LOGINJaxon:Tell me everything.” I recounted the call in clipped, precise sentences. The kidnapping, the amusement park, everything. Carver listened without interrupting, typing steadily as I spoke. When I finished, the room fell silent except for the clicking of keys. “We’re working with almost nothing,” Lewis muttered. “We’re working with enough,” Carver replied calmly. He enlarged the city map. “The phone connected for less than ninety seconds.” “That’s still ninety seconds more than whoever took her wanted.” He highlighted several communication towers. “The signal bounced between three repeaters before reaching yours.” Lewis leaned closer. “They masked it.” “They tried.” Carver’s fingers moved faster. “But masking a signal isn’t the same as erasing one.” A series of circles appeared across the map then another. Gradually overlapping until they formed a rough section of the industrial district. “There.” I stepped closer. “How many?” “Too many.” Red dots began appearing. Lewis
Jaxon:I shoved through the glass doors of the Regala building without slowing. The receptionist barely had time to look up before he crossed the lobby and headed straight for the private elevator. Lewis kept pace beside him, already barking instructions into his phone, dispatching trusted men to every corner of the city.“Check every abandoned property within ten miles of the amusement park. I don’t care if it’s been empty for twenty years. Search it.”I ended the call just as the elevator doors slid open. Neither of us spoke during the ride. I stood with my jaw clenched, one hand curled into a fist at his side. Kael had gone from frantic to dangerously quiet. That silence was worse. It meant his wolf was focused, listening, waiting.Our mate was alive. I could still feel the faint thread of the bond. Hold on Ember, I’m coming. The elevator doors opened onto the executive floor. Carver was already waiting.He stood beside the conference table with a laptop open, three additional moni
Jaxon:The moment Edison’s convoy disappeared through the warehouse gates, I was moving. I didn’t wait for protocol. I barely waited for the office door to finish closing behind me before I was already taking the stairs two at a time.Kael was still frantic beneath my skin. Every instinct he possessed screamed the same thing. Lewis met me outside before I reached my SUV. His phone was pressed against his ear, his expression grim enough that my stomach dropped before he even spoke. He ended the call and looked at me.“I can’t find her.” The words landed like a punch to the chest.“What do you mean?”“I checked her apartment first.”“Nothing.”“I called Noah.”“Then Elias.”“They’ve been looking for her for over an hour.”My jaw clenched.“What happened?”Lewis exhaled sharply.“They were at the amusement park.”“Kim, Noah, Elias… and Ember.”“They went into one of the haunted attractions.”“Elias was supposed to follow her inside.”“He lost sight of her.”“When he found the exit…” Lewi
Emberlyn:The first thing I became aware of was the pounding. It started somewhere behind my eyes, a slow, relentless throb that felt as though someone was driving nails into my skull one careful strike at a time. Every beat of my heart made it worse, sending another wave of pain through my head until I couldn’t tell where the ache ended and the dizziness began.A bitter, chemical taste coated the back of my throat. I swallowed instinctively and it burned. My tongue felt heavy, my mouth painfully dry, and my limbs refused to obey me no matter how hard I tried to move them.For a long moment, I stayed exactly where I was. Darkness pressed against my eyelids, comforting in a strange way. Opening my eyes meant facing whatever had happened. The light overhead was dim, filtering through grimy windows set high into cracked concrete walls. Dust floated lazily through the narrow beams of sunlight, turning slowly in the stale air.I didn’t recognize the room. The floor beneath me was freezing
Jaxon:Something wasn’t right. The feeling settled in my chest without warning, subtle at first, then sharp enough that I nearly stopped walking. For the past few weeks, I’d become used to Kael reacting whenever Ember was close. He noticed things about her before I did. Her scent changing when she was nervous. The subtle shifts in her heartbeat whenever she lied about being fine. Even before her wolf surfaced, he’d always seemed to recognize something inside her that neither of us could explain.I paused outside the warehouse doors and glanced around the loading yard. Men in reflective vests moved between delivery trucks with practiced efficiency, checking manifests against shipments while forklifts carried sealed pallets across the concrete. Men moved between delivery trucks, checking manifests and unloading sealed crates. Forklifts rumbled across the concrete floor, their engines echoing through the vast building.Everything looked exactly as it should, except me. Kael stirred. He
Emberlyn:“Now we do something fun.”“I’m voting for going home,” I said.“Your vote has been rejected.”“I didn’t know we were voting.”“We aren’t.” She slipped her arm through mine before I could protest.“We’re kidnapping you.”“I don’t think that’s how kidnapping works.”“It does today.” Noah laughed as we crossed the parking lot.“I’m just here for the entertainment.”“You always are,” Kim replied.A short drive later, the amusement park came into view. The towering Ferris wheel slowly rotated against the bright blue sky while screams from the roller coasters echoed through the air.The smell of popcorn, sugar, and grilled food drifted on the breeze. Children ran between the attractions with balloons tied around their wrists while families queued beneath colorful signs advertising every ride imaginable.I stopped walking. “You brought me here?”Kim looked pleased with herself.“You need a day where your biggest problem is whether you’re brave enough to ride a roller coaster.”“I
Emberlyn:The desk was clear. The tie was back where it belonged. The office looked exactly as it had before I walked in, which felt like its own kind of statement.I buttoned my top in the mirror of his darkened phone screen and didn't look at him directly, which was a self-preservation decision r
Alpha Jaxon:Maybe I should revoke his family membership. Is that too petty?I had seen them from a hundred and fifty feet away.The green, the fairway, the two of them standing close enough for conversation, Emberlyn with a golf club in her hands and Elias Desmond covering the distance toward her
Emberlyn:I should have just said yes.No, I shouldn't, why should I say yes?The word sat at the front of my brain like something that had been waiting for permission to exist. It had been there since the green, since his thumb at my jaw and his voice saying say yes like it was the simplest direct
Alpha Jaxon:She swung like she was trying to punish the ball.The club cut through the air at an angle that had nothing to do with physics and everything to do with zeal, and the ball skipped sideways across the green and came to rest approximately fifteen feet from where she'd been aiming.She st







