The Alpha's Runaway Mate

Chapter06--Gone

I did not remember the ride back to Nightfall clearly.

There were pieces of it, sharp and broken, like glass scattered across the road. The headlight tearing through the trees. The throttle vibrating beneath my palm. The taste of blood in my mouth from where I had bitten the inside of my cheek hard enough to keep myself from screaming. Jax’s voice kept replaying in my ear even though the call had ended minutes ago.

The last mile to the compound felt longer than the five years I had spent hiding there. When the ridge road opened into the valley, I first saw the lights. Too many of them. Nightfall did not waste light at night unless there was a reason. Flood lamps were on along the eastern wall, washing the yard in hard white glare. Men moved between the buildings with weapons drawn. Bikes stood running in crooked lines. The main gate was open only wide enough to let me through, and two riders stepped out with rifles before they recognized me.

The compound blurred around me as I crossed the yard. Riders turned toward me and then away just as quickly. No one wanted to be the person standing between a mother and the place her child had been stolen from. I passed the infirmary and saw two men on cots, one with his shoulder wrapped, another with blood drying down the side of his face. Near the garage, someone was shouting about the west fence. Another voice answered that the cameras had gone dead for six minutes, maybe seven. Six minutes. Seven minutes. That was all it had taken to tear my entire life open.

The family wing sat behind the main clubhouse, lower and quieter than the rest of the compound. I had chosen that room for Kael because it had only one window and two exits, because the floorboards near the hall creaked if anyone stepped too close, because from my own room across the corridor I could hear him turn in his sleep.

It had not been enough.

Jax stood outside Kael’s door with blood on his knuckles and murder in his eyes.

I had seen Jax angry before. Everyone in Nightfall had. When he looked at me in that hallway, I saw something beneath the cold rage that made my chest tighten. Failure. Not because he had failed as a leader, though he would take that weight too. Because somewhere over the years, without saying it, Kael had become his.

I swallowed the bile in my throat, hoping I would swallow the fear that thawed at my heart with it, as I moved past Jax into the room.

Petra was inside.

She sat on the floor near the bed with one hand pressed to her side and the other braced against the wall. Her face was pale, her jaw tight. Blood had soaked through the fabric beneath her fingers, and one of the infirmary women knelt beside her, trying to pull her hand away long enough to see the wound. Petra looked ready to bite her.

I stepped into the room.

For a second, my mind refused to understand what my eyes were showing me. Kael’s room was small, warm, familiar. It was supposed to smell like him. Like sleep-warm skin, cedar soap, the faint wildness that clung to him no matter how often I scrubbed dirt from his knees. It was supposed to have his drawings pinned crookedly to the wall, his boots under the chair, his blanket twisted at the foot of the bed because he fought sleep like an enemy every night.

Those things were still there.

The blanket had been dragged halfway to the floor. The chair was overturned. The wooden shelf Jax had built for him last winter hung crooked from one nail, its small collection of treasures scattered beneath it. Bottle caps. Smooth stones. A rusted key he insisted opened a secret door somewhere. Three marbles. A bird feather. Things only a five-year-old boy could love with absolute seriousness.

His pillow lay near the window.

The window was open.

Cold air pushed into the room and lifted the edge of the curtain. I stared at it. My body understood before the rest of me did. My knees softened, but I locked them. I would not fall. Not here.

“Tell me,” I said.

Petra pushed the medic’s hands away and tried to stand. She failed halfway, and Jax stepped into the room, catching her under the arm. She hated needing help; I could see the fury of it in the way her mouth tightened.

“I heard the floorboard,” Petra said. Her voice was rough, but steady. “The one outside the hall. It was late. I thought he had gotten out of bed again.”

Kael had a habit of wandering when he could not sleep. Sometimes I found him in the kitchen, asking for milk he did not want just so he could sit near someone. Sometimes he went to Petra’s office and curled up in the chair like a cat until she gave in and pretended he was helping with maps.

“I came in,” Petra continued. “The window was already open. There were two men inside.”

My hands curled at my sides. “Did he fight?”

Something almost like pride passed across Petra’s face, and it hurt more than fear would have.

She nodded slowly.

That was my boy. My furious, brilliant boy.

My gaze dropped to the blood at her side. “You saw where they went?”

“West window, then the service path. They knew the blind side of the cameras. They knew exactly how long they had.” Petra’s eyes held mine, and I understood what she was not saying. This had not been a desperate grab. This had been planned.

Jax’s voice came from behind me. “West fence was cut from inside.”

The room went very quiet as I turned slowly.

Jax looked like he wanted to put his fist through the wall and every person standing near it. “Someone helped them,” he said. “No one gets through the west fence from outside without tripping the lower wire. The cut was made clean after the system went down.”

“A spy,” The word tasted like poison.

Nightfall was home. It had been the only place that gave me shelter when I had nothing left but a stolen bike, a broken bond, and a child growing inside me. I had trusted these walls because I had helped strengthen them. I had trusted these people because they had bled beside me. And now someone inside those walls had opened a path to my son.

My wolf rose again, pushing hard enough that my claws broke through the tips of my fingers. The pain steadied me. It gave me something small and real to hold.

“Lock the compound,” I said.

Jax did not argue with the command in my voice. “Already done. No one leaves. No one enters. I’ve got riders sweeping the perimeter and checking every vehicle.”

“Check the human affiliates too.”

A few people in the doorway shifted at that. I did not care.

“Everyone,” I said. “I don’t care who they are. I don’t care how long they’ve been here. If they breathed near the west fence tonight, I want to know.”

Jax nodded once and turned to issue orders into the hall. His voice became the compound’s spine, hard and clear, sending people where they needed to go. Petra tried again to move, and this time I crossed to her before the medic could. I crouched in front of her, close enough to smell the silver residue near the wound.

“They used silver?” I asked.

“Trace amount,” she said. “Enough to slow healing. Not enough to kill.”

That meant they had not come to s*******r everyone in the room. They had come for Kael and only Kael. Somehow, that made it worse. Violence I could understand. Territory wars, revenge hits, pack challenges—those had shapes I recognized. But a group of trained wolves slipping into my son’s room with sedatives and silver-laced blades meant someone wanted him alive. Someone knew what he was, or thought they did.

Petra grabbed my wrist before I could stand.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

I stared at her hand on me. Petra did not apologize often. Not because she was proud, though she was. Because she believed apology without repair was a useless thing. Hearing the words from her now made my chest feel too tight.

“You stayed with him,” I said.

Her grip tightened once, then released.

I stood and forced myself to look around the room again, taking in the mess. The broken shelf meant Kael had thrown something, maybe at their faces, maybe to make noise. My eyes followed the scatter of his treasures across the floor.

Then I saw the wooden wolf.

It lay half under the bed, split cleanly through the middle. For a moment, everything in me went silent. I bent and picked it up.

The wood was warm from being near the heater, but the broken edge was fresh. My thumb moved over the c***k, and grief slipped past my control so quickly I almost did not catch it. I saw Kael at three, asleep with the wolf tucked under his chin. Kael at four, making it guard the door while he built a fortress from storage crates. Kael that very morning, pushing it into my hand and telling me it would “watch the room” while I was gone.

I closed my fist around the two pieces. And then I smelled it. It smelled of cedar, smoke. and cold rain on leather. My entire body went still.

Petra saw my face change. “Lyra?”

I could not answer. My wolf knew that scent the way my blood knew its own path through my veins. Five years had not weakened it. Distance had not blurred it. Hatred had not burned it away.

Ronan.