Chapter 66

Killian

The search had entered its third month, and even I was beginning to lose hope.

We traced her phone records and communications, interrogated her maid until the young girl cried and begged not to be exiled. I was impressed at her loyalty to her Luna, and could also tell that she really didn’t know where she went.

Elena had simply left one night and vanished into thin air.

I tried to keep it quiet for the first day, knowing that she could have gone to see Alice or found a friend to spend the night with. Things had been rough enough at home lately, and I wondered if she regretted our night together and needed space.

But as the days went by, I had a duty to make the public announcements and call upon other Packs and the good nature of my fellow citizens of the world to help me find my wife. I had scouts all over the region, even returning to the Silverclaws and poking around, but we came up empty-handed.

It seemed like a magic trick, and I kept expecting her to appear from behind a curtain. Or back in my bed.

But she was really gone.

In all that time, the election crept closer and closer and I tried to put my focus back on my campaign. Now we were a day away from election day, and I was wondering if any of it would even be worth it.

“Don’t talk like that,” Natalie said to me at dinner the night before. After it was clear to her that Elena wasn’t coming back, she had started taking meals with me again. “You have worked too hard and come too far to doubt yourself now. You deserve to win and you will do great things when you do.”

She put her hand on my wrist, gently rubbing her thumb across the top of my hand. I looked down to watch, noticing the pleasure in the feeling of human touch but feeling empty otherwise.

“You have to think about the future.”

Natalie’s dark eyes were pools and for a moment I was sinking into them, but I managed to keep myself afloat.

“I am always thinking about the future,” I said. I twisted my arm so I could take her hand in mind, testing the waters. Her fingers were long and slender, and I rubbed my thumb across her knuckles.

“Killian,” she said, reaching her other hand to my face and leaning over the corner of the table.

I hadn’t realized how close she was sitting to me until that moment. Something in my reacted to her touch or smell or some idea of wanting to feel something again, and so I didn’t stop her when she kept leaning towards me.

Her lips touched mine, softly and then with more urgency. It felt cold, foreign, but I squeezed my eyes shut and steadied my breath until my body relaxed. Her mouth opened slightly and a small moan escaped her lips, and the spark was lit.

Grabbing her other arm I pulled her towards me while I moved my chair at the same time. She landed in my lap, our lips staying connected the whole time. Her arms were around my neck, her fingers in my hair. One of my hands was on her ribs, the other at the small of her back. The pressure between us was building.

This isn’t it.

I pushed Natalie up and off of me, then pulled my hands away from her to signal that she should stand up.

“We can’t do this,” I said, catching my breath. “It’s not right.”

“Are you serious?” Natalie’s tone was immediately harsh.

“I’m sorry, I just…” I just wanted Elena.

She understood. “Unbelievable.”

She stood up, throwing her napkin onto the table.

“She left you, Killian,” she snapped, “or she went off herself killed. But she isn’t coming back. You need to move on.”

She didn’t wait for my reply before she left and went upstairs.

My shame and frustration took away my appetite, and apologized to the cook for wasting her dinner. She, thankfully, still offered me pity since I had lost Elena, and forgave me my trespasses.

The next morning, there was a last meet and greet with the five candidates before the polls opened. Kana was in top form, though I knew her well enough to recognize a crease in her forehead when she thought no one was looking.

Jaxon Adler found me quickly after the opening remarks, and insisted on bending my ear about something. We took our paper cups of coffee and found a quiet corner.

I figured he wanted to ask me to drop out, so I was surprised when he opened with an apology.

“I should’ve told you sooner, but the selfish part of me thought this all might knock you out of the competition and out of my way,” he said.

Only Jaxon could turn an apology into an insult as well.

“Say what you came to say, Adler.”

He sighed, a surprising show of vulnerability from a man like him. “I saw your wife, Thorne, not long before she…disappeared.”

My blood went cold, and my jaw tightened. I nodded for him to continue.

“She asked for my help, for information,” he went on, dropping his voice even lower. “She was asking about Silverclaw.”

“What did you tell her?”

“Only what I knew, not much,” he paused, cutting off a breath and perhaps the rest of a sentence. I raised my eyebrows, questioning if there was more. He shook his head. “I just wonder if she went and did something stupid. Your wife had spirit, she sure did.”

“Do not speak as if you know my wife,” I said quickly, a reflex. “But, thank you, for telling me. I know many think I have given up, but I will not rest until I find out what happened to Elena. She is my Fate and my Destiny, and worth fighting and dying for.”

I hadn’t meant to say this much to my political rival, but it felt good to get it out and direct it at the man who kept trying to come between me and my wife. But she had chosen me, and I believed the people would choose me too.

“You’re quite the wolf, Alpha Killian,” Jaxon said, nodding his approval. “I bet you’d make one hell of a leader of the Alliance. May the best man win.”

We shook hands, and he was about to leave when he stopped. His eyes were locked on Natalie across the room.

“Oh,” he said, “watch out for that one. I have reason to believe that her story about Toro, her ‘abduction’ from your Pack— well, seems like it’s too strange not to be fiction, if you ask me.”

Natalie was schmoozing with a journalist, and I realized I had seen him before. Most of the press was familiar at this point, but this man stuck out because he was always talking to one person.

Natalie.

The plan was to return to the Alpha mansion to wait out the end of the voting day. We’d made the final rounds to voters and polling stations, and the rest was up to the goddess to decide. I found Natalie in her room— a new room on the second floor she’d found after Elena left— and closed the door behind me.

“Killian,” she looked a bit excited, probably her imagination spinning this into a different fantasy. “What’s up?”

“I need you to tell me,” I said, trying to keep myself calm, “everything.”

“What do you mean?”

“Tell me,” I said, feeling the heat rising in my face, “about Toro.”

I’d been putting all the pieces together, and now I just needed a confession. And from the look on Natalie’s face as my aura swept over her, I was going to get it.

“Please, Killian, you have to understand—“

“Tell me!”

“He promised to help me!” Her response came so quickly I almost flinched backwards. “He said he could make me a hero! That the Pack would honor me!”

My mouth dropped. It was true.

“Go on.”

“But then he tricked me, and took me, and made me look after his little brat,” she was whining now. “And he threatened me not to leave, until you came back for me!”

“And Elena?”

She paused, her mouth full of poison. “She got what she deserved,” she said in a voice I hardly recognized. “Or at least, she almost did. And now who knows where she is.”

“The fire, the prisoner—“

“Yes! Fine, it was me!” She threw her hands up. “I had to destroy my enemy and the stupid mercenary who started all this.”

I let her finish, keeping myself steady, until she was looking back at me.

“Get out.”

“You don’t mean—“

“Out! Forever and a day, you are banished from this Pack!”

She crumpled to the floor as I stripped her of her allegiance and connection to the Pack. I stepped over her and left the room, not caring to see her again.

Kana found me on the stairs, a phone in her hand, her face euphoric and crazed.

“There you are! Killian, Alpha, you’ll never believe it—“

“What is it, Kana?”

“He dropped out,” she said, waving her phone at me, “Jaxon Adler dropped out of the race. No one else can come close to catching you, and the polls are about to close.”

I let the information sink in.

“You won.”