The Mark He Refused To Claim

CHAPTER 10

I didn't remember deciding to grab the receptionist's desk, but suddenly my hands were braced hard against its edge, my knuckles white, my whole body swaying like the floor had dropped six inches without warning beneath me.

"That's not possible," I said, my voice barely more than a whisper, the words scraping out of a throat gone tight with panic. "I never gave anyone permission to pick him up. Not you, not the school, not anyone."

"Ma'am." The receptionist's eyes darted nervously between me and Dane, standing rigid and visibly furious beside me. "He had identification. He looked like him, like the boy, I mean. We assumed, given the resemblance, that everything was in order."

"Show me." Dane cut in, his voice a low, controlled growl that made the woman flinch and immediately turn her monitor toward us without further question.

The security still from the front camera showed a man in a dark jacket, his face angled carefully away from the lens with a precision that suggested he'd known exactly where the camera was mounted, walking out of frame with Milo's small hand engulfed entirely inside his much larger one.

My knees buckled instantly. Dane's arm shot out and caught me before I hit the floor, his grip steady and sure even as I could feel him shaking with the exact same terror clawing through both of us in equal measure.

"That's not Torren," Dane said grimly, studying the frozen image with an intensity that made his whole jaw tighten. "That's not anyone I recognize from my own security team. Whoever that is, he wasn't sent by me."

"Voss," I choked out, the name tasting like poison. "It has to be Voss. Who else would even know to look for him here?"

Dane's phone was already at his ear, his thumb moving with practiced speed. "Torren. Someone took Milo from his school. I need every asset we have moving right now, this instant, and I need the Voss family's exact location within the hour. I don't care what it costs or who we have to wake up to get it."

I couldn't process anything beyond the roaring building in my ears. My son. My baby, the one I had carried alone through a night my aunt died, the one I had raised on waitressing tips and stubborn hope, taken by strangers because of a war I hadn't even known I was standing in the middle of, a war six years in the making that had nothing whatsoever to do with the quiet, careful life I had spent every waking hour building to protect him from exactly this.

"He's scared." My voice broke completely now, all pretense of composure gone. "He doesn't know any of these people, Dane. He's going to be so terrified, and I'm not there, and I don't even know where he is."

"We will find him." Dane's voice carried a sheer, unshakable certainty that was the only thing keeping me upright in that moment. "I promise you, Nora, on absolutely everything I have left in this world, we will find him and bring him home."

My phone buzzed sharply in my shaking hand. An unknown number, the digits meaning nothing and everything all at once.

I answered with trembling fingers, Dane leaning in close enough that his shoulder pressed against mine, close enough to hear every word.

"Ms. Ashworth." The voice on the other end was smooth, unfamiliar, and chillingly calm in a way that made my skin crawl. "Your son is perfectly safe, for the moment. But I think it's time we discussed exactly what an unclaimed Alpha heir is worth to certain interested parties, and exactly how quickly that value could shift if Alpha Kestrel refuses to reconsider his sponsorship arrangements."

"If you hurt him..." I started, my voice cracking under the combined weight of a fury and terror I had never before felt in such equal, overwhelming measure.

"No one wants to hurt a child, Ms. Ashworth." The voice remained infuriatingly, deliberately smooth. "We simply want assurances, nothing more. You have one hour to convince Alpha Kestrel to see reason on this matter. After that, I'm afraid I cannot promise how patient my associates will remain with the situation."

The line went dead.

I looked up at Dane, and the expression on his face was one I had never once seen before in the whole of our history together, not on that terrace six years ago, not in the gym, not anywhere. Pure, lethal, entirely unrestrained Alpha rage, aimed squarely at a threat that had just made the single worst mistake of its existence by putting hands on what was his.

"Get me Voss on the phone." Dane's voice had gone terrifyingly quiet, more dangerous in that stillness than any shout could ever have been. "Right now, Torren. And tell my father in law that if one single hair on my son's head is out of place when we find him, there will not be a corner of this world far enough for him to hide in.”