CHAPTER 35

JAYDEN

The forest tore past me in a blur of mud, branches, and shadow. My lungs burned, but I didn’t slow. Couldn’t. Every heartbeat was a drum of panic, every breath a curse.

“Catriona!” I bellowed, my voice splitting the night, scattering birds from the trees. “Abriel!”

No answer. Just the rustle of leaves, the hollow echo of my own desperation.

I ripped through underbrush, flipped stones, kicked logs aside like they might be hiding beneath. Every scent I caught on the wind drove me mad—mud, damp bark, blood. None of it hers. None of it is my son’s.

The old man’s voice teased the edges of my skull: You’ll never find them.

I shoved it down with a snarl and hurled myself forward again, crashing through a stream, mud splattering my legs.

Every overturned stone. Every clawed trunk. Every scentless trail mocked me.

And yet I kept sprinting, like a madman in a labyrinth that shifted under my feet, because the alternative—the image of my mate and my son swallowed whole by something I couldn’t fight—was worse than death itself.

I would find them.

Or I would tear this entire cursed forest apart until nothing remained standing.

My legs trembled when I finally stopped — the kind of tremble that comes from running until your muscles forget their names. I dropped onto a sun-warmed rock at the stream’s edge and let the world tilt back into view: leaves trembling, distant birds arguing, the mud cooling where my paws had skidded. For a beat I simply breathed, sharp and greedy, trying to suck back enough oxygen to push the panic down a notch.

Sandra came up behind me, boots slapping wet earth. She looked as wrecked as I felt — dirt streaked across her cheek, hair matted, chest hammering. When she crouched beside me she kept her distance, eyes sweeping the trees the way a soldier scans a battlefield.

“I couldn’t get any scent of them, Alpha,” she said, voice raw.

“Me either.” The answer was flat because there was nothing else to say. No tracks, no broken branches that showed a struggle, no toy or scrap of cloth that might have marked where they’d been taken.

“What are we going to do, Alpha?”

Silence fell heavy. I had no plan beyond will and teeth and a brand-new, burning hatred for whatever had taken them. We both knew hope without a plan was a lie.

“I hope they’re safe wherever those things dragged them,” Sandra added, and the note of it — the helpless prayer hidden in the words — twisted my stomach.

Even the thought of a scratch on Catriona or Abriel made my blood boil. My jaw locked hard enough to ache; the wolf beneath my ribs paced like a beast on a chain, rattling at the restraint. For a raw second I let myself imagine finding them — all of them — alive and flinging those pale things back into whatever hole they’d crawled from. The image was a kind of opiate. It steadied me and made my hands shake at once.

There was a flicker of guilty relief in knowing Gabriel had been taken too. Maybe, in some twisted way, it meant the slate had been wiped clean—that Catriona and my son were safe from those creatures. But the thought soured quickly. Another image rose unbidden: Gabriel with Catriona again.

Was he taken because of what I’d said about his daughter? Was this all some scheme, another cruel move by that old man to force them back together? My chest tightened at the thought. What must Catriona think of me now? Would she leave me and return to Gabriel?

No. She wouldn’t. She couldn’t. We have a son together. That had to mean something… didn’t it?

My fists clenched until my knuckles ached. The possibility of some new tie between Gabriel and Catriona — a connection I had kept buried like a live coal — made bile rise in my throat. I hated myself for feeling it, for letting suspicion split open my head when there were more pressing horrors. Still the seed of jealousy sat there, hard and bitter as a stone.

“Alpha,” Sandra called suddenly, and her voice cut through my tangled thoughts like a blade.

I flicked my eyes up. She pointed.

Selena stood inches away, almost impossibly close. For a heartbeat the forest held its breath. The witch’s shadow pooled at her feet; the air she moved through seemed to wrinkle, as if the world itself was nervous around her.

I didn’t think. Rage flared hot and clean. I was to my feet in a second, fur sprouting along my skin, teeth finding form. The instinct to run her down, to rip the head from that proud body, roared louder than reason.

I lunged.

Power clanged against me like a metal gate. Something unseen slammed into my chest, stopped me dead. The world snapped tight. My paws scrabbled at air. The witch’s barrier held me like iron bands. I snarled, muscles trembling with the effort to break through, but the force only immobile me more.

