Page 30 of Betrayed Mate

Unprocessed grief. That was what had to be making my emotions all crazy, and it clearly had nothing to do withhim. However, I needed to keep the emotions at bay until I located my sister. That was the reason I was here with Ryker; I had to remember that.

A cold, heavy knot dropped into my stomach. What if he decided I wasn’t worth keeping around and I had to locate my sister on my own? I knew, without a doubt, after what I’d just witnessed, that going it alone could be a death sentence for not only me but my sister too.

I was about to go after him when Gage, Kendric, and Xander jogged into view.

All three wore varying degrees of a frown, with Kendric’s scowl being by far the deepest. He gestured to me and said, “Xander, stay with her while Gage and I go after Ryker.”

Xander’s head tilted back. “What? Why me? I should be part of the hunt.”

“That right there is why.” Gage shook his head and didn’t slow down even a step, rushing past me to follow Simon and Ryker’s trail. “You don’t know how to keep your mouth shut.”

Huffing, Xander stopped in front of me and pursed his lips. “I guess I get babysitting duty.”

I lifted my chin, ignoring the burn of the muscles in my injured shoulder. “I don’t need babysitting. That’s insulting.”

He arched a brow. “Says the woman who ran while her pack got murdered, lost her sister, almost drowned, and now pissed off the one alpha who is the most driven to find her missing sister’s captors.”

His words echoed the same fear that sat uncomfortably within me. I hated feeling exposed and worthless, but ever since I’d been rejected by my fated mate in front of hundreds of shifters, I seemed to keep finding myself in worse and worse situations…something no true alpha would experience. Not that my sister or I had a choice now of who would lead the two of us. I was stronger than her, and my wolf would never be able to submit to hers even if she made the most sense as a leader.

Still, I refused to appear weaker than I already did to all of them. “I couldn’t stand by and let him torture someone like that. It’s notright. That vampire almost got killed after surviving an attack on his nest. How can you even try to justify that?”

He straightened, but his shoulders drooped. “I can’t, but I don’t have much choice right now with how Ryker’s acting. I keep hoping he’ll snap out ofthisand go back to normal.”

My hands relaxed, and I tilted my head. “Normal?"

“Yeah. He’s only been like this since our pack—” He cut himself off as his face twisted into what could only be described as agony.

He didn’t need to finish the statement because my heart shattered all over again. I knew exactly what he was going to say because he looked like I imagined I did whenever I thought about my own pack. “He wasn’t like this before?” I arched a brow, daring him to contradict me. Even before the royal and protector packs were slaughtered, there’d been so many storiesabout the way the Grimstone pack handled threats. They had no issues with torturing, starving, cage fighting, and beating individuals to get information or make a point, which was what I’d just witnessed from Ryker.

Xander’s head jerked back. “You’d know if I were lying. Why would you even ask that?”

He was right. There was no hint of sulfur in the air…but none of this made sense to me. However, my end goal was unchanged—find my sister. “It doesn’t matter. We just need to start searching for answers again instead of wasting time hunting down a vampire.”

Every second that passed could put my sister’s life more at risk. My only comfort was that the connection was still present. If we didn’t get a lead soon, I’d have to shift into my wolf and focus purely on our connection to locate her. It would be long and tedious with the connection so faint, but it might be better than what we had, which wasnothing.

“The one thing we’ve learned sincethatday is once Ryker is set on something, there’s no deterring him. He’ll alpha-will us the second we don’t listen, making things even more tense.”

The more I learned about Ryker, the more it validated my opinion of him. He was an arrogant know-it-all who could cost me locating my sister. But whoever I was up against had slaughtered two packs and a massive vampire nest, which made it clear that going alone would essentially be a death sentence for me.

Maybe they were using my sister to lure me somewhere so they could finish us both off.

“I made the right call.” I crossed my arms, ignoring my aching shoulder. “You can’t just torture someone like that, especially after what he witnessed. It’s inhumane.”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Ryker is trying to get justice for our pack, and I can’t blame him at all.”

Huffing, I dropped my arms. Talking to him was a waste of energy, and I didn’t have much to spare. Ryker was his alpha, so even if Xander agreed with me, he couldn’t do a damn thing about it. “So we’re just stuck here until they’ve captured Simon or they tire of searching for him?” If they didn’t get their shit together, I’d have to go off alone and hope for the best.

“Yes, because ifwe”—he pointed at himself and then me—“keep interfering, it’s going to make things take longer, so just sit tight and stop causing problems.”

Problems? Yes, me saving someone from torture was such anissue.

Not bothering to tell Xander where I was heading, I spun on my heels and marched back to the vehicle. There was no point in standing there, and now that the adrenaline from my outburst was wearing off, I realized how much energy I’d used. My legs were harder to lift with every step, but I gritted my teeth and kept going.

I took a deep breath and glanced at the now-dark sky. Another day gone with no leads on Briar. My heart ached, and the chill in my chest seemed to grow colder. Only the deep ache left reminded me that something pleasant used to be there. Even Briar’s faint link reminded me that I could lose everyone I loved. She was just out of reach.

A vise tightened around my heart, squeezing to the point that I thought it would implode.

My blood tingled through my body, and my head screamed that something strange and different was hiding about fifty feet ahead of me deep within the woods. But that didn’t make sense. There were no sounds, smells, or other signs that someone was there.

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