Chapter 10: The Desperate Escape
The Thornwood main house smelled of old wood, dried herbs, and quiet power. Elara’s new bedroom was too large, the bed a vast expanse of furs and linen that seemed to swallow her whole. For three days, she had been its centerpiece, a invalid queen attended by four restless kings.
The nausea came in waves, unpredictable and brutal. It would recede for an hour, letting her believe she might actually keep down some broth, then crash over her without warning, sending her stumbling to the adjoining bathroom. They were always there. A hand holding her hair back. A cool cloth pressed to her neck. A steadying palm on her back.
It was the constant touching that was driving her mad.
Every time she settled, a hand would find her stomach—Kael’s, broad and possessive, splayed over her lower belly as if guarding a treasure. Rhys’s, gentler, tracing absent circles. Lorcan’s, playful, accompanied by a whispered, “You in there, kiddo? Your dad’s a riot.” Even Silas would rest his fingers briefly on her wrist, monitoring her pulse, before his clinical touch would drop to her abdomen, checking for some shifter sign she couldn’t fathom.
The bond was a live wire in her chest, humming with their proximity. It fed her a low-grade current of their emotions: Kael’s simmering concern, Rhys’s profound contentment, Lorcan’s eager anxiety. It felt warm. Seductive. It whispered that she was safe, cherished, theirs. That was the most terrifying part. Her body, traitor that it was, wanted to lean into that warmth. Her mind screamed.
“You need more protein,” Kael stated, setting a plate of rare steak and eggs beside the bed. The smell of iron and fat hit her sinuses. Her throat closed.
“Take it away,” she managed, turning her face into the pillow.
“The cub needs strength.”
“It’s not a cub,” she snapped, the words muffled. “It’s an embryo. It needs me not to vomit on your boots.”
She felt his irritation spike through the bond, sharp and spicy, before he banked it. He was trying, she could feel that too. His dominant nature chafed against her defiance, against the biological vulnerability she represented. It made him edgy, which made everyone else edgy.
“How about some ginger tea, little one?” Rhys offered, his bulk making the floorboards creak as he entered. He was holding a steaming mug. “Mara from the kitchens swears by it.”
“Mara’s a wolf shifter who probably gives birth to litters,” Elara muttered, but she pushed herself up and took the mug. Rhys’s presence was the easiest. The bond with him felt like being wrapped in a warm blanket, safe and heavy. She hated how much she craved it.
Lorcan popped his head in, a grin on his face. “Still got the pukes? I brought reinforcements.” He held up a grocery bag. “Saltines, ginger ale, and… pickles. Classic combo.”
“Get out,” she said, but without heat.
“Nope. You’re stuck with me. Doctor’s orders.” He plopped into an armchair by the fireplace, tearing open the crackers. “So, any weird cravings yet? Dirt? Chalk? Kael’s notoriously bad decisions?”
A faint, unwilling smile touched her lips. It vanished as another low cramp pulsed through her lower abdomen, different from the nausea. A reminder. Something is growing in there.
Kael’s phone buzzed. He looked at it, his expression hardening into the mask of the Alpha. “The Southern Ridge scouts are back at the western ridge. Brazen.” He looked at Rhys, then Lorcan. “Silas is at the perimeter. We need to meet. Now.”
The order hung in the air. The attention that had been solely on her fractured, shifting to the threat outside. She felt the sudden vacuum keenly.
“I’ll stay,” Rhys said immediately, his hazel eyes finding hers.
“No,” Kael said. “I need you at the table. Your bear’s sense for deception. Lorcan can stay.”
“Why do I get babysitting duty?” Lorcan complained, but he was already moving to sit on the edge of the bed, his demeanor shifting to watchful.
“Because you’re the least diplomatic and we’re trying to avoid a war, not start one with an insult,” Kael said, already moving toward the door. He paused, looking back at Elara. The amber eyes softened, just for a second. “Rest. We won’t be long.”
Rhys bent, pressing a kiss to her temple. “The tea. Sip it. I’ll be back soon.”
And then they were gone. The room felt cavernous without them, the bond stretching thin, an ache in her sternum. But it was also, gloriously, quieter. The oppressive weight of their combined focus lifted.
Lorcan sighed dramatically. “Alone at last. So, cards? I warn you, I cheat.”
“I just want to sleep,” she said, closing her eyes.