Selena’s voice fell like frost. “Don’t waste whatever energy you have left on me, wolf.”

The magic loosened in a suffocating, surgical way and my body slid back into human shape. I hit the earth hard, breath ripped out of me, lungs burning. Rage didn’t go with the shift; it simply sat there, hot and impotent.

“If you had helped us when we first came,” I spat, forcing the words past the ache in my ribs, “none of this would have happened. Those things wouldn’t have taken my family. None of this.”

She laughed, not much, more like a dry wind. The sound was sharp and clinical. “That’s precisely why I’m here.”

My head snapped up. “You are?” The hope in it was a raw, desperate thing. For one stupid, childish second I believed.

“Yes.” Her eyes glinted like knives. “I will help you get them back.”

The words were a balm and a blade at the same time. Relief threatened to wash me under, but something in her tone — the way she said it like a contract rather than a promise — kept my muscles tight.

“Why?” I demanded, brittle. “What do you want in return?”

Selena’s smile was cold, patient. “You’ll learn the price soon enough.” She turned away slowly, as if the conversation was finished.

I rose to my knees, feeling every bit of the exhaustion that had been building for two days. The forest hummed with small things moving in the dark; the creek whispered over rocks as if nothing at all had slithered through it in the night.

The witch’s house loomed like a secret carved out of the night, every arch and balustrade soaked in shadows. The chandelier above threw dim honeyed light across dark wood and velvet, and the place pressed down on me like the walls themselves were judging me for stepping inside. It wasn’t a home—it was a fortress built to intimidate.

I didn’t waste time. My voice cut through the silence, sharper than I meant. “What were those skeletal creatures that took them?” My tone was a growl, fury coiled tight around the exhaustion in my chest.

Selena didn’t even flinch. Her eyes caught the candlelight but gave nothing back. “They are the Hollowed. Corpses emptied of will, bound to whatever spirit commands them. They came for your son because he is marked. His light threatens them. The boy draws the spirit world’s hunger the way blood draws wolves.”

My fists clenched hard enough to ache. “What the hell do they want with him? Why my boy—why Catriona?”

She didn’t bother with words. Just gave me that cold, unreadable look. “Sit.”

I bristled. “I can’t sit when you haven’t told me how you’re going to help me get my family back—or what you even plan to do.”

Her voice sharpened, slicing through my defiance. “Release her guardians. That is the reason you dragged your sorry pack blood across the sea to Austria. That is the key. You already knew it. But you sought me only when it suited you.” Her gaze narrowed, like she could see through to the bone. “I do not ignore what’s beneath my nose, wolf. I despise it.”

Her words burned. I gritted my teeth until my jaw hurt. “So we were right. You fucking knew. And you let us bleed anyway.”

Her mouth curved, not quite a smile, not quite contempt. “Follow me.”

She turned, skirts whispering over the carpet. Sandra moved to step after us, but Selena’s hand flicked once, sharp as a blade. “Not you. Stay.” The command cracked through the air like iron.

A growl threatened at the back of my throat, but I bit it down and followed. She led me into another chamber, smaller, dimmer. Incense stung my nose, and a single chair sat in the center, draped with strange symbols I didn’t recognize.

“Sit,” she said again, quieter this time, but her tone carried weight.

I sat, though every muscle in me stayed tense, ready to tear her throat out at the first hint of betrayal. “Tell me.”

She began circling me, slow, deliberate. “Your mate is the key. Through her bloodline, through her guardians, the spirit world left a door open. I will use you to reach it. Your bond to her—your wolf’s tether to her heart—will be the thread. Through you, I can find her consciousness. Through her, I can unbind what sleeps.”

My pulse thundered, heat prickling under my skin. “And once they’re freed?”

She stopped beside me, her hand hovering dangerously close to my temple. “Once they are freed, they will do what even I cannot. They will fight for her. For your boy. And I will guide them back—her, the child, and that other pathetic Alpha you loathe—back into the human world.”

Her words landed like stones in my chest. My wolf clawed at me, furious at relying on her, but pride didn’t matter. Only Catriona’s face. Only Abriel’s small hands. I curled my fists tight against my knees.

“Fine,” I forced out. “Do it. Use me. Just bring them back.”