Chapter 205: Rhys
I slammed the door to my office. 48 hours. 48 fucking hours, and there was no sign of Grace. I had immediately stormed her old pack, only to find it fucking empty again. No sign of literally anybody in the area. This time though, it had looked truly abandoned. Like people hadn’t been there in a month.
I set up multiple groups of warriors to search throughout the pack. I was done sitting back. I would not let them play their game any longer. We would not tolerate the disrespect of them taking our Luna Queen. My Luna Queen. They would regret ever touching her. They would regret ever crossing me. I will destroy them.
I sat down in my chair and began to type furiously. I would not beg for help but demand it from my subjects. Other Alphas would either step up or pay the price. I wasn’t willing to accept anything else. I was the fucking Alpha King. And they would remember why I of all people held that title.
I leaned back tiredly as I hit send. I didn’t have time to wait for answers; I would do it myself if I have to. I tugged on the bond between us, and I felt it shimmer slightly. That was the closest I had felt to her in 48 hours, and it was next to nothing. But at least she was alive, and that would be enough for me for now. It had to be.
I stood up, throwing my chair back. I didn’t have time to be sitting around. I needed to go back out there. My mate. My best friend. My brother. Were all missing. How the hell had it come to this?
I pushed my exhaustion away, and threw open the door, where Heather was standing, looking like she had been about to knock.
“Heather,” I said shortly.
“Rhys.” She responded, not taking my shit for even a moment.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“Sammy is asking for you.” She answered. “She hasn’t stopped crying. She won’t sleep. She needs you right now.”
“She needs Grace,” I corrected. “She needs her dad. She needs the people who aren’t here. I can’t help her.”
“You’re right. She needs them. But as you said, they aren’t here. You are. And you are responsible for them. Just because Grace is gone, doesn’t mean you stopped being responsible for them. Michael is blaming himself. Sammy is crying, and you’re self-destructing. So go be with the kids for a minute. Settle things down. Get some sleep. And trust your team to find a lead. Give the Alpha’s of other packs a chance to respond, and we come up with a more specific plan that will actually work instead of just anything you can think of in a sporadic nature.”
“I have to get her back!” My voice broke a little giving me away and if it was anyone but Heather, I might have been embarrassed, but Heather had seen me through every walk of life so far.
“I know.” She said softly. “I know. But not like this Rhys. Not like this.”
“Then how?” I asked.
“The way we’ve been handling everything lately. Together. As a team. We lean on each other. We all lost Grace. We all lost Leon, and Caleb. We all are trying not to fall. So we take it one step at a time. We hope someone will give us something useful. We’ll figure it out, but Grace does not want you to lose yourself. Not for her. Not for anyone.”
“How did you do it?” I questioned. “How did you not break?”
“I did.” She admitted. “I just did it behind closed doors. I only allowed myself a couple hours a day to break, the rest of the time, I had to be a mom, and a Beta. Just like right now, you have to be a Dad or Uncle and an Alpha King.”
“An Alpha King gets his people back in a timely manner.”
“The Alpha King has been doing everything he can for weeks now while dealing with every other problem that has come up since. We have a plan. We are going to follow our plan, and we will be successful. You aren’t leaving them high and dry. You aren’t going on a suicide mission. We will get them back.”
“How do you know?” I wanted to have her faith. I wanted to know that I would succeed in the end. I wanted to believe that I wasn’t a failure of a mate for letting this happen. But the doubt and self-hate kept creeping into my mind telling me that it wasn’t enough. It never was.
“Because I have known you nearly my whole life, Rhys. You do not fail. Right now, we have to trust that Grace, and Leon, and Caleb are strong enough to hold on, and they are going to trust that we can get them out without burning the world down. At least not at first. Not till we try everything else first.”
“They shouldn’t have to be though... And that if they decide to kill them?” I challenged. That was my worst fear. That they would decide that they no longer had a use for the three of them, and just kill them.
“They probably will if we are too hasty and not calculated.” She responded truthfully. “But they won’t kill Grace. They need her for some reason, even if there are a million possibilities of why.”
“That’s not reassuring.” I muttered. “They’re probably torturing her.”
“I know.” Heather gave me a small smile, but it wasn’t real, and we both knew it.
I knew she meant well. And unfortunately, I knew she was right. It didn’t make me feel better. But it didn’t make me feel worse either. There was something about knowing exactly where we stood that I wouldn’t call comforting, but it was calming.
“Get some sleep,” Heather told me, placing her hand on my shoulder. “Come on, let’s go see those kids, and tell them that you haven’t forgotten about them. Their waiting on you.”