Chapter Ten: Unraveling

The sound had barely faded before Kadence was moving.

He didn't remember the stairs. Didn't remember grabbing his keys from the entry table or pushing through the front door into the cold. His body was already outside, already moving toward the truck, while his mind kept replaying the same three seconds on a loop. His fist hitting the wall. His father's smile. Blood on the floor.

'You can't punch your way out of being exactly what I made you.'

The keys were cold in his hand. He climbed in, started the engine, and sat with his hands on the wheel while blood from his knuckles smeared the leather in slow, dark streaks.

The mate bond pulled. Honeysuckle and woodsmoke. Amber eyes and confusion that he'd put there himself.

His foot hit the gas before his mind caught up with it.

The roads were empty, just Kadence and the occasional truck moving through the dark. He didn't try to stop the replay. The elders' ultimatum. Ronan talking him into breaking his own rules. Walking into that club and feeling the world detonate in his chest. Running. His father's laughter filling the room like something he'd never be able to unhear. The wall. The blood. Twelve hours and his entire life was unrecognizable.

Yesterday morning he'd been Kadence Thornwell. Controlled. Disciplined. A man with three rules and the spine to keep them. Tonight he was someone who'd run from his mate, put his fist through a wall, and couldn't tell anymore where his father's demons ended and his own began.

Ember's sign appeared through the dark, red and gold burning against the black sky. The parking lot had thinned out, just a handful of cars left scattered across the asphalt. Kadence pulled in near the entrance and killed the engine.

His hand was on the door when the mind-link opened.

'Kade.'

Ronan's voice, clear as if he were sitting in the passenger seat.

Kadence went rigid. 'Where are you?'

"Inside. I've been talking to her."

The words landed like a fist. "You went back without telling me."

"Because you wouldn't have come if I had. Someone needed to explain things, and since you were busy putting holes in walls."

"What are you telling her?"

"The truth. That you found your mate. That it scared you. That you're not thinking straight."

And then, filtering through the pack bond, Ronan's actual voice from somewhere inside the club.

"Soul mates. Fated pairs. The one person in the world meant for you. Do you believe in that?"

"Is that a pickup line?" Asha's voice, tired and skeptical in a way that made something in his chest pull tight.

'Stop,' Kadence sent.

'Someone has to talk to her. You're not doing it.'

'I'm coming in.'

'No you're not. Not bleeding. Not like this.' Ronan's voice went firm. 'You'll make it worse.'

"My friend has been looking for something for a very long time. Tonight he found it. You're what he found."

A sharp breath from Asha that carried through the bond.

"What the hell are you doing?" Kadence demanded.

"Laying groundwork. So when you finally pull yourself together and talk to her, she'll at least have somewhere to put it."

"I didn't ask you to do this."

"You didn't ask me to do anything. That's the whole problem." Frustration bled through the link, clean and unfiltered.

"You're so locked up in your father's mistakes you can't see what's right in front of you."

The thought that came back was bitter and fast. 'Everyone thinks I need managing. The elders. My father. Now you. Everyone making decisions on my behalf.'

'Then prove us wrong. Go inside. Talk to her.'

His hand was already on the door handle. One push. That was all.

His phone rang.

Kadence looked at the screen.

'Mom.'

His heart stopped.

Mirelle never called this late. Not unless something was wrong.

"Mom?"

"Kadence." Her voice was soft and strained in a way that sent ice straight down his spine. "I'm sorry to call so late, but I thought you should—"

A scuffle. Her voice cut off.

Then new voices. Young. Male. Familiar in the worst possible way.

"Well, well." Rhydian. "Look who Mommy's calling for help."

Kadence's blood went cold. "What are you doing at her cottage?"

"Just visiting." Saskia now, her voice high and mocking. "Can't we visit dear Luna Mirelle?"

"Get away from her." The words came out low and final. "Right now."

"Or what?" Rhydian laughed. "You'll come running? You're so busy being the perfect son you can't even protect the people who actually matter."

Then a sound that erased every other thought in his head.

His mother. A sharp cry. Then a thud.

"Stop." Mirelle's voice, thin and frightened, then nothing.

Everything in Kadence's world narrowed to a single cold point.

"I'm coming." Flat. Deadly. "Touch her again and I—"

"You'll what?" Saskia's voice had an edge of uncertainty underneath the venom now. "Kill your own family? We heard about your little stripper mate by the way. Like father, like son."

"Mom!" He was already turning the key. "Mom, I'm—"

The line went dead.

Silence filled the truck.

Kadence sat with the phone pressed to his ear for one second, two, the silence absolute. Then he threw the truck into reverse, tires screaming across the asphalt as he peeled out of the lot.

"Ronan." He pushed through the mind-link hard. 'I have to go. Rhydian and Saskia are at Mom's cottage. They're hurting her.'

'What? Kade, wait—'

'I can't.' He hit the road and the speedometer started climbing. 'Tell Asha I'm sorry. Tell her whatever you need to. I'll fix it later.'

'Kadence—'

He closed the link and pressed the accelerator to the floor.

Sixty. Seventy. Eighty.

His phone rang again. Unknown number. He answered without slowing down.

"Kadence." Rhydian, smug and satisfied. "Changed your mind about—"

"Listen carefully." His voice came out barely recognizable, more wolf than man.

"I've spent my entire life being controlled. Measured. Leashed by rules I built to keep myself from becoming something I hated." The needle hit ninety. "You just made me let go of every single one of them."

Silence on the line.

"I'm ten minutes away," Kadence continued, his tone dropping quieter still, which made it worse.

"When I get there you have two options. You're gone and my mother is unharmed. Or you're still there, and I show you exactly how much of my father's son I really am."

"You won't—" Saskia's voice in the background, the certainty bleeding out of it.

"Try me." His smile had nothing human left in it.

"You wanted to see what happens when I stop caring about consequences? When I stop being the perfect Alpha heir?" The truck flew through the dark. "Congratulations. You're about to find out."

He ended the call and threw the phone onto the passenger seat.

The road opened up ahead of him, empty and dark and endless.

He drove.