LOGINChapter 131: The HeroPOV: OdetteI don't know how long I lay there after Julian left.The bell didn't ring again. The rain kept falling on the roof, the pipe kept dripping, and the single bulb swung back and forth over my head. Every time it passed, my shadow stretched across the floor and shrank again, like something breathing.I had stopped feeling my hands. The silver cuffs had burned the skin raw, and the cold had done the rest. I tried to pull one wrist free, just to see, and the pain shot up my arm and made me gasp.Clara.I said her name in my head, over and over, and tried to make it fit. The girl in the yellow dress with the little white dog. The girl who had stood at a keyhole and listened to her little brother scream. The spoilt girl that took Beckett from me, I never knew she will go to this extend and planned my kidnapp with Julian.Julian had said the staff were sent to bed. Nikolai was out. Cai was alone in that house with her. Who knows what she might be planning for
Chapter 130: Two MissingPOV: NikolaiMy Beta got to the river road at ten to nine.I heard the cars before I saw them. Two sets of headlights came bouncing through the rain, and I didn't turn around. I was crouched in the ditch next to the wrecked car with a strip of torn cloth in my fist. I had been there almost an hour. I had walked the whole road twice, from the tire marks to the trees and back, and every step told me the same thing. She was gone, and I was too late.A doctor climbed out of the first car with a black bag and went straight to the man in the front seat. "Silver," I heard him say. "A few more hours and he'd have lost the arm." The two men my Beta had brought stood at the edge of the road with their hands at their sides, waiting for me to tell them what to do."Nikolai," my Beta said."The driver is missing. Odette is missing. A truck blocked the road, a big one with deep tires." I pointed at the marks in the mud. "Silver darts. Wolfsbane smoke. Six men at least, mayb
Chapter 129: The ForestPOV: CaiClara knocked at half past nine.It was two soft raps, light and pretty, like someone tapping on glass. I knew who it was before the door opened. She was the only person in the whole house who knocked like that.I was sitting up in bed with the lamp on and the pencil in my fist. I wasn't asleep. I hadn't been asleep once since Dad left. The house had gone strange and quiet, because the maids had all gone to bed early and nobody walked past my door. Only the rain was tapping on the window."Cai?" Clara came in with a tray. She wore her yellow dress, and the little white dog trotted in behind her and sat by the door, staring at me with its bulging black eyes. "I made you tea."I looked at the cup. There was a slice of lemon on top, and a spoon sitting in it."Is there sugar?""Two lumps. Just how you like it."I didn't say anything. I hate sugar in tea. Everybody in that house knew it, even the cook, and Clara had lived there my whole life. She put the t
Chapter 128: Who Helped?POV: OdetteI thought he was leaving.He stopped at the edge of the light with his hand on the iron door, and I heard him sigh. Then he turned around and came back, slowly, his polished shoes tapping on the concrete, like a man who couldn't resist a second helping of dessert.Far away, over the rain, a church bell began to strike.I counted without meaning to. Eight. Nine. Ten.Ten o'clock. I had told Maya to go if I wasn't at the green door by ten, and I had never in my life heard her agree to a single thing without arguing first. My throat closed. I pressed my cheek against my raised arm and shut my eyes, and the cold went straight through my wet dress and into my bones.Please, Maya. Please be gone."You're thinking very hard," Julian said.I opened my eyes. He was standing over me with his hands in his pockets, tilting his head the way he did across the dinner table, as if I were something on a plate."I'm thinking you didn't do this alone."His eyebrows w
Chapter 127: Warehouse POV: OdetteThe first thing I felt was cold.It came up through the floor and into my bones, a damp, heavy cold that smelled of rust and old oil. My head was pounding. My mouth tasted like pennies. I tried to open my eyes, and for a moment the lids wouldn’t listen, as if somebody had glued them shut.When they finally opened, I was staring at a ceiling.It was very high and black with shadows, crossed by iron beams. Rain drummed on the roof somewhere far above, loud and steady, like a thousand fingers on a tin can. A single bare bulb hung from a wire in the middle of the room, swinging a little, and the light it gave was weak and yellow.Where am I?I tried to sit up, and my arms wouldn’t come with me.They were stretched above my head. I tilted my face back and saw my wrists locked in two thick metal cuffs, with a chain running from them up to a rusty pipe on the wall. When I pulled, the metal bit into my skin, and a hot sting went through me like a hand on a
Chapter 126: The HowlPOV: NikolaiI left the house at half past seven.It was raining, a thin steady rain that blurred the lights along the drive. I had said yes to Clara in the end. I told the housekeeper to send the staff to bed early and leave my daughter to her quiet evening. Then I stood in the front hall in a clean shirt and my good coat, feeling like a man on his way to a hanging.Cai was sitting on the third stair in his pajamas, with the pencil in his fist.“You’re going out,” he said.“Yes.”“You said it was business.”“I did.”He looked at my coat, and my shoes, and my face. He was nine years old, and he looked at me the way a judge looks at a witness.“Are you going to get her?”I should have lied. I had lied to his sister that afternoon without blinking. But my son’s gray eyes were fixed on mine, and I couldn’t do it.“I’m going to try.”“Good.” He tightened his grip on the pencil. “Don’t come back without her.”Behind him, Clara came down the stairs in her yellow dress