“Right, right. Pregnant lady prerogative.” He rustled around for a minute, then she heard the soft crunch of him eating crackers. The silence stretched. She could feel his restless energy, his worry for the pack seeping through the bond. It was a thinner thread than with the others, laced with a nervous desire to please.
After twenty minutes, he shifted. “You know, Mara said wild rosehip might help more than ginger. I saw some in the lower garden.” He stood up. “I’ll be five minutes. Don’t go anywhere.”
She kept her eyes closed, her breathing even. She heard the door click shut.
Five minutes.
Her eyes flew open. The room was empty. The bond pulsed, a taut line leading downstairs and outside toward the garden where Lorcan had gone. The other threads led deeper into the house—to the meeting room. She was alone.
Her heart began a frantic drum against her ribs. This was it. A sliver of space. A crack in the prison of their care.
She moved without thinking, throwing back the furs. She was wearing one of Rhys’s t-shirts and a pair of soft sweatpants they’d found for her. No shoes. It didn’t matter.
She went to the window first. It looked out over the back of the house, a two-story drop to a stone patio. No.
The door to the hallway was an option, but the house was full of pack. She’d be sensed, smelled, caught in seconds.
Her eyes landed on the other door, the one to the private bathroom. She slipped inside, locking it behind her out of habit. The window here was smaller, but it was on the ground floor. It looked out into a dense thicket of lilacs and ferns, shading the north side of the house.
It was old, painted shut. She wrestled with the latch, her nails breaking. Panic gave her strength. With a final wrench, it gave. The window squealed in its frame. She froze, listening. No sounds of alarm.
She pushed it open, the cool, damp forest air rushing in, washing away the cloistered scents of the room. It was a tight fit. She scraped her hips and shoulders pulling herself through, tumbling into the soft, wet mulch below.
The shock of the cold ground on her bare feet was a shock. The forest floor was a mosaic of sharp pine needles, twigs, and stones. She didn’t hesitate. She pushed into the thicket, away from the house.
The bond in her chest gave a violent, warning tug. It was a physical sensation, a hook behind her sternum trying to pull her back. She could feel a spike of alarm—Lorcan’s—from the garden. He’d sensed her distance. She started to run.
It wasn’t the graceful sprint of her fieldwork. It was a stumbling, desperate flight. Every root and rock was a knife against her soles. Branches whipped her face and arms. She sobbed as she ran, tears blurring the green and brown smear of the forest. The bond was a siren now, blaring panic and fury. She could feel them moving, converging, the threads pulling taut, pointing right at her.
No. No. No.
She pushed harder, her lungs burning, the cramp in her belly tightening. She had no direction, only away. The sounds of the house were gone, swallowed by the dense woods. She ran until her legs gave out, collapsing against the mossy trunk of a fallen cedar. She stared at her feet. They were filthy, criss-crossed with shallow cuts, dotted with dark spots of blood.
What was she doing? She had no phone, no money, no shoes. She was pregnant, sick, and lost in the wilderness owned by the men she was fleeing.
But the alternative… the endless touching, the suffocating possession, the loss of herself entirely. The thought of a child born into this, a pawn in a supernatural world.
She forced herself up. She had to find a road.
An hour later, the trees began to thin. She heard the distant, beautiful hum of tires on asphalt. Staggering out onto the gravel shoulder of a two-lane highway was like stepping onto another planet. The sky was huge and grey above her.
She walked, her feet screaming with every step. Another mile. A flickering neon sign appeared in the gathering dusk: ‘GAS & GROCERY’.
It was a relic, a single pump and a small, dirty convenience store. She hobbled across the oil-stained concrete and pulled the door open. A bell jangled.
The clerk, a gaunt man with a greying beard, looked up from a hunting magazine. His eyes widened, taking in her bare, bloody feet, the oversized clothes, her wild hair and tear-streaked face.
“You alright, miss?”
“I need… I need to use your phone. Please.” Her voice was a ragged scratch.
He hesitated, eyes narrowing. “You in some kind of trouble?”
“Please. Just a cab. I can pay when I get to the city.” She was trembling all over, from cold, exhaustion, and the relentless, agonizing pull in her chest. They were close. She could feel them, a storm of anger and fear moving through the woods like a front.
The clerk must have seen the pure desperation in her eyes. He nodded slowly, pushing an old corded phone across the counter. “Dial 9 for an outside line.”
Her fingers were so cold she misdialed twice. Finally, a dispatcher answered. Elara begged for a car to Seattle, gave the address of the gas station, her voice cracking. The dispatcher said forty-five minutes.
