Chapter 143
Asher
I pressed my forehead to hers, nose to nose, in the most aggressive display of dominance a wolf could make without actual violence. My ebony-tobacco crashed over her cedar-ice in waves, drowning her scent, consuming it.
She froze, her eyes going wide with shock and—I searched desperately for it—was that fear? Or guilt?
"Tell me now." My voice came out barely human, vibrating with the wolf beneath my skin. "If you did something—if you hurt her because you hated Celeste, because you didn't want a 'debt slave's daughter' as Luna—tell me now. And I might, might, be able to forgive you."
I felt Blake and Cole's shock through our triplet bond, their horror at what I was implying. But I couldn't stop. Had to know.
"But if you lie to me..." My voice dropped to a whisper that somehow carried to every corner of the garage. "If I find out you were involved in taking her, in giving her to those animals... I don't know if I'll be able to call you mother anymore."
Tears spilled down Victoria's face, her cedar-ice scent fragmenting with genuine terror. "Asher, I swear—I swear on the Moon Goddess—"
Her hands came up to grip my tactical vest, clutching the fabric like a lifeline. "I know I've been cruel to her. I know I made her life hell because I couldn't separate her from Celeste, from what that woman did to my brother. But I would never—" Her voice broke. "I love you boys more than anything. I would never do something that would truly hurt you, and she—she's your mate. Losing her would destroy you."
She was sobbing now, full-body shakes that made her cedar-ice spike with grief. "Please. Tell me what happened. Where is she? What—"
I pulled back, my wolf reluctantly accepting her distress as genuine. She didn't know. Whatever had happened to Kara, Victoria wasn't part of it.
The relief was almost as devastating as the fear had been.
---
Marcus pushed forward, his oak-leather scent heavy with authority. "Report. Now."
I let Blake and Cole catch him up while I tried to pull myself together, tried to think past the screaming panic in my veins. But all I could see was that empty terrace, those handprints, that silence where Kara should have been.
Through our explanation—the roof, the chloroform, the massive wolf prints—Marcus's expression grew darker. When we finished, he was silent for a long moment, his jaw working.
Then: "Assemble every available warrior. I want search teams in the forest, tracking teams at every border crossing, aerial surveillance over the entire territory. Someone took our future Luna. We don't stop until we have her back."
His words should have been reassuring. Instead, they just highlighted how badly we'd failed. Future Luna. She was supposed to be safe here, protected, ours. And instead...
"There's more." Blake's voice was rough, raw. He pulled out his phone, brought up a photo. "I found this in her room three days ago. A tactical glove, left behind by the first intruder." He zoomed in on the marking: a double-headed eagle clutching Cyrillic script. "Konstantin's personal enforcer squad."
The garage went deathly silent.
Marcus's face turned to stone. "Are you telling me a Russian crime syndicate just kidnapped your mate from inside our territory?"
"Yes." The word tasted like failure.
"And you waited three days to tell me about the first attempt?"
"We handled it." My voice came out defensive, and I hated how weak it sounded. "We killed the intruder, increased security, kept her under constant protection—"
"Clearly not constant enough." Marcus's oak-leather was cold with disapproval. "If Konstantin has her, we have maybe hours before she's out of the state. Maybe less."
Hours. The word echoed in my head, each second a countdown to losing her forever.
Victoria stepped forward, her tear-stained face set with determination. "Then we mobilize everything. Every alliance, every favor owed. If she's still in Alaska, we will find her."
She looked at me, at Blake, at Cole, and for the first time in weeks, I saw something other than hatred in her eyes when she thought about Kara. "I may not have loved her. But she's yours. And that makes her pack."
---
Blake
We stood in the snow outside the garage, the three of us forming a tight circle while the pack mobilized around us. Warriors running to grab weapons, tech teams setting up command centers, scouts heading into the forest to search for any trace of Kara's trail.
But I barely registered any of it. All I could feel was the wrongness of her absence, the gaping hole where our mate should have been.
Cole's mint wrapped around me and Asher, trying to hold us together. "We will find her. We have to find her."
"And when we do?" My voice came out flat, emotionless. "What then? She was already terrified of us before this happened. Before we let her get kidnapped because we were too busy fighting about border patrols to keep her safe."
"This isn't our fault." But Asher's ebony-tobacco wavered, betraying the lie.
"Isn't it?" I looked at him, saw my own guilt reflected in his golden eyes. "She ran because we broke her. Because she was so desperate to get away from us that she climbed to a roof in a blizzard. And while she was up there, alone and scared because of us, they took her."
"Blake—"
"We did this." The words came out broken, shattered. "We spent ten years breaking her, and now—now she might die thinking we're monsters. Thinking we never really changed."
Silence fell between us, heavy with truths none of us wanted to face.
Then Cole's voice, soft but absolute: "So we prove her wrong. We find her, we save her, and we spend the rest of our lives showing her she was wrong about us being monsters."
"And if we can't find her?" The question escaped before I could stop it, the fear I'd been trying to suppress.
Asher's hand gripped my shoulder, his Alpha authority bleeding through the touch. "Then we burn this whole fucking territory to the ground looking. We don't stop. We don't rest. We don't breathe until she's back with us."
Cole took my other shoulder, mint steady and sure. "Together. The three of us, like always."
I looked at my brothers—my triplets, my other halves, the only people in the world who understood this particular agony. Felt their determination through our bond, their refusal to give up.
And I made a choice.
"Swear it." My voice came out rough but certain. "Swear on our bond, on our wolves, on everything we are—we don't stop looking until we have her back. No matter how long it takes. No matter what we have to do."
"I swear it." Asher's ebony-tobacco surged with Alpha command, binding the vow.
"I swear it." Cole's mint wrapped around us both, sealing the promise.
"Then let's hunt." I let my wolf rise to the surface, let the rage and grief and desperate love fuel the predator within. "And Moon Goddess help anyone who gets in our way."