The Captain's Forbidden Mate

Episode 34: THE MISSING MAN

LENA

Two days before the council. Two days before, and now Damien Holt was somewhere out there asking his father exactly what would unravel the Ridgeview story.

Didn't hear from him that night. Or the next morning.

Astra continued to train me until the day had shortened. "Fear moves faster when you know it's coming," she said, looking over my shoulder in the clearing as I held the shift steady; "better to make the control now while you have a little time before you can no longer practice."

My phone buzzed in the middle of my training, but it wasn't Damien. Not the unknown number.

It was Marcus. Noah's cousin.

Need to talk. Now. I found something about the uncle. It's bigger than any of us thought.

I called him back immediately, Astra watching with concern as my hands started shaking again, only this time, it wasn't from the shift.

"Marcus. What did you find?"

His voice rushed through the speaker hurriedly and concerned. "The photo Noah found. I dug a little deeper into the old pack records that Ridgeview isn't so keen on people digging into anymore. Aiden Holt didn't just help your mother escape. He was making plans with the Corwin alliance before the m******e. A plan to stop the war before it started. Peace talks, back room negotiations, the kind his own family would have seen as betrayal."

"So he really did try to stop it.

"He tried, but he failed, and here is the part that will matter right now." Marcus's voice dropped lower, as if he was worried about being overheard even though he was on the phone. "The records show that he didn't die that night. He was last seen three days after the m******e, crossing borders in territory that belongs to neither pack. Neutral ground, that is, the same stretch of land that Elias Thorne's people are rumored to work in now."

My stomach dropped at the implications. "You think Aiden Holt is with Thorne."

"I think it's possible that he has been with Thorne all this time, twenty-two years he's been with them, building whatever it was that Thorne has been building, waiting for the right time to make his move. Lena. If Aiden Holt is still alive and working with Thorne's faction, then that means that maybe, just maybe, Damien's own uncle is the missing piece connecting everything. The betrayal. The m******e. And the plan that Thorne has obviously been working on for two decades."

I sat with this for a while, the forest silent around me as Astra watched my face for whatever revelation was to come next.

"There's one more thing," Marcus said before moving on to the next. "I don't know how to say this softly, so I'm just going to say it like this. If Aiden Holt has been alive all this time, hiding with Thorne's people, planning something for the last twenty-two years, then maybe Damien isn't walking right into a simple family confrontation, he's walking right into the one man his entire family has been hoping never resurfaces for the last two decades."

My phone buzzed again before I replied. I got a text this time from Damien himself, the first word I'd heard from him since he walked out of the coffee shop.

I found him.

Three words, nothing else. And a long while later a new text followed, one that made the blood leave my face in a hurry.

He wants to meet you. Tonight. Alone.

I read it twice, my heart slamming against my ribs before turning around to look at Astra, who had fallen quiet by my side, taking in the concern etched across my face.

"What is it?" she asked softly.

"Damien found him. Aiden. He's alive, and he wants to meet me. Tonight." I turned the text back towards her, showing her what it said for emphasis. "Alone."

"Absolutely not," she said immediately, arms crossing over her chest as she watched me carefully. "Not without Cole. Not without me close-by. That's not a proposal that you take in full, Lena. Not from a man who's been hiding for twenty-two years for reasons we haven't found yet."

I know that's what it is supposed to say, but if he really did try to save my mother, if he really did work in hiding for Corwin's secrets this entire time...

"Then he'll understand what I mean when I say that if anyone cares for your safety, they won't ask you to come in without protection for a simple chat," Astra interrupted. "Not for the first conversation, anyway. That's not a caution, that's a red flag, Lena."

I sat with that one for a while, my chest tight with something I didn't know how to put into words.

I typed a reply to Damien, hands somewhat unsteady.

Not alone. Cole comes too, or I don't come at all.

The reply took a while, longer than I was actually expecting before it came, and it wasn't the answer that I wanted.

He said that's fine, that he actually asked for Cole specifically, and said there's something he needs Cole to hear too. Something about his father and some of the things none of us are going to like to hear.

I stared at the message for a long while, my hands cold despite how mild the evening air actually was. Astra read it over my shoulder, her expression tightening.

"That changes things," she said after I had read through it again. "If it is specifically this man who wants Cole to go with him, then that is no coincidence; that is a plan."

"What kind of plan?"

"I don't know yet," I said, looking at her carefully. "But nobody disappears from out of this world for twenty-two years, just to ask for a Silverclaw heir by name. You should call Cole now, before you make any promises to anything else."

I was already dialing him before she could finish the sentence, my heart in my throat for wondering what kind of truth it could be that will last for twenty-two years after disappearing only to pop up now three days before everything will come to a head.

Cole picked up with the first ring, like he was expecting it.

“I got Damien’s text too,” he said before I could even do more than explain. "I'm already in the truck. I'll pick you up in ten minutes. We'll do this together, all the way through, whatever it turns out to be."

I hung up the phone and looked at Astra, who was now pulling on her jacket, lips set in a firm line.

"You're not going without me either," she said. "Whatever it is that Aiden Holt has to say, I want to hear it firsthand, not secondhand, from someone who's spent twenty-two years in hiding from anyone he used to know."

I nodded gratefully, and ten minutes later, headlights swept across my window, and I grabbed my jacket on the way down to meet what ever it was that was waiting for us in the dark.