“Please, hurry,” Elara whispered, hanging up. She slumped against the counter, wrapping her arms around herself.
“You want to wait outside?” the clerk asked, uneasy.
“No. Here. Please.” Inside felt marginally safer.
Twenty impossible minutes crawled by. She jumped at every car that passed, but none stopped. The bond was a thunderstorm in her ribs now, so intense it was nauseating. They were here.
Then, headlights turned off the highway, slowing. A yellow taxi. Relief, so profound it was dizzying, washed through her.
“Thank you,” she breathed to the clerk, and pushed out the door.
The cool night air hit her. The taxi idled by the pump. She was five steps from the open back door when new headlights—bright, harsh LEDs—flared behind it. A black van screeched to a halt, blocking the taxi’s path.
The taxi driver honked, a short, angry blast.
The van’s side door slid open. Three men in black tactical gear, their faces obscured by balaclavas, moved with a brutal, coordinated efficiency. One went to the taxi driver’s window. A short, sharp gesture, and the driver’s protests died.
The other two came straight for her.
Elara turned to run back to the store, but her battered feet betrayed her. She stumbled.
A hard arm banded around her waist, lifting her off her feet. A gloved hand clamped over her mouth, stifling her scream. She kicked, twisted, bit down on the glove. The taste of nylon and sweat filled her mouth.
“Feisty,” a low, unfamiliar voice grunted near her ear. It held no warmth, no recognition, only cold purpose.
The other man produced a pre-filled syringe. The needle caught the neon light.
The bond inside her exploded into a silent, rending scream of pure rage. It wasn’t hers. It was theirs. Kael’s fury, Rhys’s protective roar, Lorcan’s sharp fear, Silas’s icy shock—all blasting through the connection at once. It was too late.
The needle jabbed into the side of her neck. A cold burn flooded her vein.
Her vision tunneled. The struggling light of the gas station sign blurred into streaks. The last thing she heard was the voice of the man holding her, a casual report to someone unseen.
“Asset acquired. Got the Thornwood bitch.”
Then the world dissolved into nothing.
The bond snapped.
One moment it was a screaming wire in Kael’s chest, vibrating with Elara’s panic and their own pursuit. The next, it was a void. A silent, cold gash where her presence had been. He stumbled in the middle of a sentence, his hand flying to his sternum as if clawing at a physical wound.
“Kael?” Rhys’s voice was sharp.
“She’s gone,” Kael breathed, the words ice in his throat. The connection didn’t just feel distant. It felt dead. “The bond. It’s… blank.”
Lorcan’s chair screeched across the floor as he stood. His face, always so animated, was sheet-white. “No, she was just scared. I felt it. The garden… the rosehips.” His eyes widened in dawning horror. “I left her. I fucking left her for two minutes.”
“More than enough,” Silas said coldly, already moving for the door. “If she reached a road.”
Kael didn’t wait for more. His wolf surged to the surface, a silent, vicious howl trapped in his human form. He exploded from the room, a blur of speed through the halls, up the stairs. Her door was open. The room was empty, the furs thrown back. The scent of her fear was a sour tang in the air, undercut by the cold, damp smell of outside.
He followed it to the bathroom. The open window was a grinning maw of accusation.
“The north thicket,” Rhys growled from behind him, his bear riding his voice, thick and dangerous. He didn’t wait for orders. He turned and thundered downstairs, heading for the nearest exterior door to pick up the trail.
Lorcan was already at the window, his fingers gripping the sill so hard the wood groaned. “Her scent goes cold… there.” He pointed to the disturbed mulch, then his head snapped toward the forest. “But I can’t feel her. At all. Kael, what does that mean?”
It meant someone had taken her. It meant they had her somewhere beyond their bond’s range, or they had done something to her. To it. The possibilities were knives twisting in his gut.
“Shift. Now. Fan out.” Kael’s command was a low snarl. He didn’t bother with clothes. He let the change rip through him, bones cracking and reforming, fur erupting from his skin. It was a violent, painful process made faster by pure rage. A massive black wolf with silver-tipped hackles stood where the man had been, amber eyes burning.
Rhys’s change was a heavier, shuddering transformation. A grizzly of immense size, on its hind legs for a second before dropping to all fours. Lorcan’s wolf was a tawny, lean streak of motion, already vibrating with frantic energy. Only Silas remained human, his clinical mind needed for coordination.
“I’ll take the vehicles,” Silas said, pulling keys from his pocket. “She’ll have sought a road. I’ll scout the perimeter routes. Call in the pack?”
