Page 89 of The Alpha Under My Bed

I turned toward the door. Locked.

Windows? Shut.

Her phone? Still on the counter.

I exhaled through my nose, forcing my hands to unclench.

My stomach twisted, nausea curling in my gut like acid. Ellie must have left on her own.

My phone buzzed in my pocket, vibrating against my palm like a warning. I answered before the screen could light up. “Tell me you have something.”

A pause, then a familiar voice. “We just flagged a purchase.”

Everything in me went still. I turned toward the nest, staring at it like it would somehow change the words that had just left their mouth. “What kind of purchase?”

A breath. Hesitant. Like they already knew I wasn’t going to like the answer.

“Claudia made a cash payment for heat inducers.”

My vision tunneled.

The apartment blurred at the edges. My pulse was no longer steady, no longer even. It pounded. A slow, dark throb that echoed in my ears, in my bones, in the fucking bond inside me that was already screaming to tear the world apart until I found her.

I barely heard myself speak. “How long ago?”

“An hour. Maybe less.” A pause. “She also put in an order for some… specialized restraints.”

The air in my lungs turned to fire.

My grip on the phone tightened, my knuckles aching from the force. “Where?”

“We’re tracking it down now, but?—”

“I need a fucking location.”

“We’ll have it soon, Mal, but?—”

I ended the call.

I couldn’t breathe.

No. Not couldn’t. Wouldn’t.

Not until I had my hands around Claudia’s fucking throat.

I had fucked up.

I hadfucked up.

I should have put Ellie in the apartment I built for her. Should have locked her in. Should have tracked her the second she bonded to me. Should have chipped her.

The thought slammed into me, ugly and sharp. I had thought about it before. Every time she had a heat. It would have beeneasy. A simple subdermal tracker, placed when she was too deep in heat to notice. She never would have known.

And I would have never lost her.

I had convinced myself it was too much—too controlling, too obsessive. That tracking her, keeping her locked away, would cross a line I couldn’t come back from.

And now?

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