Chapter 23

Aurora

I don’t know where to run, just that I have to get away. I don’t want to be nineteen, I don’t want my birthday to ever come again. Not for my twentieth especially. I can’t be mated to someone like Jaxson, seeing him tear a ruthless bite into my best friend’s throat. He could have easily killed Luke for just wanting to come see me.

I know it’s complicated after I kissed him, after what I confessed to him, but I didn’t know what else to say or do at that moment. It was a mistake. I may not feel the mating pull yet but I felt the pain in Jaxson’s heart, in his wolf, when I betrayed him. But that never gave him the right to power play Luke and bite him like he had.

I can’t stand to be around him right now.

I weave upward through the valley, slowly hearing him and his warriors filter off of my trail as I travel in and out of the crease of the mountains. Luke and I used to travel through these woods when we were younger, racing to the top where the winner would prevail and get to pick the next game. I always won.

Luke always avoided the waterfall, but I never did, and I use that to my advantage now, racing through the creek and ultimately up the shelves of the falls, cold water drenching me, covering my sense with moss and murky mud as I leap up the slick mountainside and use it as my own personal staircase. The sounds of warriors and Jaxson’s wolf behind me filter away for good.

I slow my pace in effort to be more careful, reaching the top of the main mountain range in no time. I can’t clear my thoughts, the moon shining hot on my back as I shift back into my normal form, curled up and shivering in the cold breeze while I try to wipe the water off of my skin and squeeze it out of my hair.

It isn’t long before I am crying again.

I hate these spells of crying that relapse through my emotional woos. It never ends. The guilt, the constant fear, everything passes through me at once. I clutch my heart and beg for it to stop.

Steps interrupt my pity, the sounds of branches cracking behind me making my heart race. I wipe my damp face clear of waterfall water, trying to dry off, curling tighter into a ball at the sounds of a wolf approaching.

“Jaxson, please, leave me alone—” I beg, trembling in the cold air. “Please!”

The wolf snarls, the noise so brute, so deep, that I know it’s not from Jaxson.

I turn, curious if one of his warriors have found me first but when I do, the wolf charges forward, lowering his head and slamming into my shoulder so hard that I go tumbling back into the brush. I opened my mouth to speak, the air smacked out of my throat instead, unable to call out for help, in shock, anything at all.

The unfamiliar wolf growls, pacing circles around me, my vision knocked sideways and spinning in the back of my head. I fear he may bite me, kill me, but my mind doesn’t care, simply blacking my vision out until I go lifeless and dull at his paws.

I plead to the moon that I’m given mercy.

Jaxson

I keep thinking of the exact moment I lost track of Aurora. I could see her clean, white fur bolting up the valley, maneuvering through the rocky mountainside until she curved to the left and ducked into the woods. My heart sank but I ran faster, trying to use the same trail I watched her take but once I hit the tree line, she was gone. I couldn’t even hear her steps anymore, just the sounds of rushing water in a river that snaked down to the streams below.

My warriors were ordered to split up, all twelve of them sent into the woods but none of them returned to the houses with her in tow. I thought I should stay back, assuming she needed space, after every time I had tried to reach her in the mind link, I could only reach a wall, bleak darkness, and it made me feel so hurt that I had to sit at her parent’s house, hoping she would return to me faster if I refused to push her back into my arms.

It hasn’t worked, and my wolf is snarling and barking in my head the entire time I wait for my warriors to report back to me about if they found her or not. The sun is breaching the horizon and I pace slower, my fists clenched so tight that I don’t feel them anymore.

“Nothing yet, Sire,” one of my warriors says, limping after running all night.

I wave him away, keeping my head down while I try once more to break into her mind. It’s no use, and instead I am faced with her worried parents and concerned friends who haven’t stopped scowling at me since the incident last night.

I don’t care about their looks, though, only peaking my anger when I see that damned mutt return to the front yard of the house, scars lining his neck and shoulder, still pink and fresh from my teeth. My body shakes at the sight of him. I should kill him for this ordeal. If he never challenged me, she would have never run.

“If you have any sense at all, you will leave. Otherwise, I have no one holding me back from tearing you into shreds,” I growl, shaking all over. He’s like a bug on my shoulder that I just so desperately want to squish.

“I am not here to fight you,” he says, exasperated. “I know Aurora. I can help find her. She might listen to me,” he says but I already shake my head the entire time.

“This is your fault.” I squeeze my eyes shut, shaking ferociously. “You just couldn’t stay away.”

“I want her happy,” he says, a persistent little bug. “If you make her happy, I will accept that, but I want her safe, first of all. So, you need me. I know her paths through the woods. We ran those trails every day. I can help you find her.”

I hate to admit fault, but he’s right. He knows her in her element out here.

I wave my hand in his direction. “Run ahead of me. But don’t think for one minute this grants you any ounce of leniency with my ruling. She is my mate. You will stay away from her.”

He gives half a nod, shifting, and I do the same as he begins a slow run up the mountainside. I follow him, a few warriors hanging behind us just in case. I hold back my anger long enough to follow him through the rocky area of the crevice in the mountains, watching as he takes the same path into the woods as she had last night. This place is far vaster than I could imagine.

He runs with confidence though, dodging trees and rushing up toward the sounds of water crashing into a pool that turns into a fast moving, white-water creek. He expectantly jumps into the water pouring down the valley’s side and I follow as best as I can, trying not to slip while he hops from step to step of rocky flats.

Once we reach the top, he is wounded and out of breath still, pacing through the woods until we reach a clearing. I catch a whiff of her scent, so potent that I can’t figure out why her smell was muted everywhere but at this spot.

I shift, kneeling in the grass, feeling it pressed down from the impression of her body, my eyes scanning each blade of grass until I see it.

Specs of her crimson blood are splattered over the grassy clearing.

My heart falls straight into my stomach at the sight.

There was a fight here last night, a fight she hadn’t won.

“Is— is that her blood?” Luke asks, kneeling against a tree, holding his collarbone that is bruised and cut from my teeth.

“It is,” I growl, trying to contain my anger.

It doesn’t work.

“Dammit!” I scream, releasing every ounce of angst trapped inside of my body. I stand up, hoping my voice carries through the woods far enough to reach my mate. “Aurora!” I holler. My tone echoes down the valley. “Aurora, I’m coming!”

Luke stifles a cough, trying to catch his breath. “Do you smell that?”

“What?” I snap, taking in a deep inhale. “It’s familiar,” I say, shaking my head, the smell of whatever wolf found Aurora first now like acid in my nostrils. “Whoever took her knows who she is and knows what they’re going to do with her. It’s not a coincidence.”

“It’s a fucking royal,” Luke says, his tone unkind.

I don’t have it in me to reprimand him like the snark asshole he is.

“It is,” I say, shaking my head, picturing her bent over in the grass, bleeding. “But who it is and why they attacked her is the new question. She can’t be far. We will follow the scent until it runs dry. Then we regroup. I will find her today; I have to.”

We both shift and try to catch the trail of the wolf I know is from the royal pack. Or at least, he was, the scent pungent with something else that I don’t mention to Luke. I don’t have it in me to admit how much this rat smells like Xander.

The sooner I find Aurora, the better.