territory. She might be safe, but she might have been captured or even killed. She could already be in their control, unaware of what’s happening to me. I have no way to reach her, no way to know, and the terror is suffocating.

Every plan I had, every certainty about Song Pack, about her, about us, collapses in an instant. I’m left in darkness, my mind spinning, trying to trace her scent, to reach her through the mind-link, to figure out who did this and why. 

“Stop!” a voice commands. The cart shudders to a halt, and I’m pulled out, stumbling. A sudden strike hits the back of my head, and consciousness slips away.