Fighting For Her Love

Chapter 20 - Ace

I hated leaving Melody alone so abruptly, especially now that we seemed to be getting somewhere in our relationship. I had spent hours planning our morning together and preparing breakfast, but instead of enjoying it, I was stuck here listening to these two grown men arguing so viciously over a f*****g flower bed.

If my father hadn’t been sitting behind his desk judging my every move then I would probably have lost my temper with both of them long before now. The whole thing was utterly ridiculous and not something an alpha would normally get involved in.

Come to think of it, there was nothing normal about the situation in front of me. The two men looked as though they were in a heated argument but there was none of the aggressive posturing that normally accompanied werewolf disagreements. Their heart rates and scents were also suspiciously subdued for two people who were in the middle of a heated disagreement.

There was something wrong here, it almost looked as though the whole argument had been rehearsed and staged as a distraction.

Shit!

That was exactly what this was, a distraction. Someone was trying to draw me away from my mate. A cold shiver passed down my spine. When I had left Melody alone in our bed a few moments earlier I had been positive that nothing bad could ever happen to her in our home but now I wasn’t so sure.

Someone had gone to the trouble to stage this distraction and I couldn’t wait around any longer to figure out why. Without saying a word I turned around and walked towards the door.

“Ace! Where do you think you’re going?” My father shouted after me, his voice filled with authority and a hint of disappointment. Hearing him use that tone on me hurt but I couldn’t stop and explain myself, not when my mate could be in danger.

My wolf growled within my mind as I ran up the stairs towards my room. He was still annoyed with me for my previous mistakes but this was so much worse, I had left my mate alone and vulnerable, and I had also given her yet another reason to doubt me.

The moment I reached my room I knew something was wrong. Melody was no longer in bed where I had left her and the scent of another person lingered in the air. I didn’t know the other person but I could tell from their scent that they were female and a member of our pack.

I told myself that this was a good sign. There were no visible signs of a struggle within my room and I couldn’t smell any of the hormones that indicated fear. I told myself that Melody was fine and she was just helping out another member of my pack, but even as I thought those words I knew they were a lie.

I tried to push my concerns to one side as I followed the trail of Melody’s scent through the long corridors of the mansion. It wasn’t long before the trail took me away from the main corridors and into the abandoned wing that my grandparents had closed off nearly fifty years ago. It was here that the first traces of fear seeped into Melody’s scent along with something else. The metallic scent of blood.

My heart was pounding as I ran around the next corner before stopping abruptly in front of the woman who was crouched on the floor, struggling for breath. There were claw marks on the side of her neck and bruises were already starting to form across her skin.

“I didn’t know, I swear she didn’t tell me,” the woman whimpered as I crouched down beside her. The fear in the woman’s eyes told me that she was involved in this somehow but that was a problem for another day. My first priority was my mate, I needed to find her before anything else could happen to her.

“Tell me what happened,” I growled.

“Rosie took her. She told me we would just scare her a bit but she was lying to me. I’m so sorry, I would have never agreed to this if I had known she planned to rip the bond out of your mate.”

A growl tore from my throat and before I had time to process to woman’s words fully I was already running. Now I was filled with a renewed sense of purpose. This wasn’t just about saving my mate any more, it was also about ending the lives of anyone who had dared to cross her. Starting with Rosie.

My claws dug into the palms of my hands as I followed my mate’s scent through the building and out of the back door. It was there that I lost all trace of my mate’s scent. I searched the area thoroughly but there was no indication of which way they had gone, the only scent in the air was the slight trace of herbs.

They must have used some kind of magic to hide their scent. It was going to take me hours to track my mate without being able to rely on my heightened senses. Anything could happen to her during that time. The ritual to remove a bond was dangerous and took a long time to prepare but that didn’t mean she was safe with them.

‘This is all your fault, you should have never left her alone.’

That was one thing both me and my wolf agreed on. Once I got her back I wasn’t going to leave her side for even a moment, not even to use the bathroom. She would just have to get used to relieving herself while I was in the room with her. But first, I needed to get her back.

I ran back to my father’s office as fast as my legs could carry me. By the time I flung open the doors I was breathing heavily and my wolf was so close to the surface that when we spoke, we spoke as one.

“Where is she?” We growled.

My father and the two other pack members were still where I had left them and they all seemed genuinely surprised by my anger. I wasn’t buying it though, I was convinced that the two of them knew something about what was going on and I wasn’t leaving this room until they told me the information I needed to find my mate.

“Ace, what is going on with you today?” My father asked as he slowly stood up from behind his desk.

“This whole disagreement is nothing but a ruse to give Rose time to abduct my mate. She plans to use magic to rip the bond out of her.”

“That can’t be true,” my father growled, his eyes flashing red as his wolf fought with him for control. My father knew as well as I did how dangerous it was to mess around with bonds. The bonds between mates were put in place by the moon goddess herself, it wasn’t simple to remove them and most of those who tried ended up dead.

The two men dropped their act and shuddered in fear at the sound of my father’s growl. Their guilt was written all over their faces but neither of them seemed willing to own up to what they had done.

My father banged his fists against his desk with so much force that the wood cracked beneath them.

“Tell me what you know and I might be able to get you a lighter sentence. But if my son or his mate dies because you refused to share information with us then I will see to it that you are executed for treason.”

“We didn’t know she was going to take Ace’s mate, I swear. Rosie told us that she wanted to give Ace a chance to prove himself to you. If I had known that she was going to do something like this I would never have agreed to help her.” His voice quivered as he spoke but there was no sign of deception in his words.

“So you have no idea where they are?” I asked, with more than a hint of desperation in my voice.

Both of the men shook their heads. Their posture had completely changed now that they understood the consequences of their actions, but that wasn’t my concern. I had a mate to find and as they couldn’t give me the information I needed, I had to find her another way.

I ran out of the room and headed back to the place where I had lost my mate’s scent. Through the pack’s mind link, I could hear my father mobilising a search party for Rosie and my mate but I ignored it. I had already wasted too much time.