Chapter 68

Sarah POV

I just froze. After all that I had seen that night, nothing compared to the knowledge that Grace and Chloe were not in their room. I just stood there, and there was nothing in the rooms and nothing in my mind. Nothing.

“They weren’t scared when they left here,” Zane said, and his voice brought the world back into focus, sharp and clear and hard. “They weren’t abducted.”

I nodded, telling myself to take that in, to believe it and to move forward.

“Can you follow their scent?” I asked.

Zane frowned and breathed in deeply several times. “This place is a nightmare of smells.”

“Is that from a poem?” Delia asked as she trotted into the room. “It sounds like it’s from a poem. I love poems! Is it a poem?”

She looked at us and exploded into laughter. “You’re both so famous, do you know that? And here I am, just talking to you like it’s nothing, and you’re both here and your daughters are here and everything is just so incredibly insane, like, can you believe it? They told me if I didn’t get better at faking enjoying sex while I was being raped they’d kill me, and now here you both are like it’s just another day in the park.”

“Delia,” Zane said. “Your heart is—”

She collapsed.

“Goddess!” I yelped and ran to her.

“Her heart’s not beating,” Zane said, kneeling down next to me. “There’s at least one ambulance outside.

As part of my educational training, I’d learned CPR, so I quickly straddled her and started humming “Stayin’ Alive” while I pumped with both hands two inches into her chest. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four.

“Pinch her nose shut, take a normal breath, and make a complete seal over her mouth with your mouth,” I told Zane, who had already shifted over to be next to her head. “Ensure each breath lasts about a second and makes the chest rise, and then you should let her exhale naturally before giving her the next breath.”

We instantly dropped into a rhythm, and in less than a minute Zane said he could hear her heartbeat, and I could make out her thready pulse under my fingertips. Zane lifted her up in his arms, and then we made our way to the elevator. But the buttons didn’t work.

“They’ve probably locked out the elevator to control people’s exits,” Zane muttered. “Which way are the stairs?”

We sped down the hallway and found the unmarked stairwell door. “Bad in a fire,” I said.

We went down the flights of steps as fast as Zane could manage while carrying Delia. I noticed some of the whip marks on her back were breaking open, dripping blood. We reached the ground floor and then set off an alarm by leaving out the closest door.

Outside, it was chaos. Flashing red and blue lights were blinding, people were running all around, and I saw a male wolf get tasered and flop to the ground. A woman was screaming, and several people were shouting, and it took me a minute to realize it was raining. The rain was cold and shocking, but all I really understood was that the club was being raided.

In the end, I just fixated on Zane’s back and followed him as he went to an ambulance.

“I need some help here!” he called, and a beta and a gamma appeared from the other side of the red-and-white van.

“What’s going on?” the beta asked, pulling a gurney out of the ambulance. The duo got the wheels down and then helped Zane get her on the gurney.

“She’s had some sort of drug-induced heart attack,” Zane said. “We got her heart beating again, but it’s weak.”

The gamma was listening to her heart with a stethoscope and nodded. The beta was setting her up with an IV.

“Her name is Delia,” I said before I looked back at the Rotary Club building. “We don’t know what sort of drugs they had her on.”

“We have to go,” Zane said, and the two of us rushed back toward the entrance.

A police officer stood in our way. “I’m sorry, but we can’t let you back in there.”

“Get out of our way,” Zane snarled.

“Our daughters are in there!” I shouted.

The beta police woman blinked and looked back and forth at us, obviously recognizing us. She reached across her chest to key on the radio she had on the strap of her bulletproof vest. “Pete, you there?” she asked.

“Right here, Val.”

“Meet us by the northern entrance.” She nodded at us and turned. We followed, or rather, Zane followed her and I followed Zane.

She led us back to the house, where a beta, I presume it was “Pete,” joined us. Inside was just as chaotic as outside, and a human female was on her knees crying and screaming for help. I just automatically went toward her, but then a beta cop was at her side and Zane was reminding me we were looking for the girls.

“This is hell,” I muttered to myself as we waited for Zane to tell us which way the girls were. He was breathing deeply again, and then he turned and ran for the lobby.

“They were here,” he said, looking around. “Follow me.” He ran into the hallway, paused, and then continued on as we all trailed behind him.

“Mommy!”

My heart stopped. I knew it. Even as I turned and opened my arms for Chloe’s little body, I knew my heart had stopped in my chest.

And then I was hit with something else, and I knew it was Grace.

“Baby,” I said, closing my eyes over hot tears of relief. “Chloe, baby.”

“We saved them, Mommy,” Chloe said. “It was awful, and we saved them.”

“I’m so proud of you,” I said, hardly knowing what I was saying. Chloe and Grace were in my arms, and we were all inside Zane’s embrace, and everything was fine.

Just fine.

“You smell like Daddy,” Chloe said into my ear.

“Just be quiet and hug me, you little bunny rabbit,” I said back, holding her as closely as I could and just thanking the universe she was all right.