Fifty-Five Days, Twenty-Three Hours Missing
We were on Chris and Cosette’s Sanctuary grounds. After Miami, we went back to St. Ailbe’s for a bit, where Claudia and Lucas were staying with Axel, but I couldn’t stay there for long. There were too many memories. Too many ghosts of Tessa that haunted me. So, all five of us left.
Chris and Cosette had plenty of room for us at the Sanctuary, and nights on the school grounds had been quiet for weeks. Which meant we didn’t have to stay there. The Cazadores could deal with anything that came up there on their own.
At the Sanctuary, I had help, friends, support, and—most importantly—all kinds of supernaturals with magic that could help find Tessa.
No fey outside of the Sanctuary could help us without starting a war. Claudia, Beth, Shane, and River had tried everything they could. We’d done spells and crystals, and I’d burned pounds of sage—so much that I was sure the scent of the smoke was now embedded in my skin. I’d taken salt baths to clear myself of magic, but nothing was working.
But tonight, everyone in the new council gathered together to do one more spell.
It was three in the morning. It’d been almost eight weeks to the dot since Tessa was taken, and we’d made zero progress.
The FBI was looking for Tessa in every hospital, every Jane Doe, every homegrown terrorist group capturing magical creatures.
So now, together, we were trying something different. At least that’s what Claudia said. She’d been working on this spell for two weeks. The other fey in the council had been helping her, along with the witches. They thought that since it was witch and fey magic that did this, then witch and fey magic had to be able to undo it.
I wanted to have hope, but if I was being honest, the only thing keeping me going was that I was still alive. Which meant she was still alive. So, I’d keep trying different things until something worked.
Tessa used to say that belief in a spell sometimes was enough to make it work. I hoped all of them had enough faith to cover my portion tonight.
I was lost and alone and terrified that I would never see her again.
Please let this work.
Michael had taken Axel out on a run tonight. Axel wasn’t handling any of this very well. Every time we hit a dead end, he ended up losing control of his wolf. He’d destroy something or shift and be unable to shift back to human for days, or start a fight for no reason. The last was the most problematic. If he didn’t get control and keep it, then…
I didn’t want to think about what would happen to him.
I couldn’t think about that. Not right now.
I was lying in the center of a ring of salt. Candles burned around me. Eleven of the strongest werewolves, fey, and witches held hands. The new council was together, but it felt broken without her. She was our center. She was the tie that unified us. She was the key to it all. And if she wasn’t here, was there even a council?
They said the words together. They’d been practicing this for days, and in order for it to work, their power needed to hit me and my bonds at the same time. If they timed it right, then the dark, sludgy magic that had infected my bonds would go. And if that worked, then maybe the magic that hid my mate bond from me would thin or even break.
It was a lot of ifs, and I hadn’t had a lot of luck lately.
God. Tessa liked to talk about her shit luck, but damn it if I needed some good luck to hit her now. To hit us.
I tried not to listen to the words as their voices grew louder. I let the chanting fade into the background while I stared up at the stars, waiting for something to change.
Suddenly everything was quiet.
They’d finished, but I didn’t feel anything. No power. No magic. Not even the faintest twinge along my bonds.
I closed my eyes, waiting, hoping, praying that something had changed.
“Do you feel anything?” Claudia’s voice had me sitting up. She stepped forward, and I knew she was worried that it hadn’t worked. Because this wasn’t the first time she’d tried a spell. This wasn’t even the first time we’d tried a spell with all eleven—twelve counting me—remaining council members.
Lucas stepped up to his mate, holding her hand. “Anything at all? Any change?”
I shook my head, and there were a few curses and grunts and then silence.
I wanted to scream with frustration, but these were my friends. They were trying the best they could to fight the magic that they had no way of fighting. “No change at all.” I forced my voice to stay steady.
“Try again. Maybe it’ll take a second for the spell to damage the magic on your bonds.” Chris stepped into the circle. “Tessa’s your True Mate. What you have can’t be broken. It’s still there. It has to be.” He was close with Tessa, and the fact that we couldn’t find her weighed on him almost as much as it did on Axel and me.
I’d been jealous of Chris and Tessa at first, but then I saw what was really between them.
They were friends. Maybe even best friends. I was sure that would piss off Meredith. She’d fight him for the title, but it was true. And I was sure that Axel would want in on that fight. He’d been her best friend—her only friend—until I bit her.
But I wasn’t alone here. It wasn’t just me feeling desperate about finding her. It was Chris. It was Axel. It was Claudia. It was all of us. Tessa changed our lives in such a massive way that none of us would stop fighting to find her.
I saw the desperation in Chris’s eyes as they went from human glass-blue to the bright electric of his wolf.
“Okay. I’ll try again.” I closed my eyes and pictured all the bonds. I found the pack. My friends. A few of my family in France. But the one shiny, glittering, glowing golden rope that tied me to my mate was gone. There was nothing there.
Nothing. There.
Just an empty void where my bond should’ve been.
I shook my head as I opened my eyes. “What do we do now?” I asked, hoping that someone would have an idea.
Everyone started looking back and forth among themselves, but no one said a word. They didn’t say a word because they didn’t need to.
We were at an end. An impasse that was thicker, higher, tougher than any of us could fight.
They needed to keep doing what the council needed to do—to fight against evil, to keep the supernaturals from war, to keep this realm safe from the demons beyond.
But I couldn’t do any of that.
Not anymore.
Not without her.
They might be giving up, but I wasn’t. I’d find another way.
I wasn’t sure where I’d go from here, but wherever I went, I’d do it alone.