“No,” Kael’s thought pushed through their telepathic link, reserved for their wolf forms. This stays with us. Until we know who. Until we have her back. A pack-wide alert would be chaos. It would show weakness.
They burst from the house. Kael took the direct trail from the window, his nose to the ground. The story was written in the soil: her stumbling run, the tang of salt from her tears, the coppery sting of her blood from cut feet. Each scent was a lash. His mate, hurt, running from him. Because of him.
She was terrified of us, Lorcan’s thought came, a pained whisper across the bond they still shared with each other. I felt it when she ran. Pure terror.
We smothered her, Rhys’s thought rumbled, heavy with regret. We pushed too hard, too fast.
Kael pushed the recriminations aside. They were a luxury for after. Right now, he had to find the point where her fear was joined by something else. The scent of strangers.
He ran, a shadow flowing through the undergrowth. The trail led, agonizingly straight, toward the old highway. Her small, pained footprints told a story of desperation that made his ribs feel too tight for his heart. He pushed his senses outward, straining for any thread of her in the bond. Nothing. That silence was worse than any scream.
He broke from the tree line near a bend in the road. The gas station sign flickered in the distance. And there, on the gravel, was a new scent. Cold. Synthetic. Male. At least three of them. Underneath it, barely detectable, was the chemical tang of a sedative.
And blood. A single drop, dried on a pebble. Hers.
A low, continuous growl started deep in his chest. His lips peeled back from his teeth.
Rhys and Lorcan joined him seconds later, their forms emerging from the dark. Rhys sniffed the ground, a deep rumbling sound of fury building in his massive chest. Lorcan paced, a tight, anxious circle, whining softly.
Sedative, Kael pushed the thought, the image of the scent to them. They took her by vehicle.
Silas’s black SUV roared up the highway, pulling onto the shoulder. He stepped out, his phone in hand. “The clerk inside is shaken,” he said, his voice cutting through the night. “He described a woman matching Elara, barefoot, bleeding. She called a cab. A black van blocked it. Men in tactical gear took her.”
“Did he see the plates?” Kael shifted back, the process faster this time, his naked form shuddering with unresolved violence.
“No. Too dark. But he heard one of them say ‘Asset acquired.’ And ‘Got the Thornwood bitch.’”
The word ‘bitch’ hung in the air. It wasn’t just an insult. It was a claim, a recognition of her connection to them. This wasn’t random. This was targeted.
Kael felt a wave of dizziness so profound he almost swayed. It was fear, pure and undiluted. His mate, carrying their child, was in the hands of enemies who knew exactly who she was. The silence in the bond was a tomb.
“Who?” The word scraped from Kael’s throat.
“Southern Ridge is the obvious answer,” Silas said, his eyes scanning the road. “But this was… professional. Clinical. Not their style. They’d want a spectacle, a challenge. This was a grab-and-go.”
Lorcan shifted back, pulling on a pair of sweatpants Silas tossed from the car. “Who else? Who’s this calculated?”
A cold, terrible suspicion began to crystallize in Kael’s mind. He thought of the broader shifter councils, the strict laws. He thought of a pregnancy outside a formal bond, with a human, involving multiple alphas. It was an aberration. A threat to their carefully guarded secrecy.
“The Assembly,” Kael said, the words tasting like ash.
Rhys shifted back, the bear melting into the shape of a grim, naked giant. “The enforcers? They’d take her for judgment. For ‘containment.’” The word was a snarl.
“If they harmed her—” Lorcan began, his hands curling into fists.
“They won’t,” Kael cut him off, the Alpha tone forcing calm into his voice he did not feel. “Not if they want her for a tribunal. They’ll keep her safe. For now.” He looked at the drop of her blood on the ground. The need to run, to hunt, to tear the world apart until he found her was a physical agony. But his mate needed his mind, not just his teeth.
“Silas. Access every contact you have in the Assembly’s network. Quietly. Rhys, take the south territory, question our contacts on the roads. See if anyone saw a black van. Lorcan, you’re with me.” He turned his gaze toward the dense, dark woods, away from the human roads. “They took her in a vehicle. But they approached from somewhere.”
“Where are we going?” Lorcan asked, already shifting back to his wolf form.
“To find where they were waiting,” Kael said, his own change beginning. The last thing he felt before the wolf took over was that yawning, deafening silence where Elara should have been. It was a siren, and it was leading him into the dark.