Page 24 of A Mate Betrayed

Chapter Ten

Daire was up in theattic space laying some duct work when his cell phone went off.He glanced at the screen and saw Jericho’s name and answered it.

“Yes, Alpha?”

“Get to the office now,” Jericho said harshly.“Kinleigh’s gone.”

The call disconnected, leaving him confused.Gone?Like got in her car and left Sheridan gone?He packed up his tools and headed toward his truck.Luckily, the drive only took a few minutes and he parked in front before heading inside the office where a dozen people waited.That’s when he knew Kinleigh leaving wasn’t what he had at first interpreted.

He moved through the crowd and saw Luna Payton sitting in a chair, with Savannah next to her bandaging a wound on her head.

“What happened?”he asked.

Everyone turned toward him and Jericho stepped forward.

“Daire, Kinleigh was taken,” he said.

“What do you meantaken?”

“Vaughn,” Payton said.“Her ex-mate showed up, demanded she go with him.She did it to protect me.”

So many different thoughts rattled through his head and none of them stuck.Only one thing cut through everything.

“We have to go after them.”He glanced back at Jericho.“Have we tracked him yet?”

“I have scouts out there now.As soon as they—” He no sooner started talking when his cell phone went off.“It’s Kinleigh.Where are you?Kinleigh?”

He pulled away the phone and placed the call over the speaker.They listened to Kinleigh having a conversation with a man that Daire assumed was this motherfucking Vaughn.

“Falling-down barn next to a stream?”Beta Ledger said.

“She has to mean the outlier road near the old lumber mill,” Jericho replied.

“I know it,” Daire said, already moving.He didn’t know if Jericho and Ledger wanted to come along, but he wasn’t waiting.He hurried out of the small crowd and got to his truck and took off, gunning the engine once he cleared the town.

Sheridan, way back in the day, had started as a lumber community.The old mill had been where wood rested between saddle blocks, and sawyers would hewn the logs.As he passed the mill, which had been closed ever since electric saws came to be, he spotted something far down the cracked road.Gunning it, he sped forward just as he saw a man lift an obviously unconscious woman in his arms.

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