Chapter 4

"Where's Elena?" Mara asked before Adrian could greet her. "I've been texting her since last night. She hasn't answered once."

Adrian's expression shifted. "She didn't go to your place?"

"No." My mother's gaze sharpened. "What happened?"

Selena appeared in the dining room doorway, still wearing the Blackwood pack shirt. Mara's eyes dropped to the crest on her chest, then moved to the empty space where my Luna nameplate had been removed from the table.

She didn't call Selena a home-wrecker. She didn't raise her voice. She simply looked at Adrian and asked, "Why is another woman wearing your family's crest and sitting in my daughter's place?"

"You're misunderstanding the situation." Adrian frowned. "Selena stayed because Noah was upset."

"Then where is Elena?"

"She caused a scene at the birthday performance and stormed off. She's hiding until I go after her."

Mara's face changed. "What performance?"

Selena explained the illusion in a careful, wounded voice. She said I had refused to come out of the box, then slipped through the escape hatch and left without telling anyone.

Adrian crossed his arms, his annoyance from the previous night still intact. "She wants me worried. The minute I start searching, she'll think she won."

My mother stared at him for a long moment. "My daughter would never disappear all night without checking whether Noah was safe."

"You don't know what she's been like lately."

"No," Mara said quietly. "You're the one who doesn't know her."

Footsteps pattered down the stairs. Noah came into the foyer holding an old gray stuffed fox against his chest.

"Grandma, is Mommy still mad?"

Mara crouched in front of him. "Why would she be mad, sweetheart?"

"She kept calling Dad from inside the box, but Dad said she was pretending." His brows pinched as he tried to remember. "Then a lot of red stuff came out. Dad said it was stage blood."

The house went silent.

Mara rose very slowly and looked at Adrian. "She was bleeding?"

For the first time, real uncertainty entered his eyes. "The entire stage was covered in fake blood. It was part of the illusion."

"Did you open the box and make sure?"

He didn't answer.

The color drained from my mother's face. She turned toward the door. "Take me back to that theater. Now."

Adrian caught her arm. "Mara, don't let Elena manipulate you too. She--"

Mara pulled free and faced him. There was no fury in her expression, only a disappointment so deep it made even Adrian go still.

"My daughter gave you seven years of her life. Is this how you repay her?"

His hand fell to his side.

Within fifteen minutes, several vehicles were speeding toward the ballroom.

The cleanup crew had already begun dismantling the previous night's sets. Mara walked past every startled worker and headed straight backstage. Unlike Adrian, she didn't believe I had vanished to punish him. She knew what I always took when I left the house, and she knew what I would never abandon.

She found my phone behind a makeup station.

The battery was dead. A dark rust-colored smear marked the edge of the case.

Then she spotted a broken navy leather bracelet near the place where the illusion box had stood.

She had given it to me on the day Mooncrest recognized me as Luna. Pressed into the inside of the leather were five small words:

[Never let them silence you.]

Mara's fingers began to shake. "She would never leave this."

Adrian stared at the bracelet, and something in his face finally cracked.

He reached instinctively for the mate bond.

[Elena.]

Nothing answered.

He tried again, forcing more Alpha power into the call.

[Elena, answer me.]

The other end of the bond was dead quiet.

Even after our worst arguments, even when I blocked my emotions from him, Adrian had always been able to feel the faint pulse of my existence. Now there was no warmth, no resistance, no trace of me at all.

His breathing turned uneven. "She could've severed it somehow. She's threatened to leave before."

He spoke too quickly, as if speed could make the explanation true.

Mara ignored him and called the Pack Enforcers. "Where was the illusion box taken?"

The venue manager checked the disposal log and went pale. "Industrial processing yard. East boundary."

For one terrible second, no one moved.

Then Adrian was the first one out the door.

The sun had barely cleared the trees when the convoy reached the processing yard. The hydraulic line was warming up for the day. Enforcers ordered the supervisor to cut power seconds before the crusher engaged.

They found the black box in a metal scrap bay.

It was locked from the outside. Dried blood crusted the seams, and the air around it stank of wolfsbane, chemical smoke, and scent suppressant.

Adrian stopped several steps away.

He had faced rogues, border raids, and challenges to his Alpha title without hesitation. Now he looked as though the final few feet between him and the box were impossible to cross.

An Enforcer pulled on gloves and pried open the side maintenance panel.

My body was folded into the narrow space between the mechanisms. Blood had soaked the fabric beneath my ribs and across my abdomen. One of the silver blades was still jammed in its rail, driven through my side.

My eyes remained open.