Chapter 138
Blake
The encrypted radio at his hip shrieked, red emergency light strobing. Devon's voice crackled through, breathing hard: "Alpha, North Border Post Seven. Fresh claw marks in the snow. Three sets of wolf tracks heading toward the territory core. One of them..." He paused, and I heard real fear. "Step width over two meters, sir. Not one of ours."
My wolf surged forward so fast I nearly shifted right there. Two-meter stride meant a wolf easily twice the size of our largest warriors. An Alpha. A massive Alpha. On our land.
Asher's entire demeanor changed in a heartbeat, the guilt-ridden mate vanishing beneath the cold predator who'd earned his position through blood. His ebony-tobacco scent turned razor-sharp, cutting through the room's tension like a blade. "Assemble Combat Team Three. I'm there in five minutes. Blake, take Team Five and flank west."
I looked toward the ceiling, toward where Kara was supposed to be taking her ten-minute shower. Every instinct screamed at me to stay, to guard her, to never let her out of my sight again after what happened last time. "But Kara—"
"This is why we have to go." Asher cut me off, already moving toward the weapons cabinet. "If they breach the perimeter, she's in more danger. We end this threat, we keep her safe."
He was right. I hated it, but he was right. My wolf wanted to be in two places at once—defending our mate and hunting the bastards who dared invade our territory. The conflict made my skin feel too tight.
Asher turned to Cole, his expression softening just slightly. "You stay. Be with her. Whatever she says, whatever she does—don't leave her sight. Don't let her be alone."
Cole straightened immediately, mint scent solidifying with purpose. "I swear it. You two go. I'll watch over her."
The words should have reassured me. Cole was capable, devoted, and Kara feared him least of the three of us. But as I grabbed my tactical vest from the closet, my hands shook. The last time we'd left her alone—truly alone—she'd nearly frozen to death because we'd locked her out as punishment.
History had a cruel way of repeating itself in this family.
---
Cole
Eleven minutes.
That's how long it took for everything to go to hell.
I'd spent those eleven minutes carefully preparing the tray—soft cashmere pajamas in her favorite cream color, thick towels still warm from the dryer, a mug of hot chocolate with a small mountain of marshmallows because I'd noticed she always ate them first. And tucked beside the mug, that battered snow-wolf plushie she thought we didn't know about, the one she'd hidden in the back of her closet like a shameful secret.
My wolf had been pleased with the preparations, certain that these small acts of care would help soothe whatever wounds tonight had torn open. The bond hummed with her presence somewhere above me—distant but there, a silver thread connecting my heart to hers.
I knocked softly on the bathroom door, balancing the tray on one hip. "Kara? I brought you clean clothes and something warm to drink. Can I come in?"
Silence.
Not the comfortable silence of someone relaxing in a bath, but the wrong kind. The kind that made my wolf's ears flatten.
I knocked again, mint-ozone scent sharpening with the first tendrils of unease. "Kara? Are you okay?"
Nothing. Not even the sound of water running.
My hand was on the doorknob before conscious thought caught up, pushing open the unlocked door to reveal—
Empty.
The bathroom was completely, devastatingly empty. The marble tub bone-dry, faucets untouched, mirror free of steam. She hadn't showered at all. Hadn't even tried.
The tray slipped from my nerveless fingers, crashing to the tile floor in an explosion of porcelain and chocolate. Dark liquid spread across white stone like a bloodstain, marshmallows floating in the mess like tiny corpses.
"ASHER! BLAKE!" I didn't recognize my own voice, high and sharp with panic as I reached through our triplet bond. "She's not in the bathroom! She never showered! I can't find her!"
I threw my consciousness toward the mate bond, desperate for any sense of her location, her emotional state, anything. But what came back was... wrong. Fuzzy and distant, like trying to hear through water. Drunk-dizzy confusion. Bitter cold. And underneath it all, a flicker of something that made my blood run cold:
Fear.
Not the angry, defiant fear she'd shown in the car. This was different. Sharper. More immediate.
Something was very wrong.
---
The brothers' responses came instantaneously through the link, a chorus of alarm that would have been comforting if it wasn't confirming my worst nightmare.
"What do you mean she's not there?" Blake's voice in my head was pure snarl.
"Check the whole floor. Now." Asher's command crackled with Alpha authority even through the mental connection.
I was already moving, following the mint-sweet trail of her scent out of the bathroom and down the hallway. It led toward the main corridor, then... stopped. Just stopped, as if she'd vanished into thin air.
No. Not vanished.
Escaped.
The realization hit like a physical blow. She'd lied to us. Told us she'd shower, asked for ten minutes, and used that time to run. My wolf howled in denial, mint scent flooding the corridor with distress pheromones. She wouldn't. She couldn't. We were her mates, her protection, her—
"She's scared of us."
Blake's thought cut through my spiral, raw and broken. "She's so fucking scared that she'd rather face a blizzard than stay in this house with us for ten more minutes."
I wanted to argue. Wanted to insist that we'd been trying so hard, that we'd changed, that we loved her. But the empty bathroom and that faint thread of fear in the bond told a different story.
We'd broken her trust so thoroughly that even the mate bond—the biological imperative that should have drawn her to us like gravity—wasn't enough to make her feel safe.
Through the mental link, I felt Asher and Blake abandon their border patrol preparations, both of them shifting to wolf form in perfect synchronization. The territorial threat could wait. Our mate was missing, possibly hurt, definitely terrified.
And it was entirely our fault.