Chapter 29

ALPHA RUNE 

I returned to the Crescent Moon territory with a heart that felt both hollowed out and heavy with disappointment. I had allowed myself to hope—a dangerous thing for a man like me—that Sara would be waiting in the Twilight Zone. My advance team had initially reported her absence, noting that Alpha Tristan was severely injured, but I had stubbornly refused to believe their assessment.

I knew Tristan. I knew he must have realized I was coming and decided to deceive me with a clever ruse. One thing remained certain in my mind: it was Tristan who had orchestrated the assault on Kayvon and Silas. It was Tristan who had stolen Sara away. I was spiraling deep into these thoughts when Carmen entered my private study.

"You have become a mere shadow of yourself since you returned from the Twilight Zone, Rune. I barely recognize you," she said, her voice laced with a rare, genuine concern.

I stared at her blankly, the flickering firelight casting long shadows across the room. "I don't know, Carmen," I muttered. "I just have a significant amount on my plate right now."

"Bullshit, Rune!" she snapped, the veins on her forehead bulging with her sudden fury. "You stood within arm's reach of the man who put two of our best people into a coma, and you simply let him live. The Alpha Rune I grew up with—the Conqueror I swore to follow—would never have let that insult stand. He would have razed that house to the ground."

"And what would you have had me do? You heard the report from the healers," I said, my voice rising to match her intensity. "The man is broken. He will most likely not survive his injuries. Killing him then would have been an act of mercy he didn't deserve. If the toxin doesn't claim him, the coming full moon certainly will."

She stared at me, her expression a mask of confusion and burgeoning resentment. I didn't want to reveal the depth of my obsession with Sara, but I felt compelled to give her some justification. "Even so," she fumed, "now he gets to brag to his dying breath that he struck us and we did nothing. He gets to die feeling like a victor." She turned on her heel and strode out, her presence leaving a vacuum of frustrated energy behind.

Carmen was fiery, protective, and intensely territorial. She hadn't always been this way; she had changed after we met, becoming an ardent, almost zealotic believer in my cause. It was because of this history that I understood her frustration with Sara. To her, Sara was a weakness—a distraction from the glory of the Crescent Moon.

The next few days crawled by with agonizing slowness. I paced the halls of my fortress like a caged beast, waiting for a sign, a scent, or a whisper. But nothing could have prepared me for the shock when I looked up to see Mari walking into the grand hall, accompanied by two men who looked like they had just crawled out of their own graves.

"Kayvon," I breathed, barely able to believe my eyes.

The return of my brothers should have been a day of unbridled celebration—a moment to roar at the heavens that the Crescent Moon does not break, even under the weight of death. But as I watched Kayvon and Silas approach me with the stiff, uncertain gait of men who had been trapped in the abyss for more than a week, all I felt was a cold, driving hunger for the truth.

Mari walked behind them, her eyes bright with a mixture of professional pride and lingering exhaustion. Kayvon looked thinner, his skin a sallow, sickly pale, but his eyes—those sharp, tactical eyes that had navigated a thousand battlefields—were finally clear and focused.

"Alpha," Kayvon said, his voice a gravelly, pained rasp. He didn't bow; we had bled too much together for such formalities. "I have the report. It was Tristan. He led the assault personally. They used masked men and scent-maskers... they took her, Rune. They took Sara right from under our noses."

I let out a short, bark-like laugh. It was a dark, jagged sound that echoed off the high rafters and made Silas flinch. Silas likely didn't realize exactly how long he had been lost to the darkness of that coma.

"You are more than a week behind the world, Kayvon," I said, stepping forward to clap a heavy hand on his shoulder. My grip was a little too tight—a silent, physical apology for the silent threats I had made against his life while he slept. "I’m impressed your mind held onto the scent through the darkness of that trauma, but I’ve already been to the Twilight Zone. I’ve stood over a dying Tristan and searched every rat-hole in his territory."

Kayvon frowned, his brow furrowing as he tried to process the lost time. "And? Did you find her? Is she safe?" Kayvon had always been my right hand, the moral compass that pointed north when my own was spinning. He saw the nuances that I often overlooked in my rage.

"I found her ghost," I said, my voice dropping to a low growl. "I found her scent lingering in a dungeon, but Tristan claims a traitor from his own pack fled with her. He’s dying, Kayvon. A toxin from the borderlands is eating him alive, and he is convinced that Sara is the only one who can heal him."

Before Kayvon could formulate a response, the heavy doors at the far end of the hall swung open with a violent crash. Carmen and Zita marched in, their faces ashen and their movements devoid of their usual warrior’s swagger.

"By the moon, you are alive!" Carmen cried, the shock momentarily breaking through her anger. She rushed forward to embrace both Kayvon and Silas. "I've missed you both more than I can say." She shot a quick, pointed look at me, but I merely offered a tight, grim smile. She likely wanted to tell them that I had been ready to pull the plug on them while they lay unconscious.

"Come here, big guy," Zita said, hugging Kayvon. There was something in the way she held him—a lingering, desperate squeeze—that suggested their bond was more intimate than they let on. It was a stark contrast to the brief, platonic hug she gave Silas. "We will have time to catch up, I promise, but I'm afraid we've brought terrible news."

