Chapter 33

Ch. 33: Dane

With anger coursing through me like fire, I reach the ridge in record time. There, I stand on the precipice, overlooking the land that I've come to call mine.

If everything had gone according to plan tonight, I would be bound to it already, with my mate and my sisters at my side. Instead, one of my sisters is kidnapped and my mate's cries of anger and dismay still ring in my ears.

Another voice echoes in my mind as well: my father's from long ago, teaching me a lesson after I'd grown too cocksure for my own good.

An Alpha doesn't demand respect, he'd said. He earns it.

Isn't that what I'm doing, though? Taking action; doing the right thing.

Can the right thing be a mistake? my father's imagined voice asks.

Unable to consider this properly as a Wolf, I Shift once more, the crack of bones and joints a little more agonizing this time. Shifting is tough on the body, and doing so too often takes its toll.

Human once more, I sit on a smooth, rounded rock, releasing my breath in a groan of mingled frustration and pain, and survey my potential territory as I struggle to arrange my thoughts.

In the heat of anger, the choice had seemed obvious: take the Alpha, gain the power, rescue Ingrid. Now, alone when I should least be alone, my doubt returns full strength.

Life is a series of choices, is another thing my dad would say. And a handful of those choices reveal who you really are.

This certainly feels like one of them, and despite my earlier eagerness to dive straight into action, consequences be damned, now 'damned' feels like exactly what I am: damned if I do; damned if I don't.

If I don't take the alpha tonight, I could lose Ingrid.

If I do take it... I could lose everything.

I don't need to ask what my dad would do in my place. I know. My mom's an alpha, too, and they've always worked together. They each have their strengths, and areas in which they lead. They rarely even have to verbalize decisions. They just know what the other thinks and trust each other implicitly. Whatever my dad chose to do would be what my mom decided, too, and vice versa.

Unlike my dad's, though, my mate's not a Wolf. He's a Fae, and a man, and sometimes a mystery. I wish more than anything that I had him at my side right now, but I don't, and that's the difference.

I fucked up. I knew I fucked up the second I pushed Julian aside and ignored his pleas to stop and wait for him, and it feels like whatever I do next, I'm gonna fuck up again.

"Damned if I do; damned if I don't," I mutter.

I have until dawn to decide which hell I'd rather live in, but as I watch the moon's slow journey across the sky, my heart tells my choice is already made. I just hope it's not a terrible mistake, and that I can be forgiven for making it.

***

As dawn makes the eastern sky blush, I return home. Shifting once more, I cover the distance in two hours, taking my time, and arrive at the cottage just as the sun lifts clear of the horizon. Trotting around to the back porch, I Shift again and take a few minutes to catch my breath before heading inside. The house seems quiet, and while I'd imagined Julian wouldn't have been able to sleep, if he had, I don't want to disturb him.

Inside, however, I find the house abandoned.

"Julian? Freya?"

Concerns for restful sleep forgotten, I call their names at full volume, but receive no reply. My unease escalates to panic as I check each room twice and find no sign of either my sister or my mate. Cursing myself, I retrieve my phone from the bedside table where I'd left it two days earlier, and curse myself again for not having plugged it in before I left.

The battery is dead.

Fuck.

Barely resisting the urge to hurl the useless device across the room, I plug it in and try to think clearly as I wait for it to charge enough to turn on.

I have years of training as a marine and a homicide detective to fall back on, but I also just spent the better part of two days as a wolf. I haven't eaten, I've barely slept, I've Shifted more times than is good for me in a brief span of time, and my carefully laid plans have been destroyed like a sandcastle kicked by a mean kid. My sister's been kidnapped, and now, to top it all off, my mate is missing. Not a great start to my rule as Alpha.

I shut my eyes and take a deep breath, forcing my mind into a stillness it resists.

Julian's scent is everywhere, the freshest mingled with hints of fear and stress, but that's hardly unexpected. There are signs of his and Freya's recent presence, too: dishes in the sink, a jacket draped across the back of the couch, an empty can of Red Bull on the counter (Freya's, no doubt), which tell me they made it home safely and probably left only moments before my arrival.

There's no sign of a struggle, either, and when I go to the window and look out, I see that Julian's car is gone. This tells me they left alone and of their own free will—Julian's antique Volkswagen barely sits two, and even then not comfortably. With any other vehicle to choose from, only Julian would choose his own.

