Page 248 of Awakened

I remember the way we were teeming with fear and anxiety, terrified of what we might find when we made it inside.

This time, my focus is solely on whatever will make Idril the happiest. That’s it. My new goal in life. To see her happy.

My instincts are 1000% on board. My Alpha hasn’t quit offering suggestions of ways to protect and care for her. When he’s not sending me wildly inappropriate images of all the ways to make her smile with my knot. Those I ignore as best I can, because even if she one day wanted me like that, I’m not sure I’ll ever be deserving of her.

I glance at Dax in the passenger seat. He’s been quiet the whole way here, his side of the Bond locked tight. I still can’t stop thinking about that flash of gratitude I saw in his eyes earlier.

Maybe I’m not the only one cracking today. Dax is, too.

He just needs one more little push.

For his own good, of course.

“This is where she lived?” Riven leans forward from the backseat to get a better look.

“Feels like a graveyard,” I mutter, pulling into the circular drive and parking the SUV right in front of the doors. A shiver runs down my spine as I open the car door and step into an eerie silence. There’s no breeze, no tree branches rustling in the wind. Hell… even the birds seem to be chirping less, and only in the far distance.

It’s like the world’s simply forgotten this place exists.

Dax leads the way up the front steps, but I reach around him and wrap my hand around the brass doorknob before he can push the door open. It’s still cracked in places, like someone tried to fix it. Poorly.

The hinges creak as we step inside. I’m immediately hit with the scent of old, dried-out blood. It’s not a shock, considering the foyer is painted in it. Marble floors and white plaster walls are streaked and splattered with dark red.

I knew Caelan fought and killed quite a few of Varenthrall’s men in this foyer, but that’s not what has me shivering.

It’s knowing that while most of this blood belonged to the enemy, some of it is undoubtedly his.

And Idril’s.

Riven points at the floor where a deep, jagged crack cuts the entryway in two. I remember noticing it briefly as I ran past, but now I can’t help feeling awed by the power it must have taken to split solid marble—not to mention the three feet of concrete atop the house’s foundation.

Riven’s circling the edge of the foyer when suddenly he stops. He crouches down, squinting at another set of bloody streaks with a frown.

“I think… I think these are footprints.”

That pulls me up short. Coming to stand next to him, it only takes a moment for the random streaks and shapes to snap into focus.

Fates, he’s right.

There are clearly small, bloody footprints that start near the stairs and continue to the middle of the foyer. They’re far too small to be a man’s, which means…

Idril.

“She ran for him,” Daxen whispers, glassy eyes bouncing back and forth between each footprint. “She said… I mean, she told me. In the library.”

His head falls back, and he blinks away the tears in his eyes. I hope he’s remembering that moment in the library. I hope he’s remembering how he threw that glass at the wall behind her head.

“She told me she couldn’t remember how she got away from her father. That he was holding her in front of him, then Caelan got shot and she just… ran.”

As he talks, it’s like I can see the scene playing out in front of me, clear as day. Idril, small and scared, shaking and crying as her own father uses her body to protect his own.

There’s a pressure behind my eyes, and I swallow thickly around the ball of emotion in my throat.

“Brave girl,” Riven murmurs, tone full of admiration. “I don’t know many Omegas who’d have the constitution to run through puddles of blood while facing unknown, dangerous Alphas. All to protect her injured Mate.”

Dax coughs, then turns around so he doesn’t have to face us. He makes a show of surveying the room, taking in the chandelier on the ceiling, barely attached to its mooring, the cracks that start at the foundation and run in spider web patterns all the way up the walls.

He examines it all, but every few seconds, like clockwork, his eyes slide back to those footprints and linger, like he just can’t help himself.