"Bad news?" I repeated, my gaze darting between Carmen and Zita. My instincts screamed that the world was about to shift under my feet again.

"Yes, Rune," Carmen said, her voice trembling in a way I had never heard before. "There is... there is news from the scouts stationed on the Silvermoon border."

"Tell me she’s been sighted. Tell me you have her location!" I demanded, my wolf surging violently to the surface. My claws pricked my palms, drawing blood. Finding her was the only thing that mattered; it was the only way I would ever feel whole again.

Carmen looked at Zita, then back at me, and shook her head with agonizing slowness. "She’s dead, Rune. Sara is dead."

The silence that followed was a physical blow, a vacuum that sucked the air from the room. I forgot how to breathe. I couldn't move. I simply froze and stared at them, my heartbeat gradually picking up a frantic, uneven speed. For the first time in my memory, I thought I was going to succumb to a panic attack.

Kayvon must have sensed my spiraling state because he stepped forward, his face hardening into a mask of disbelief. "That’s impossible. She was taken from Mari's clinic just a few days ago in our timeline. There is no way she could be on the Silvermoon border. It’s a grueling two-day journey from the clinic to Silvermoon. I refuse to believe a word of this."

"You've been gone for a long time, Kayvon. A lot has happened in the world while you were dreaming," Carmen spat sarcastically. I couldn't tell if she was truly angry or secretly relieved. Perhaps the realization that Kayvon, unlike the rest of the council, truly understood the value of Sara was a threat to her.

"It has been more than a week," Zita explained with a voice full of hollow compassion, turning her attention to me. "A spy from the Silvermoon border witnessed the accident. A car was spotted moving at high speeds toward the neutral zone. It lost control and went off the road on Highway 25. It hit the jagged rocks and ignited instantly. The fire was... it was absolute. Nothing could have survived that inferno."

"Show me," I growled, the word vibrating in my chest.

"Rune, the reports say the body was completely—"

"Show me!" I roared, the sound shaking the very paintings on the walls and causing the glass in the windows to rattle.

I didn't wait for their consent or a map. I knew exactly where Highway 25 cut through the mountain passes. I strode out of the hall and climbed into my SUV, the engine screaming as I floored the accelerator. Carmen joined me in the front seat, while Silas, Kayvon, and Zita piled into the back. The cabin was thick with a suffocating, grief-laden tension. No one dared to speak. The only sound was the wind howling against the glass as I pushed the vehicle to its mechanical limits, weaving through the mountain roads.

Carmen's face was a complex mixture of emotions. I saw her stealing glances at me and then at Kayvon in the rearview mirror. I got the distinct feeling she was waiting for the right moment to accost Kayvon and demand every detail he knew about the girl who had brought me to my knees.

Highway 25 was a jagged, ugly scar through the mountainside. When we arrived, the smell of scorched earth, burnt rubber, and melted iron hit me like a physical punch to the gut. The blackened, skeletal carcass of a car lay at the bottom of a steep, treacherous ravine, thin wisps of grey smoke still curling lazily from the twisted debris.

I climbed down the embankment, my boots sliding on the loose shale and scorched grass. At the center of the wreckage lay a shape. It was small, charred, and utterly unrecognizable as a human being.

"The scent is gone," Kayvon whispered, standing directly behind me. "The fire was too hot. It burned everything—flesh, bone, and memory."

I stood over the remains, my heart feeling like a block of frozen nitrogen. I looked at the twisted metal, the shattered glass, and the total absence of the bluebells-and-rain scent that had lived in my lungs since I first met her.

"No," I said, the word a low, dangerous rumble that sounded like the earth cracking open.

"Rune," Carmen said softly, reaching out to touch my arm. "The spy saw her enter that car. The border guards confirmed it was a transport belonging to a high-ranking official from the Twilight Zone. There were no survivors, Rune. It's over."

"A body burnt beyond recognition is just a pile of carbon and ash, Carmen," I said, turning to look at her. My eyes were no longer human; they were glowing with a lethal, brilliant amber light. "Tristan is a coward, and whoever orchestrated this "accident" is a snake. They know I am closing in. They know the Crescent Moon is at their throats, and they are terrified."

I turned and grabbed Kayvon by the front of his shirt, hauling him close until our faces were inches apart. He was still weak, his hands trembling slightly, but he remained the best tracker I had ever known.

"This is a ruse," I stated, my voice echoing in the canyon with a chilling confidence. "They want me to stop looking. They want me to crawl into a dark hole and mourn so they can use her in the shadows without my interference. But they have forgotten who I am."

I tightened my grip on his shirt. "I don't care if you have to smell every blade of grass between these mountains and the sea. I don't care if you have to tear the Twilight Zone apart stone by stone, house by house. You find her, Kayvon. You find my Little Miss Blue Eyes."

I looked back at the smoldering wreckage one last time, a cold, predatory smile touching my lips—the smile of a monster who had just found a new purpose.

"Because if she were truly dead... I would feel the world stop turning. I would feel the sun go cold. And the world is still spinning, Carmen. She’s alive. Somewhere, she is breathing. And I’m going to burn whoever did this to her until there is nothing left but ash."

"You need not worry, Rune. I will find out exactly what happened on this road," Kayvon reassured me, his eyes meeting mine with renewed iron, much to the visible dismay of Carmen.