The Alpha’s $12 Million Bride

Something Broken

Roman's POV

Seph's head lolled back, a groan slipping past her lips before her body went limp.

Her captor caught her weight beneath the arms, dragging her by her collarbone, staying in human form with his claws piercing her skin.

HE'S USING HER COLLARBONE LIKE A f*****g HANDLE, Rune growled, losing control.

We lunged.

A black wolf intercepted us.

He hit our shoulder hard enough to knock us sideways, jaws snapping for our throat before our paws found the ground again.

We twisted.

Bit down.

Bone cracked between our teeth.

We didn't wait to see if he got back up.

Seph.

She was moving away from us.

White dress dragging through the grass.

Red curls hanging loose, catching against leaves and broken twigs as he hauled her backward.

Her feet dragged behind her, carving the same two shallow tracks through the earth she'd made fighting him seconds before.

Mate. Rune breathed.

I see her.

Another wolf came from the left.

We met him in the air.

His teeth caught Rune’s shoulder. Rune’s found the soft place beneath his jaw.

Warm blood flooded our mouth.

He dropped.

We ran.

There was Seph.

There were bodies between her and us.

And every one of them was trying to buy the man dragging her another second.

A gray wolf came low.

We jumped him.

Another caught our hind leg before our front paws hit the ground.

Pain tore upward, white and immediate. We kicked free, claws catching something soft, and kept moving.

Eight feet.

Maybe ten.

That was all we'd gained.

Seph's captor reached the trees.

We drove harder.

A wolf launched directly into our chest.

We twisted before impact, taking him across the shoulder instead. His weight threw us off line.

Claws opened our side.

Teeth tore at our ear.

We caught a throat.

Released it after a sickening snap popped between our jaws.

By the time we looked up, the white of Seph's dress was gone.

Her scent wasn't.

It cut through everything.

Blood.

Churned earth.

Crushed greenery.

Seph!

Fear sharpened her scent.

Blood threaded through it.

And beneath both was something bitter.

What the f**k did they drug her with?

We couldn't place the scent. Couldn't recognize the drug.

We tore into the trees.

Her trail dropped sharply down the ridge.

Wet earth broke beneath our paws. Ferns flattened against our chest. We cleared a fallen tree without slowing, landed badly on the injured leg, corrected our weight, and kept moving.

Then the trees thinned.

A road appeared beyond them.

Red taillights burned through the dark.

Already a hundred yards away.

Seph.

Her scent poured across the road where they'd loaded her into the vehicle.

Blood spotted the gravel.

A piece of white fabric caught on something near the shoulder, fluttering in the wash of disturbed air.

We hit the pavement.

The injured leg buckled on the third stride.

We kept going.

The vehicle took the first curve.

For several seconds, we gained.

Our claws scraped uselessly against asphalt. Blood warmed one paw as the pavement split the pads beneath it.

We ran harder.

The road straightened.

The engine climbed as they floored it.

The SUV had to be modified; nothing that size should’ve accelerated that fast.

Twenty yards became thirty.

Thirty became fifty.

Red lights blurred between black walls of trees.

No. Rune's rage burned through us.

We ran harder.

The taillights got smaller anyway.

Then they disappeared.

We kept running.

____________________________________________________________________________

I woke with dirt and blood beneath my fingernails, matted in my hair, dried on my arms.

Fresh, angry red scars laced down my arm and leg.

My wolf and I had followed the road long after the SUV disappeared. Past the point where her scent ended. Past any reasonable possibility of catching them.

We'd kept running anyway.

Through woods when the road turned the wrong direction.

Across fields.

Through a creek deep enough that the water covered our back.

We ran until the pads of our paws split open, blood mixing with dirt.

Until everything was an open wound, including our heart.

Until our lungs couldn't pull enough air from the night.

Until we collapsed.

I remembered the ground splitting our nose as we hit the rocks beneath us. Wet leaves against our muzzle.

The smell of our own blood.

And Rune, still searching the dark between the trees with his golden eyes, barely moving his head. Soft whines escaped his muzzle with every exhale.

Mate.

Cal mind-linked us sometime after midnight.

I didn't know where we were.

So I left the link open, letting Cal see everything we'd run through. Roads. Trees. Water. Fields. Whatever fragments of the last several hours might lead him to us.

