Chapter 141
Blake
I forced myself to think tactically, to channel the rage into something useful instead of letting it consume me the way it wanted to. Asher was breaking down, Cole was barely holding it together, and if I lost my shit too, we'd never find her.
So I became the weapon we needed.
"The claw marks." I pulled away from my brothers, moving back to the roof's edge with predatory focus. My wolf's vision traced the path of disturbed tiles, following the trajectory. "He came from the north side. Used the pine trees to climb up—see how the branches are broken there?"
I pointed to the ancient evergreen that grew close to the tower, its upper limbs snapped and hanging at odd angles. Fresh sap gleamed in the aurora-light, and when I leaned out over the railing to look down, I saw gouges in the bark. Claw marks climbing up.
"He scaled the tree in wolf form, jumped to the roof." I was narrating as much for myself as for them, building the picture. "Grabbed her here—" I gestured to the handprints in the snow. "She fought. Not for long, but she fought."
Pride and horror warred in my chest. My fierce, stubborn mate had tried to resist even while drunk and terrified and facing an opponent who outweighed her by a hundred pounds.
"But he didn't jump down." Cole had moved to my side, his mint scent steadier now that we had a trail to follow. "The snow below is undisturbed. He took her across the roof."
I followed his logic, my eyes tracking to the north edge of the terrace where the old tower connected to a section of gabled roof that ran toward the tree line. "Through the canopy. Wolf form, jumping tree to tree. That's why there are no ground tracks."
Smart. Fucking smart. Whoever had taken her knew our territory, knew our patrol patterns, knew exactly how to move without leaving a trail we could follow.
Asher climbed to his feet, his ebony-tobacco scent still wild but starting to crystallize into something sharp and deadly. "We go after them. Now."
"It's a four-story drop to the ground." Cole's mint carried a hint of anxiety. "Even for us—"
"We jump." Asher's eyes had gone full gold, his wolf so close to the surface that his voice resonated with Alpha command. "We jump, and we track them, and we don't stop until we have her back."
He didn't wait for agreement. Didn't need it. He simply vaulted over the railing and dropped.
For a heartbeat, I watched my brother fall through the aurora-lit darkness, his body a black shadow against green-violet sky. Then instinct took over. I felt the partial shift ripple through me—eyes going gold, claws extending, muscle density increasing to absorb the impact—and I followed.
The world blurred into streaks of light and shadow. Wind tore at my face, stole my breath. The ground rushed up with terrifying speed, and I had just enough time to think this is going to hurt before—
BOOM.
The impact drove me knee-deep into snow-covered earth, the frozen ground cracking under the force. Pain shot up through my legs and spine, but my enhanced physiology absorbed most of it, bones and muscles flexing in ways human anatomy couldn't match. I stayed crouched for a moment, letting my body adjust, then straightened.
Beside me, Asher had landed in a similar crater, and a second later Cole dropped between us with a mint-scented thud that sent up a spray of white powder.
We stood in the north gardens, three deep holes in the snow marking our landing sites. Above us, the North Tower loomed like a sentinel, that open terrace door a dark wound in its side.
And somewhere out there in the frozen wilderness, someone had our mate.
"Next move?" I looked to Asher, waiting for orders even though every cell in my body screamed to just run, to chase blindly into the trees and tear apart anything that got in my way.
Asher's jaw was set, his expression carved from ice. "We seal the territory. No one in, no one out. Full lockdown."
---
Asher
The Alpha command network snapped to life in my mind, hundreds of mental threads connecting me to every ranked wolf in Silver Frost territory. I'd never used the full network before—it was reserved for war, for catastrophic emergencies—but if this didn't qualify, nothing did.
My consciousness expanded outward like a shockwave, touching every pack member simultaneously:
"This is Alpha Asher Sterling. Effective immediately, Silver Frost territory is under Level One combat lockdown. No one enters or leaves our borders under penalty of death. All warriors report to your designated stations. All civilians return to your homes and await further instruction. This is not a drill."
The response was instantaneous—a chorus of mental acknowledgments tinged with fear and confusion. Good. Let them be afraid. Fear would make them sharp, vigilant.
Through the bond, I felt Blake already deploying our forces with brutal efficiency:
"Combat Teams Three, Five, and Seven, full gear and assemble at the north gate in three minutes. Border patrols, increase frequency to every fifteen minutes. I want eyes on every inch of our perimeter."
"Check all vehicle logs for the past two hours," he continued, his mental voice cold and precise. "Anyone who left the territory in that window, I want their name, destination, and a full background check."
Cole took point on technical support, his mint presence weaving through the network with quiet intensity:
"Devon, pull all security footage from Midnight Estate's north side, timestamp 00:00 to 00:20. Thermal imaging drones, launch now—search pattern covering a ten-kilometer radius from the estate. Medical team, prepare for hypothermia and chemical exposure treatment."
I let them work, my own focus turning to the immediate problem: we were already too late.
Twenty minutes. Maybe thirty. That's how long it had been since Kara had climbed to that roof, since someone had grabbed her and vanished into the night. In that time, they could have covered serious ground—especially if they had vehicles waiting outside our border, which any competent extraction team would.
My fist clenched around the chloroform-soaked cloth I'd retrieved from the terrace, the chemical stench making my eyes water. Professional-grade tactical fabric. Massive wolf prints. No trail to follow. This was planned, executed with precision by someone who knew exactly what they were doing.
Someone who'd been watching us. Waiting for an opportunity.
And we'd given it to them by leaving her alone.
"Maybe..." Blake's voice was rough, his gunpowder scent flickering with desperate hope. "Maybe she just ran. Maybe she's at Sophia's house, hiding out for the night because she was mad at us. She was so angry in the car, and drunk, and—"
"Blake." I held up the cloth, and the hope in his scent died. "Chloroform. Professional tactical gear. Boot prints that don't match our inventory. Claw marks from a wolf twice our size." Each word was a nail in the coffin of that fragile hope. "And her scent ends here. Not at the driveway, not at the gates. Here."
Cole's mint had gone brittle again, all warmth stripped away. "The bond is silent. If she'd just run to a friend's house, Asher would still feel her. Even if she was blocking us out intentionally, there'd be something. Anger, fear, defiance. But there's nothing."
The truth settled over us like a burial shroud. This wasn't Kara running away. This was Kara being taken.
Blake's eyes flashed gold, his wolf rising to the surface with a snarl. "So someone kidnapped her. Some bastard came onto our land, into our home, and took our mate."
"Yes." The word tasted like ash.
"Then we find them." His voice dropped to a growl, gunpowder-leather spiking with violent intent. "We find them, and we kill every single one of them. Slowly."
I should have objected. Should have talked about interrogation, about getting information, about following proper protocols. But all I could think about was Kara's terrified face as someone pressed a chloroform rag to her mouth, her small hands clawing at the snow as she tried to fight, the moment when the bond went silent—
"We kill them all," I agreed, my ebony-tobacco scent mixing with Blake's gunpowder in a promise of bloodshed. "But first, we find her. That's all that matters. Getting her back."
Cole moved between us, mint-ozone trying to temper our rage with something resembling sanity. "We need to think about this logically. Who would take her? Why now?"
It was the right question. The one I'd been avoiding because I didn't want to face the answer.
"Konstantin." The name left a foul taste. "The Russian syndicate. The same people who killed Scarlett Reeves. Who probably killed Kara's parents." I looked at my brothers, saw my own horror reflected in their faces. "And now they have her."