Page 111 of Torment Me Knot
“I'm angry at her for leaving.” The words scrape out, raw at the edges. “She didn't tell us what she was thinking. Feeling. She just left and—”
“I texted her to put her big girl panties on and she still left.” Aubrey's voice is quiet against my hair. “I'm furious at her.”
The tears come then, the ones I'd been holding since Kev walked into the greenhouse yesterday with that look on his face. Aubrey holds me tighter, and we stand in the middle of Sera's room and fall to pieces together.
I wipe my face with the back of my hand. Take a breath. Take another. The shaking doesn't stop but it gets smaller, manageable.
“She was wrong, Aubrey. About not being enough. She was wrong.”
“When we find her, I'm going to put her in the middle of the nest and sit on her until she understands.” The certainty in his voice is absolute.
“If we find her,” I whisper.
“She'll come back.” Aubrey rubs my back, his grip unsteady. “She will.”
He's trying to convince both of us. Neither of us has a crystal ball. It took the rest of the night, all three alphas bundling us between them, Lex's chin on Aubrey's head, Kev's arms tight enough to hurt in the best way, Ezra's purr working through the stack of us in our chair until exhaustion finally won, before either of us could semi-function again. I don't know if that counts as okay. It's the closest thing to it we have.
Aubrey links our fingers. “Come on. Let’s take all of this to our nest.”
He tugs me out. I keep the sweatshirt folded against my chest, her scent as close as I can get it. We leave her door open behind us.
“Is there any word?” I pause in the kitchen doorway.
Kev sits at the table, phone flat on the wood in front of him, screen dark. He plows his fingers through his hair. “Nothing yet.”
“Levi said they had a location. That’s where she was?” Aubrey says.
“They've searched it several times.” Lex turns from the window. “There’s no trace of activity. No sign that anyone was there.”
“Then where?” My voice cracks. “Where would she go?”
Ezra comes to us before I finish the sentence. He pulls in Aubrey, then wraps his other arm around me, drawing us both against his chest. I still have Kev's flannel folded over one arm, Lex's scarf, Ezra's sweatshirt, all of it pressed between us as he holds on. I press my face to him and breathe. Fresh linen, woodsmoke. There's a burnt edge underneath that catches in my nose, acrid and wrong, the scent of a man running on no sleep and too much fear for too long.
“Have Wallace's alphas been seen again?” Aubrey asks, his voice muffled against Ezra's shoulder. “The ones who were at the nursery.”
Kev's phone hits the table harder than it needed to. He doesn't answer.
They found us. Then they disappeared again.
I start shaking, hands first, spreading up through my arms, old fear rising through muscle memory. “How did they find us? How did they know where we'd be?”
Kev shakes his head. “We don't know yet.”
“Levi and Pack Hawthorn are working on it,” Lex says. His voice is level but his Earl Grey has gone sharp at the edges. “There are a few possibilities. None of them are good.”
“Then tell me the possibilities.” I look at him straight. “Don't manage me.”
Lex meets my gaze. A beat passes before he nods. “There could have been a leak somewhere in the search network. A tail we didn't pick up early enough. Or they've been tracking the house and waited for us to move.” He pauses. “We don't know which. Until we do, we have to stay here where it's safe.”
“What if they got to Sera first?” Aubrey's voice cracks on the last word.
“Sera is highly capable. We have every resource at Silverpine looking for her. She is trained, armed, and she knows what she's doing.” Kev keeps his hands at my face and makes one slow pass along my cheekbones. “We will find her.”
The words are true. The fear underneath them is also true. The dread doesn't leave. It just settles beside Kev’s steadiness and refuses to move. I take Aubrey's hand and take him to the patio. To our chair. Nothing about it is right. I swallow frustration that has nowhere to go.
Aubrey’s discord presses against mine, and beneath it the same wordless insistence that this needs fixing right now.
I pull the top blanket off and drop it on the patio stones. Then the next. Then the shirts, the pillows, the clothing we had there, all of it, stripped back to nothing heaped with the collection we’d scavenged.