Cal had always had a way of using my Alpha bond to find me, even though I was the one who carried the constant, quiet awareness of my pack.

Where my people were.

Who was hurt.

Who was afraid.

Cal and Mari found us beneath an oak, silver fur matted with blood and mud.

I don't remember shifting.

There were pieces.

Cal's hand buried in the fur at my neck, his arms heaving beneath our front legs as he hoisted Rune over his shoulder.

The careful way he lowered us into the truck bed.

Mari climbed in beside us.

“Rune.”

His eyes barely opened.

“I know.” Her hand moved slowly through the fur along his neck. “I know.”

A whine slipped from our muzzle.

“We'll find Seph.”

She kept stroking my mane as she cradled our head in her lap, her tears falling softly onto our snout.

I knew she'd grown close to Seph.

Knew Cal had too.

I knew how badly this hurt them.

Rune hurt more.

I hurt more too.

Now I sat on the edge of my bed with both feet planted on the floor.

My sheets were just as bloodstained as I was.

I looked down at my body.

The deepest tear across my forearm had closed sometime while I slept, leaving a raised red seam from my wrist almost to my elbow. Four claw marks crossed my thigh, the shallowest two already reduced to pink lines. The deeper ones were still knitting themselves together, hot and tight whenever I moved.

The bite at my calf was gone.

The one across my ribs wasn't.

My palms were still healing.

But what hurt most:

My hands were empty.

They had been empty when I reached the road.

They had been empty when we collapsed.

They were still f*****g empty.

Alive.

Rune had been quiet since I woke.

His pain mingled with my own, overwhelming my senses.

Alive.

I held onto the word.

We hadn't smelled death.

We hadn't felt the bond disappear.

Whatever they'd put into her had dropped her body, but Seph had been alive when that SUV disappeared.

She was alive.

Somewhere.

Rune had known before she'd even looked at us.

Sixteen days ago, I'd walked into Marcus Valcourt's house expecting another argument.

Then I'd smelled her.

Mate.

One word.

Absolute certainty.

And there she'd been.

Seph.

Five-foot-three inches of red curls and barely contained disdain, staring at me like I was just another man who'd had the audacity to approach her without being invited.

I hadn't told her.

Not that day.

Not after the contract was signed.

Not once in the sixteen days that followed.

Her father had already decided she would marry me.

I wasn't going to tell her fate had decided she belonged to me too.

I wanted her wolf to recognize me first.

Rune could smell her.

He knew she was there.

But sensing her was different.

Most of the time, there was nothing.

Then Seph would get angry.

Or laugh.

Or stand too close to me for too long.

And there she'd be.

A flash beneath her skin.

Warm. Awake. Reaching.

Rune would light up inside me.

There.

And just as quickly, she'd disappear again.

The first few times, Rune had been excited.

After that, he started to worry.

Blocked.

I didn't know what he meant.

She's there.

I know.

Why can't we reach her?

I couldn’t give him an answer.

It was as if her wolf lived behind a locked, hermetically sealed door.

Except every once in a while, something broke the seal.

Just enough for Rune to feel her.

Then it slammed shut again.

Rune hated it.

Not because she hadn't recognized us.

Because somewhere inside our mate, something was keeping her contained.

Rune wanted her out.

He wanted her lungs full of cold night air. Her paws pressing deep into the earth. Moonlight spilling across her back.

He wanted to run beside her.

He wanted her to live.

And I wasn't going to frighten Seph with answers I didn't have.

So I waited.

I let her come closer when she wanted to.

Let her pull away when she didn't.

Let every inch between us belong to her.

The night before our wedding, she'd looked at me like she'd never been truly seen by anyone before.

I'd watched her walk into the studio I'd built for her and go completely still.

Then she'd looked at me.

Truly looked at me head-on, her eyes wide.

Yesterday, she told me I could kiss her.

Yesterday, I saw how badly she wanted to kiss me.

Yesterday, her wolf brushed closer to the surface than ever before. Her naturally hazel eyes flashed electric blue, a shade I'd never seen in a wolf, as her fingers slipped beneath the lapels of my tux and pulled me in.

Yesterday, I should've kissed her faster.

I should've f*****g kissed her faster.