Page 139 of Blood and Ruin: The Complete Series

We still need to find the traitor for lying to us. He won’t be getting off easy now that we know he betrayed us.

Axel growls out a warning, smoke seeping from his breath as he tries to intimidate me, but we both know who will be the first to yield, should it come to it.

I narrow my eyes on my brother, releasing a bit of my alpha power around us before he attempts something stupid, like trying to challenge me.

“Axel. You need to get a hold of yourself before you destroy what’s left of this building and those inside it.” My words have authority, a command, as I take advantage of my alpha power again to reach him before he becomes too lost in his rage and despair.

We’ve all been hanging on, barely holding it together as we wait and watch for the first one to snap.

Believing we were closer this time to finding her, only to have it ripped away from us, might be the thing that makes one or more of us break.

Axel steps forward, a look of challenge lighting up his eyes as he sizes me up.

“Who gives a fuck? It won’t kill us.” Axel’s voice grows deep, his dragon now completely in control. His eyes flash a deeper gold, the red bleeding into his irises, and he gives me a smirk that tells me he’s too far gone to care what happens. “They lied to us. They deserve the graves we dig them.”

Something we can agree on, but I’m not about to lose my brother because he’s a stubborn fool, nor am I about to throw away the opportunity to find out any further information about our missing mate.

That sleazeball knew something about Kiarra; I know it. “Agreed, but we need them alive. For now,” I tell him. “Besides, if they lied to us, they deserve a much worse fate than a building falling on them.”

Axel takes another step closer, not hearing the truth or promise behind my words. Frustration builds inside me at his pushing, consuming all my senses. I usually avoid using more than small amounts of my alpha abilities on them, but the idiot needs to be taken down a notch.

I need him to get a hold of himself and snap out of it. More alpha power seeps out of me this time. It spreads out around us, hitting him like a swift punch to the chest.

He stumbles back a step, grunting at the impact. Squeezing his eyes shut, he shakes his head a couple of times before opening them. Still unfocused, he grapples with his dragon. A flicker of gold pulses, and his eyes turn hazel, then back again.

I watch him battle with his dragon, fighting it to take back control. Each of his conflicted emotions display across his face as he tries to subdue the beast.

“Come back to me, brother. We need you.Sheneeds you.” I take a step closer, releasing the hold on my alpha abilities, knowing he’ll always come back to us, come back forher.

Family chosen never leaves one behind. We become their armor and shield until they can get up and fight again.

“Don’t let yourself get lost in the dark, not when you still have a light waiting to guide you home.”

After a tense moment, the deep gold recedes, flickering once before clearing completely. We both let a harsh breath out, grateful that he isn’t lost to us. At least, not this time.

Axel gives me a look of apology before glancing around, a frown on his face as he speaks. “She’s not here. That son of a bitch lied to us.”

We should’ve known better than to trust that slimy underling, Garath. He gave us what we thought to be the closest thing to a lead. The only reason any of us even gave the slimeball a chance was the pull from the bond between us and Kiarra, telling us he was on to something.

Garath had overheard one of the bear shifters talk about a secret meet-up with one of King’s associates. A secret project that had a special type of cargo needing to be moved with discretion. He followed up by telling us he saw a girl who was similar to Kiarra’s description and knew the location where they were supposed to meet.

The same location the pull also pointed us to. But it wouldn’t be the first time we followed the bond, only to find nothing. It made us think we were going crazy.

Our bond with Kiarra allows us to sense her location, but only to an extent. The location itself could be the whole of Manhattan, but it won’t grow stronger until we are close enough to her. Every time we think we are close, feeling the bond slightly stronger, she is ripped from us completely and we have to start our search all over again.

It’s possible that King is able to manipulate it somehow. That, or he’s three steps ahead of us each time and pulls her out from under us before we even make it to where she is.

Either way, we are going around in circles, getting nowhere. Trusting Garath for even a moment made us all foolish, but none of us cared if there was the possibility that it ended with Kiarra back home with us, where she belongs.

The meeting was supposedly taking place right under our noses, on the edge of Manhattan. Another huge red flag, as King wasn’t naïve enough to try something so close to us. But with doubts creeping in from lack of sleep and being constantly on the move, it made us question if his arrogance would try something this stupid to prove how powerful he thinks he is.

He knows we’re alive. He knows we’re on to him, and he’s toying with us.

We felt the pull of the bond. But just like every other time, once we got close enough, it grew distant, like she was moving farther away from us, disappearing completely out of our reach.

King knows we are coming for him. The bastard’s been moving her, but how he’s able to tell when we’re close is something none of us have figured out yet.

A few times, the bond has completely disappeared, ripping our hearts out along with it.

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