Page 1 of Mating Mia
one
. . .
Kane
“She’s been gone for too long,” I mutter out loud as I tap my fingers against the table at the restaurant.
Five minutes stretch into ten, now pushing fifteen. My alpha instincts are screaming, a primal warning system that’s never failed me. I’m pretending to study the dessert menu while my inner wolf paces, hackles raised, sensing danger to what’s mine.
I check my watch again, the movement sharp enough to slosh the water in my glass. Ten minutes and eighteen seconds. No woman takes this long to pee, not even a pregnant one who’s eight weeks along.
“She’s fine,” Finn says without looking up from his scotch, reading my thoughts as clearly as if I’d spoken them aloud. “Probably got caught up fixing her makeup or something.”
“Yeah, or maybe she’s having a little morning sickness episode,” Jace adds, spearing the last bite of his steak. “She wants space, and if we keep crowding her, she’ll run away again.”
I grunt in response, my foot now tapping a rapid rhythm against the polished restaurant floor. The bond between Mia and me feels strange. It’s not broken, but strained, like a radio signalcutting in and out. I close my eyes, trying to focus on it, to follow the invisible thread that connects me to my mate.
“Kane,” Finn’s voice cuts through my concentration. “Relax.”
“It’s been too long,” I growl, unable to keep the edge from my voice. “Something isn’t right.”
Jace rolls his eyes, but there’s a hint of concern beneath his casual posture. “Dude, you can’t freak out every time she’s out of your sight for more than five minutes. She’s already accused us of being overprotective.”
“I need to check on her,” I growl, pushing my chair back from the table with enough force to make the couple at the next table turn and stare.
“Kane…” Finn starts, but I’m already away from them, weaving between tables with alpha speed.
The restaurant is crowded tonight, bodies and voices pressing in around me, a hundred scents mingling in the air—perfume, wine, food, sweat. I cut through it all, moving faster than a human would, my focus only on finding Mia.
Reaching the hallway that leads to the restrooms, a waiter gives me a curious look, but I don’t give two fucks.
The women’s bathroom door stands slightly ajar, warm light spilling out onto the dark hallway floor.
I hesitate for a fraction of a second, societal norms warring with primal instinct.Fuck it. I push the door open wide.
“Mia?” I call, my voice echoing against tile and marble. “Baby, are you in here?”
Silence answers me, broken only by the steady drip of a faucet. The bathroom is empty. Three stalls with doors standing open, and not a soul in sight. But her scent is here, honey-sweet and distinctive, mingled with something else that makes my hackles rise instantly.
Another wolf’s scent. One female, one male.
I inhale deeply, parsing the scents with practiced precision. The female smells bitter-sharp, like overbrewed coffee. Hmm, another omega, which is rare and also very alarming. Probably a rogue. And there is a male’s scent, smoky and metallic, with undertones of something rotten.
And beneath it all is the faint trace of fear. Mia’s fear.
A growl builds in my chest, vibrating up my throat as I look around frantically, kicking each stall open. Someone took her. Someone took my pregnant mate.
“Kane?” Jace appears in the doorway, his usual playfulness gone, replaced by alert tension. He scents the air and his eyes immediately narrow, flash amber-gold with anger. “Fuck. Is that…?”
“Another omega,” I confirm, already pushing past him back into the hallway. “And a male. Unknown. They were here with Mia.”
Finn materializes at my side, his quiet intensity sharpened to a lethal point. “How long ago?”
I take another deep breath, analyzing the freshness of the scents.
“Ten minutes, maybe less. The trail leads…” I turn, following my nose. “This way.”
We move as one unit, three alphas on the hunt, following the mingled scents down the hallway past the restrooms to a service door marked:Employees Only.