The question now is, where did he go, and why?

Retrieving my keys and phone, I stride out to my car. Remembering my wallet, I turn back, and that's when I spot the yellow note stuck to the door—right where I'd have seen it if I'd used the front entrance when I returned.

"Danni's for supplies," I murmur, reading it aloud to myself. "The fuck for?"

Crumpling the note and tossing it aside, I shake my head as anger heats my core. Whatever the reason, given the circumstances, it had better have been a damned good one.

***

I drive much too fast, but luck is with me and I manage to avoid a speeding ticket. Spotting Julian's car in front of Danni's shop, I park with a screech of brakes, get out, and jog across the street.

The interior of the store is dark, and I reduce my pace and increase my caution. Testing the doorknob, I find it unlocked and enter without announcing myself. Inside, I pause for a breath while my eyes adjust to the dim light, when an oddly muffled voice calls my name.

"Dane? That you?"

"Freya!"

Spotting her bent over near the counter, hands covering her eyes, I bolt to her side.

"I'm okay." She waves me off. "Just got some pepper-spray—or pepper dust—in my eyes. I think there's some wolfsbane in it, too. Stings like fuckin' hell, and I can't see for shit, but I'm not hurt."

"What happened?"

"Skin-changer got Danni."

"Where's Julian?"

"He went after it."

"Alone?"

"Yeah."

"Shit. Which way?"

"Out the back." She waves towards the other end of the shop.

"You sure you're okay?" I ask as she pushes herself to her feet.

"Yeah. Go after Jules. I'm fine."

I grunt my acknowledgment, in which is a promise to come back for her as soon as I can, and slip through the narrow emergency exit and into a familiar alleyway. It's the same one where Julian had lost the thief, the night of our stakeout.

A little way down, the back door of another shop stands ajar. I reach it in a few strides, throw it open, and burst into the storage area of Stephanie Wong's thrift shop.

Pausing, I sweep the darkened space with my gaze and sniff the air. Julian's been here, for sure, and so has someone else. There's another smell, too—the dank scent of the tunnels—and it leads me to a gaping hole in the wall, which appears to have been knocked in with a sledgehammer.

"Fuck."

I swear under my breath as the scenario plays out in my mind. Julian in pursuit, alone, with no one to back him up. Of course he rushed headlong into who-knows-what. After what I said and did, he probably—

"Dane?"

His voice echoes softly from the dark, cautious and low.

"Julian!"

I duck into the narrow opening, but he's already emerging from the gloom, eyes wide and pale face streaked with grime. I clamber back through the hole and help him out after me, then grasp his shoulders as if to reassure myself that he's solid and real.

He grasps me in return, but his expression is tinged with uncertainty and a trace of fear.

"You got my note?"

I nod. "How did you know it was Danni?"

"I didn't. I was hoping they could help me break Rhiannon's curse, so she could tell us what the fuck is going on. We figured out Danni wasn't Danni by accident."

"You lost them?"

He hesitates. "Sort of. They escaped to the Shadowlands. I... decided not to follow them."

I blink. "Decided not to?"

The thought that he'd even consider something so recklessly dangerous is what alarms me, but what I see on his face is guilt.

"I'm sorry," he says. "I had a chance. I might have caught them and gotten some answers there and then. It was a risk, but I'd have taken it. I know you'd have told me not to, but that's not what stopped me. Sometimes we have to make choices on our own, but when it affects both of us..."

His eyes flick between mine, a painful uncertainty in his expression, but something inside me relaxes as I finally let go of the fear I'd been clinging to all night.

"I made the same choice, Julian," I say. "I chose us. I won't take the Alpha unless you're standing at my side, and whatever we do next, we'll do it together."

His eyes widen, and then he's in my arms and I'm in his, and we hold on tight.

When our heartbeats and breaths have slowed, we release one another and share a tentative, hopeful smile.

Movement in my peripheral snags my attention and I turn.

Freya stands in the doorway, but she's not alone. Her hands are cuffed behind her back, and Detective Erickson keeps a rough grip on her arm, a gun in his other hand.

He grins, obviously pleased with himself.

"Well, well, well," he drawls. "And what do we have here? Three for the price of one. Looks like I'll be getting that bonus after all—once I turn you over to the Fae, that is."