Chapter 24 – Missing
917 Words
For a heartbeat no one moved.
Sorrel’s question hung in the air, thin and sharp as wire.
“Where’s Tamsin?”
Amara’s head snapped around, heart dropping before her eyes finished the sweep. Mud. Torn ground. Wolves. Men. Shredded net. No short, dark‑haired hunter anywhere in sight.
“She was right behind us,” Amara said. Her own voice sounded wrong in her ears.
Rowan pushed off her, already scanning the chaos with a soldier’s eye. “Check the van,” he snapped. “Now.”
Two Blackridge wolves—halfshifted, hands bloody—ripped the remaining side door fully open. Inside: restraints bolted to the walls, a closed metal crate, a pile of gear. No girl.
“Crate,” Gideon snarled from somewhere to Amara’s left.
They hit it together. Hinges screamed. The lid came up.
Empty.
“Anyone see her go down?” Elias’s voice, hoarse over the comms.
“No,” Sorrel said, too fast. “She was there and then—” She cut herself off, biting down on the tremor.
Amara forced air into her lungs. “Beacon,” she rasped, grabbing for her own wrist. “Nira, check the board.”
“I’m already on it,” Nira snapped in her ear. “Yours is pinging. Hers is—” A hitch. “—moving.”
“Direction,” Rowan said.
“Downslope,” Nira said. Keys clacked in the background. “Fast. Cutting away from your current position. Looks like… east by southeast. They took a secondary track.”
“Backup vehicle,” Gideon spat. “Of course.”
Amara’s stomach flipped. “She’s conscious?”
“No way to tell,” Nira said. “Beacon’s live. That’s all.”
Wind tore the last of the gas away. The clearing stank of fear and metal. One of the masked men tried to inch toward his earpiece; Lyra’s boot landed on his wrist, grinding until he hissed.
“Who’s your handler?” she asked pleasantly. “Who’s paying for Zero?”
His eyes flicked to Amara.
Wrong choice.
Rowan snarled, low and lethal. “Eyes on me,” he said, dominance rolling out like pressure. Even halfshifted, he had to fight not to let the wolf take over entirely.
Amara barely heard them.
Tamsin’s scent was a fast‑fading thread under everything else—sweat, fear, the sharp tang of human tranquilizer. Her wolf wanted to drop to all fours and run, track, chase, until she hit steel and blood and the humans stupid enough to touch one of hers.
“Amara.” Rowan’s voice cut in, closer now. “Look at me.”
She did. Barely.
“This wasn’t the main grab,” he said, reading her face. “You were. They took what they could when the window closed. We shut that down. Now we get her back.”
Her laugh came out shredded. “That easy?”
“No,” he said. “But simple.”
Gideon jogged up, breath puffing white. “Track from the far side,” he said. “Light rig. Two humans, one wolf scent I don’t recognize. They bailed when the fight turned. Truck tread’s smaller than the van’s.”
“Beacon signal?” Rowan asked.
Nira: “Still moving. Slower now. Either they hit rough ground or they think they’ve shaken you.”
“They haven’t,” Amara said.
Rowan’s gaze sharpened. “We can’t go in blind. Not twice in one night. We regroup, call in fresh bodies, then move.”
“She doesn’t have time for your perfect formation,” Amara snapped. “You saw those crates. You know where she’s headed if we wait.”
“If you go crashing down that slope like this,” he said, “you’re giving them exactly what they wanted the first time: Subject Zero in a van.”
He wasn’t wrong. That only made it worse.
Sorrel stepped in, voice steadier than her pulse smelled. “We move light,” she said. “Fast team. No pups, no elders. Amara in the middle, not the front.”
“Like hell,” Amara said.
“Like strategy,” Sorrel shot back. “You want Tamsin alive? Then you don’t get yourself taken two minutes into the rescue.”
The words hit where they had to.
Rowan exhaled once, sharp. “Fine. Two teams. Blackridge and Silverpine mixed. Gideon, you lead the strike. Frost—” His eyes locked on hers. “You track. Nothing else unless it’s life or death. You hear me?”
“Loud and clear,” she bit out.
He nodded. “The rest secure the scene and get these idiots somewhere we can talk to them without an audience.”
“Or with,” Lyra muttered, grinding her heel into the captive’s hand once more for emphasis.
Amara jogged to the edge of the clearing. Tamsin’s scent was clearer here—a scuff mark where her boot had slipped, a smear of blood where someone’s grip had been too hard.
Her wolf surged to the front, nose working, heart locked on that one thread.
“Go,” Rowan’s voice said in her ear. “We’re on your six.”
She dropped into a lope, following the faint, ugly line of fear and tranquilizer down the slope into thicker dark.
Subject Zero had been bait tonight.
They’d taken a friend instead.
That was their second mistake.
The first was thinking Amara Frost was ever going to stop.
- Writer
