Contact me within three hours, or they die.

Straight and to the point. Nothing cryptic about it, which, in some morbid way, Nik appreciated.

He already knew their lives were in danger before reading the message. In fact, it didn’t really surprise him. It had been expected. After all, if he were an evil son of a bitch with no soul—and sometimes, he questioned whether or not he still had one after some of the things he’d done to survive—he would ransom his enemy’s loved ones’ lives, too. It was a smart move.

Only, when that message came delivered in your loved ones’ blood…well, let’s just say that made an entirely different impression.

Soon as he smelled Alara’s blood, he nearly vomited. His body went still, all but his hands, which hung limply at his sides, trembling.

He couldn’t look away. In another one of those surreal moments of his life, his sense of where he was, why he was here, whom he was with, abruptly vanished, as if his mind had gone numb. Like the growing horror in his chest as he slowly comprehended what he read somehow hollowed him out, made him feel as though someone had shoved a block of ice down his throat.

His mouth filled with spit. His tongue twitched, urging him to swallow, but he couldn’t even do that. It was only when his eyes began to water from being open for so long, when that first hot tear fell on his cheek and forced him to blink, that he felt “in the moment” again.

And the horrible sense of loss was so great, it nearly sent him to his knees. A sob started to escape, but he snapped his mouth shut, sealed his lips. He was an Alpha, dammit. No way in hell would he cower—not now, not fucking ever.

But he wanted to. He wanted to beg God for mercy, to scream at him for letting this happen, to claw at himself for being so reckless as to leave his mate’s side when war was on the horizon.

He should have known she wouldn’t be safe. None of them were while that snake lived.

And who had brought her to his doorstep?

The rational part of his brain said, Now, Nik, you knew Mistress Black was most likely coming to kill you all, anyway. World domination kind of works that way.

But the irrational, pissed-off part that needed something to punch said, Hell, naw, motherfucker. That SOB, sorry sack-of-shit brother brought this plague upon us, and he deserves to PAY!

Gritting his teeth, he closed his eyes. Saw Alara’s kind, steady gaze in his mind’s eye, felt the memory of her hand upon his cheek. “You’re stronger than your anger.”

He growled a curse in frustration, his eyes stinging all over again. God, he missed her so damned much. His mind skipped forward to the future. Instead of picturing him and Alara sitting on a porch in a little farmhouse somewhere in the boonies, sipping sweet tea with cute little lemon slices because she loved that shit, their hair so gray it looked like smoke, he instead saw nothing but darkness, and that terrified him, and God, he needed to release all this hurt, this gnawing anger, this relentless demon inside him that just wanted to rip the world apart.

“I hate you,” he said quietly, fists shaking at his sides. The urge to rip his elder brother’s head off and punt it into that damnable message was intoxicating, to the point he was choking on his rage.

Elijah—and the whole damn clearing—had gone still.

The wind rustled through the trees, shaking loose a few more russet-colored leaves. They brushed Nik’s face, raking their brittle claws down his cheek before settling on the ground. He stared at the red leaf. Flashes of the crimson message, of Alara screaming his name while Mistress Black smiled and poked holes in her with a knife, assaulted his mind.

“I hate you so damn much,” Nik growled, louder than before.

Elijah didn’t say a word. He stared at his brother with a hardened gaze, mouth pressed into a firm frown.

Nik fought to control his breathing, to rein in his anger. “You have no idea how hard it is to look at you, to breathe the same air as you. To not let this…this rage control me. And you want to know what the worst part of it is?” He laughed bitterly and shook his head. “I don’t want to hate you. I was actually glad to have my brother back. Still want to be. But I can’t. I can’t celebrate your return if it means the loss of my mate. So I guess I’ll just have to make do with hating you.”

Verika looked as though she wanted to say something, but a quick shake of the head from Gage kept her mouth shut. She stared solemnly at the ground, looking as miserable as Nik felt.

Elijah never said anything. Which only made Nik feel more like a dick than he already did. Somebody should have jotted that down and framed it: “The day Nik Johnson regretted what he said.”

“I’m sorry,” formed on his tongue, but his voice dried up. The words tasted true, but he couldn’t say them, not yet. Maybe not ever.

Gage’s calculating gaze stared at the tree. “We should prepare for battle,” he said quietly. “Taking an Alpha’s mate is an act of war.”

“Agreed,” Nik said in a steely voice. He was itching to tear that bitch’s head off even more than he was Elijah’s.

“We need to leave here, before the DPI figures out where we are. If they haven’t already,” Verika said.

“Yeah, you’ll be useless from a jail cell,” Nik said darkly, eyeing Elijah as if he were a piece of garbage he couldn’t wait to be rid of. The want and need for his brother, for the three of them to finally be a family again, warred with his desire to scream and kick at him for getting himself tangled up with Mistress Black.

“But what if this happened for a reason?” Alara had said when Elijah had first showed up and Nik had confessed his frustrations to his mate in private. “What if he was destined to fall in league with Mistress Black? What if his purpose was to bring her to us because we’re the only ones who can stop her?”

Nik never believed in destiny. No one could convince him it had been God’s plan to have his father die, his brother walk out, for him and Gage to endure hell on earth under Malachite’s rule. For Verika to leave him, taking his heart with her.

Then he’d met Alara, and suddenly, “fate” took on a whole new meaning. The sense of rightness he felt with her was indescribable. Suddenly, he’d started to believe some things might be preordained. That maybe the bad was kind of good sometimes.

But what little faith had been growing inside him was blown to hell the moment he realized she had been taken.

His mate, the other half of his soul. The better part of him in every possible way.

And he’d do anything to get her back.

“We should trade him over to Mistress Black for Alara and Danica,” Nik said, pointing.

“Nik,” Verika snapped, stepping in front of her mate, “you can’t be serious. You’re just upset—”

“No, upset is when you get a flat tire on the way home from a hard day’s work. Or when your cable goes out during the Super Bowl. We passed upset a long time ago. Try pissed off and desperate, sweetheart.”

Verika drew herself up to her full height. “Nikolas Austin Johnson! This is your brother you’re talking about.”

“And Alara is my mate, my Marked! Just as Danica is Gage’s! We can’t take any risks, especially not with Danica being with child.”

He might as well have dropped a bomb in the clearing, everyone looked so stunned.

Elijah took a step back; his eyes flashed to Gage. “Danica is pregnant?” Verika stopped too, gaping at Gage while waiting for him to answer.

Gage flashed Nik an irritated glance. “Yes. She told me this morning.”

“And you told Nik but not me,” Elijah said flatly.

“I was going to eventually tell you.”

“Why doesn’t that sound more convincing?”

“Now is not the time to sort out hurt feelings,” Verika interrupted. “We need a plan, now. What are we going to do about this?” She gestured to the tree. “Mistress Black said we have three hours to contact her. Plus, we can’t stay here much longer. We need to find Mistress Black, and we need to get going.”

Nik blinked. Verika had always been kind of a nerdy, soft-spoken girl. Clearly, she’d come into more than her dazzling powers. She’d found herself, her true power as a person, since meeting Elijah.

That’s when it hit him—he and Verika were never meant to be. He could never have given her what she needed to grow and prosper as a human being. Elijah could.

Huh. Maybe there was something to this fate thing after all, but he didn’t want to give it too much credit. Not yet, not until they’d found Alara and Danica, and had brought them home safe and sound.

Gage nodded curtly and placed his hands on his hips. He stared at the ground, thinking. “I’ll call in every favor owed me and to the crown, contact every pack, and rally every wolf willing to help.”

“That’s a good start, and you should do that.” Elijah stepped forward. “But I have another idea.”