Page 74 of The Runaway Mate

A surge of hope ignited within me. It was a lead, as slim as it may be, but it was better than nothing.

She handed me a note with a handwritten address on it.

“Thank you, Anna,” I said, my voice sincere. “This could be really helpful.”

She gave a small nod, biting her lower lip. “I just… I just want Isaac to be safe. And… Mai. She was nice to me. She doesn’t deserve… whatever Seth is doing.”

“Thank you, Anna,” I said again. “I’m going to do everything in my power to bring Mai back.”

She gave me a small, uncertain smile, then turned and disappeared into the shadows. So, Kara wanted me to know where Isaac and Seth might be, and she didn’t want to tell me in front of Ajak and Korrin. Was it a trap? It didn’t matter. I’d go through every last one of them if it was.

Chapter forty-seven

Mai

The door banged open, and a person I didn’t recognize strode through it. I thought it was a man because of his size, but I couldn’t be sure as he had a dark hood pulled over his face. He smelled of herbs, old paper, and something spicy that made me want to sneeze.

Friend or foe?

Seth appeared in the doorway behind the man. He seemed relaxed, glancing from the man to me and then back again.

Foe, then.

I darted to the left as the man paced toward me. He started chanting in a foreign language, then threw something that looked like old leaves that had been chopped into tiny pieces into the air.

What the hell?

I sneezed, and then everything went black.

My wrists were bound tightly to one of the support posts by coarse ropes that dug into my skin. Blood trickled down my arms, leaving a trail of pain. My feet were bare, and my ankles were tied, too, the cord biting into my flesh. Every movement felt like needles stabbing me.

I figured I’d been out about half an hour. When I’d come to, the hooded man had disappeared, and I’d been tied to the support post. Since then, I’d been trying to work my way loose, but these ropes were tied tight. Seth had been busy, too. He’d taken a piece of chalk from his pocket and drawn a circle around me, then another around himself. He connected the two circles with a bridge-like line. My breathing became shallow and erratic as I watched him, unable to tear my eyes away.

“Whatever this is, you don’t have to do it, Seth.”

Seth kept working, making little lines spiral out from the bigger of the two circles. “You know, I thought it was me. That I wasn’t good enough. That was why you never gave yourself fully to me, to us. That this relationship was another thing in my life that I couldn’t get right. But it’s not me, Mai. It never was. It’s your bond to the Three Rivers,” he spat the words of my Pack. “It tied you in knots, so you couldn’t be you. Not really. With it gone, you’ll be able to take the Cocrane bond. It’s pure, Mai. Not corrupted. Not twisted. Everything will become clear once it’s gone, I promise. Then we can go back to how we used to be.”

He was delusional. That had to be it.

“The bond isn’t the issue, Seth,” I said, trying to stay patient.

“Ah, but we won’t know for sure until it is broken, will we?”

I watched him add more lines to the chalk circles and tried to make sense of them. “How long have you been working with the witches?”

Seth’s hand hesitated. Werewolves were not supposed to work with the witches. Not since Simon Webster had tried to create the spell to put all werewolves under his control.

“Long enough to see the truth about our bonds. There are only some left that are pure. We have to destroy the others.”

I blinked. Where was this coming from? He’d been keen for me to sever the bond to the Three Rivers when we were together, but he’d never said anything about bonds being impure.

“It’s time, Mai. Are you ready?”

“Seth, this isn’t going to work.” I pulled against the rope.

“I have to try. I have to save us. I have to prove it’s not me.”

Seth began to chant, the sound echoing in the room. The air around us seemed to hum with energy, the hairs on my arms standing on end. An odd tingling sensation started in my chest and spread out through my body. The tingling ramped up until it was like thousands of tiny needles pricking at my skin, making me want to scream and claw at my own flesh. My wolf started howling; she didn’t like what Seth was doing or how it was making her feel.

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