Missing Someone?

KAEL'S POV

"Where's Mara?" I ask.

Darin's on his feet before I finish the question, phone already in his hand.

"I've been trying her since sunrise," he says, already dialing again. "Didn't want to say anything until I was sure it wasn't nothing."

That explains the untouched mug. The tight jaw. The two wolves standing instead of sitting, like they've been waiting for permission to say something out loud.

He calls her. I can hear it ring from where I'm standing, the sound stretching longer than it should. Nobody in the kitchen breathes.

It goes to voicemail.

"Again," I say.

He tries again. Same result.

"She never checked in for the morning handoff," Darin says. "I figured she overslept, or forgot, until it had been two hours and I still couldn't reach her."

The young wolf on the stairs comes back to me all at once, the piece I hadn't been able to place until now. He'd said he saw Mara leave before sunrise, alone, moving fast toward the east fence line. I hadn't thought much of it at the time. Now the two things sit next to each other and make a shape I don't like.

"She went to the east boundary," I say. "Alone. Before dawn."

Darin's face goes carefully blank, the way it does when he's furious and trying not to show it. "If I'd known that, I would've stopped her. She knows better than to go out there alone during an active border, not after everything I made her second for."

The words settle into my chest like a stone dropping through water.

"I'm going," I say.

"Let me go," Darin says. "You don't need to..."

"I'm going." My voice comes out harder than I mean it to, but I don't take it back. "She's my responsibility. I'm not sending someone else to carry it."

Lyra's already moving with me to the door before I finish the sentence.

"No." I catch her arm without thinking, pulling her back toward the stairs, toward somewhere I can actually talk to her without half the kitchen listening. "You're staying here."

She wrenches free the second we're out of the room, hard enough that I feel it more than I expected to.

"Don't," she says, low and sharp. "Don't grab me like that. Don't decide where I go without asking me first."

I stop. All at once, I hear exactly what I just did, and it lands somewhere I don't like at all.

"I'm sorry." I mean it. "That wasn't fair."

"No. It wasn't."

"I'm scared," I admit, because it's easier to say plainly than to dance around it. "I don't know what happened out there. I don't know if she's hurt, or lost, or just late, and not knowing is worse than any answer I can think of."

Something in her face softens, just slightly. "Then let me come with you instead of leaving me here to wonder."

"It's not safe. We don't even know what we're walking into."

"Nowhere's been safe since the night I met you." She takes my hand instead of pulling away this time, lacing her fingers through mine. "I'd rather be scared next to you than scared alone in a house full of people who still aren't sure they trust me."

I don't have an answer for that, because she's right, and because some part of me already knew she would be before I even tried to argue.

My phone rings. Unknown number.

I almost let it go to voicemail. Something makes me answer instead, some instinct I don't fully trust but can't ignore either.

"Kael Varga?"

The voice is unfamiliar, calm in a way that doesn't match anything happening in this house right now. Measured. Patient.

"Who is this?"

There was a slight huff.

"Roman Ashford."

The name hits harder. Beside me, I feel Lyra go still, then rigid, her hand tightening around mine until it hurts.

"I believe you're missing someone this morning," Ashford says. "A woman named Mara, I think. Dark hair. Sharper tongue than sense, based on our conversation."

My stomach drops out from under me.