I came to an abrupt halt at the sharp pain in my mate stain.
Gone. The word ghosted across my consciousness.
“She’s gone.” I looked at Pax, who was as white as a ghost.
After all, her promises and vows not to leave. The ones professing she would stay safe and in her nest? Had she really decided to run off after Hero and Stimpson? How could Orley permit it?
“Surely she wouldn’t…”
“She did… I cannot tell you how I know, but on the lives of the Three and the Old Faith, I swear I know she left.”
Fear. Something an alpha should not have any knowledge of… Fear. She could be in danger. My mate.
I needed to break or be broken. There was no other option. I searched for something to break. I heard it. The creaking of the sign in the hot summer breeze. With one powerful leap, I grabbed the wooden plank painted red and blue and wrenched it free, bringing it down to shatter on the cobbles. A scream filtered through my consciousness—though if it was real or imagined I could not say.
“Soldier!” Pax barked. I swung towards him. My whole body shook with feral fury.
“I—”
“We go back,” he growled, pressing his alpha on to me. Five years and that iron will was enough to have me dropping the remainder of the sign. The world came back incrementally, but my body hummed with repressed violence.
“Can you drive?” he asked.
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. He was right. I needed him here to prevent me from doing more damage than necessary… Than necessary. The growl gave me a purpose, put fire in my blood, encouraging me to go forward.
If the drive away from Ayleigh was wild, the one back was frantic. We pushed the horses, and the tolls were thrown open and passed without another look. Pax would go back and pay if we remembered. First, we needed to return to Trix, ensure she was safe in her nest, and that our instincts were wrong. Goddess, I hoped they were wrong.
Ayleigh’s drive was at least three miles through parkland, and we caught tantalising glimpses of it as we drove up to the great house.
“Faster,” Pax growled.
“No.”
“What if she is in danger? I’d not—”
“No, Pax. We will see first. Learn the lay of the land.” Somewhere along the way, my mind had settled into the too aware sensation I felt in the moments before a battle. As if I was like those greyhounds in the slips, straining upon the start. Emotions, whatever they might be, would come later.
“What caused your temper to cool?” He snarled. “You—Of course. The cool headed soldier now that you are on the battlefield.”
“Naturally.” I focused entirely on the horses and pushing them those final miles that I might then jump down and find my mate. She’d be in her nest, fretting and desperate for news. Her disappointment would be hard to take. Tears, recriminations, but eventually acceptance that after a night in her arms, Pax and I would be on the road again. We’d find Hero, and I would personally wring Stimpson’s neck until his life left his body.
She. Would. Be. There.
He sighed. “Naturally.”
The sound of the curricle’s wheels on the yard’s cobbles called the grooms, who scrambled to take the horses while shouting questions at us.
“Did you find her?”
“Is she safe? Did Dickens be there when you found them?” Another ran forward to catch the horses’ heads.
“Miss Hartwell was so sure. And Dickens is best to help her.” My head whipped in another direction when I heard my mate’s name.
“Send for his Grace!”
The sounds became an alarming cacophony as the hounds bayed in their kennels. The whole place was a battlefield with no clear place to funnel my increasing rage. I stood, the carriage rocking beneath me.
“Where is she?” I barked as tightly woven strands of my anger unraveled in the chaotic realisation that Trix wasn’t at Ayleigh. “Where is my mate?”