MATTHIAS POV: Raine had been back in the pack now for almost a week, yet Matthias couldn’t bring himself to go see her. He was a coward yes, and running from his problems would truly get him nowhere, but anytime he got close enough to the room where stayed now, he couldn’t bring himself to push open the door and walk in. He just couldn’t bear to look at her, and see the extent of damage done to her by her captives. He’d gathered enough from Lyra to know just how bad her injuries had been—from wolfsbane poisoning to broken bones and multiple unidentified scars scattered across her body. Lyra had claimed she had no clue who had done the damage, and Ronan was refusing to look at him, much less even speak to him, so there was no way of knowing the truth from either of them. The first and last time he saw her was on a random afternoon. He was walking past the corridor and realized the door to the room was wide open. She’d been on the bed, curled on her side, the blanket draped up to
RAINE POV: The last thing she remembered before going under was the heat of Ronan’s chest against her skin, Matthias’s frantic gaze as he shook her with so much fear and panic, and the silent fury in Killian’s gaze when she met his gaze as Ronan carried her past him. It’d been terrifying and cold, Raine had never felt that much fear around that alpha until then. She woke up now, surrounded by various familiar scents. After two weeks away from home, it was enough to push her to tears. The bed beneath her was familiar, because it was hers and Ronan’s, the sounds of the pack outside the pack house walls was achingly familiar as well, and all the scents mingling about, faint now because her abilities were still nonexistent, soothed an ache in her chest that’d been festering for weeks. She shut her eyes tight against the sensations and just let herself feel. When she woke again, it was to find a familiar figure hovering in the room, dressed in all black, Raine at first confused the fig
MATTHIAS POV: Killian and Hansel left after about an hour. Since there was nothing they could with the wards according to Hansel, if all three of Matthias’s blood lines were absent. And since no one could even remotely pin point where the last sibling could even be, they had to work with the temporary one Hansel set up. It was hardly more than a cheap piece of plastic, but it was the best they could get for now. Everything in Matthias longed to go find Raine and be with her right at that moment, but he needed to keep his head in the game. He just found out that he had a child somewhere out there, whom he’d apparently spawned without his knowledge. There were bigger on ground now than his illicit affair with his son’s mate. He and both his sons walked the rest of the way to the packhouse in silence. Matthias couldn’t recall the last time he’d been alone with his without them going at each other’s throats. He watched them both as they walked ahead of him, close enough that their s
RONAN POV: Thalia helped him up, dragging him by his arm like he was nothing but a lifeless rag doll. If Ronan were in the right state of mind, he’d have been insulted with the ease she used to pick him up. It was a bruise to his ego to say the least. But right now, he had bigger things to worry about than whether or not he was stronger than a woman. Panting as he fought to catch his breath, Ronan met Killian’s gaze from across the open space, watching the other alpha pull himself upright from where Thalia had tossed him against a tree. It’d been hard enough to leave a dent in the bark. Killian did not look so pleased about it. A fission of fear went down Ronan’s back as he watched Killian pull off his gloves one by one, they’d been torn apart by his claws earlier and were nothing but strips of leather at this point. But still, the sight of Killian’s pale hands was so much of a shock, Ronan could do nothing but stare. Thalia moved to stand in front of him, blocking him from Kill
According to Lyra, Raine’s bones had refused to heal because someone had used wolfs bane to separate her from her wolf, and had been doing it for so long, that her innate self had retreated so far back. Leaving her without her wolf and all the abilities that came with it. While Lyra said all these, Raine was asleep, having knocked out as soon as her head hit the pillow, so he couldn’t even ask her when she’d first been exposed to the substance, he and Lyra needed an exact date to be able to determine just how long the poison had been circulating in her system. “Where did you find her?” Lyra asked after they sat in silence for twenty minutes. She was writing something at the desk, staring at him from across the small space. She couldn’t use her medic house in the meantime, so she was using this pack house bedroom as a make shift office. Ronan shook his head where he stood, towering over Raine in bed, watching her chest rise and fall with each shallow breath. She looked smaller th
It seemed like the entire world was at a standstill as Matthias watched his son’s car draw closer and closer until it stopped just by the border. Ronan stepped out and froze, shocked to find everyone there. His gaze snapped to Killian’s briefly, and a flash of something went through his gaze. It looked a little like fear, but it was gone far too soon to be sure. Matthias wasn’t even looking at him long enough to be sure. The only thing he had eyes on was Raine. It’d been only less than a week, but seeing her in the flesh was a knife to his gut. He hadn’t even realized how much he’d missed her until now. His wolf whined, drawing close and seeking the bond between them, but there was no answering call from her side. Just like it was that first night, Matthias felt like he was calling out to a brick wall. Something was wrong here. She looked like a shadow of her former self, and that was before she stepped out of the car, and he finally saw the cast on her leg and the crutches. Wha