Blood Of The Sun

Chapter 11

Carlos’s POV

The dawn came too quiet. No guards shifting at their posts, no chatter in the halls, no sound of my daughter preparing for the coronation’s final rites. My gut twisted before my feet even hit the floor.

When I stepped into the hall, I knew. The air carried it—her absence.

“¡Mierda!” I slammed my fist into the wall hard enough to rattle the frames. Christa appeared in the doorway, eyes sharp, already knowing without me saying a word.

“Anna.” Her voice was low, dangerous.

“She’s gone,” I ground out. “And the boy’s cell is empty.”

For a moment, silence. Then my wolf surged, claws raking at the surface, demanding blood. I’d kept that room locked, guards rotated every hour. No one should’ve breached it. No one.

“They didn’t breach it,” Christa said, lips curling. “She let him out.”

The words cut deeper than any blade.

My fists shook, my chest heaved. “She’s just a girl—”

“She’s your heir. And she’s her mother’s daughter.” Christa’s gaze burned through me.

I dragged a hand through my hair, pacing. My blood boiled, my thoughts colliding like thunder. My daughter ran with a hybrid. My bloodline. My future.

“¡Carajo!” I bellowed, the word echoing down the hall. “I’ll tear him apart with my own hands. I’ll drag her back if I have to break her damn legs to do it.”

But beneath the rage, fear coiled like a viper. Fear for Anna. Fear for the prophecy. Fear that the boy’s last name Lykoudis wasn’t just history clawing its way back, but destiny wrapping its teeth around my family’s throat.

“Carlos.” Christa’s voice was iron. “This isn’t just about him. It’s about her. We find them both.”

I met her eyes. Alpha to Alpha. Husband to wife.

And I knew if we didn’t, everything we’d built, everything we’d bled for would burn.

Christa would hunt for her and I would protect what was ours from the front lines.

Christa’s P.O.V.

We hit the freight yards like thunder, all teeth and intent. Aaliyah’s tether thrummed under my boots, a thin, dangerous thread that should have led us straight to them. Ricardo and Ramiro carved the exits. Maria and Navi dropped into the spine. Serenity shadowed my flank like a blade—quiet, patient. Antonio rode two cars back, breath hot and nervous, eyes wide with the ridiculous bravado that kept him from collapsing into panic.

“Bring them back alive,” I ordered one more time—my voice brittle with a thing I didn’t like to name. (Vivos.) The order snapped through the dark and the team folded into formation because when I speak like this, they obey. But under the authority was a tremor so sharp I could taste it: I was terrified. Not for my life—my life had been traded and bartered before—but for Anna’s. The idea of her blood spilled, the thought of Antonio without his sister, my husband’s face hollowed by grief; these things made my hands shake.

Aaliyah set the wilted flower on the hood of a battered truck and closed her eyes, weaving the tether. It pulsed, a heartbeat of witch-magic. “He’s close,” she breathed. “Two heartbeats past the freight bridge. Moving west.”

We ran.

The freight yard smelled of diesel and rust and the sweet rot of things left too long. Shadows pooled like ink. Then we saw them: a red taillight, a flash of a ponytail, and the shape of a bike cutting the dark. Anna sat forward on it—lean, dangerous, her mother’s old leather jacket snapping at her hips like a banner. She was driving her mother’s bike.

My breath stalled. Of all the foolish, brilliant things she could have done—this was the most Christa of all of them. The way she handled the throttle, the way her shoulders tightened over the bars, it was like watching a child slide into armor.

“Cut them off,” I hissed. Ricardo took the left; Ramiro cut the right. Maria and Navi sprinted up to the bridge. It should have been simple. We were in the right place at the right time. We had them boxed in.

For one breath the world held its heart.

Then the bike leapt.

The boy twisted the wheel with a feral sound, tires screeching. Anna shoved him low—she’d learned to move like wind—and dove the bike into the narrow drainage ditch that ran alongside the railway. Water and muck hit metal; the rear wheel spun with a spray that hit my face like cold rain. I heard the sound of leather slamming against metal, of wet rubber trying to find purchase. For the barest second I thought the ditch would stop them.

Serenity lunged, claws flashing, and snagged empty air where the wheel had been. Ricardo dove for a grab that missed by a breath. Maria slid on her knees, fingers skidding over oil-slick concrete, and came up with nothing but the smell of diesel on her palms.

“¡No!” I roared. Something in me cracked—part mother, part Alpha—and the raw sound split the night.

The bike skidded, a wild animal, and erupted out of the ditch. Anna kept it upright, cursing low, then steered through a tangle of underbrush that should have been impenetrable to anything with wheels. They vanished—red light a stain swallowed by trees and the long dark.

We ran until our lungs burned. We cut across lots and clambered chain-link fences. We followed the smear of tire marks, the crushed brush. Antonio kept calling taunts and questions between gasps—trying to be brave, trying to anchor us back to the human heart when all around us thudded war drums.

At dawn the prints ran out. The rubber marks bled into a patch of concrete the sun had already warmed, and then—nothing. The tether stilled like a heartbeat that had been cut. Aaliyah’s face drained to slate when she read the trail. “They’ve gone farther than we thought,” she said, voice flat.

We had missed them.

My hands went numb. For a moment I felt unhinged—raw and ragged, as though a vital piece of me had been wrenched free. I had led raids, stormed houses, taken what I needed with cold hands. But I had never felt this particular terror: my child on a bike barreling away into thin air with the son of Lykoudis behind her.

Antonio skidded to a stop in front of me, face streaked with sweat and dirt. He tried a grin that was all bravado and no solace. “They’re fast, Mom,” he wheezed. “Like—really fast. Do we still get popcorn?” His attempt at levity snagged on the rawness of the morning.

I wanted to bite him for the joke; instead I grabbed the small thing that kept me human and let it steady me. “No popcorn,” I said, voice flat. “We tighten the perimeter. We hit the river routes. We ask the docks. We burn every road if we have to.”

The pack gathered, faces set but hollowed. Maria’s eyes were red-rimmed. Ricardo and Ramiro moved with the focus of men who had a job and could not let personal fear undo them. I leaned on my sisters—Aaliyah’s hand on my shoulder, Serenity’s quiet presence at my left—and felt the small brutal comfort of them.

We had failed tonight. Tomorrow we would make the city feel the heat of our search. We would drag every shadow into light until Anna and that boy were found.

But the image would not leave: my daughter, hair whipping, hands clenched on my old bike, a grin that was the same stubborn thing I remembered from infancy. It both cut me down and forced me forward.

I straightened, tightened my fingers into fists, and gave the orders that would become strategy. They were the orders of an Alpha who would not lose everything without answering for it.