Page 64 of Sold Rejected Mate
And I can’t wait to see Lucian pay for every single thing he’s done to me.
Chapter 32 - Lachlan
“Where would your brother take them?”
Phina stares back at me with wide eyes, which dart from me to her husband and back. I know I’m acting insane, pacing outside the fire station like a shark in still water, but I can’t help it. My body is filled with an urgent, itching need to take action. To find Valerie and make sure she’s okay.
My mate.
Mypregnantmate.
What a fucking idiot I was to leave her alone. But what an idiot Lucian Winward is to think he could take my mate and not feel my teeth in his throat.
“I have no idea, Lachlan,” Phina says, clearing her throat and taking a step back. Xeran puts a hand on her shoulder and stares at me hard. His wife is four months pregnant now—I was there when they announced it at Nora’s birthday party—and I’ll have to temper the way I talk to her.
I’m being too intense, too forward, but I’m going to fly apart at the seams if I don’t find my mate and make sure she’s okay. Make suremy babyis okay.
The other guys are here, Soren tapping away on his phone and Kalen with his hands in his hair, clearly trying to think. When Felix came out to my place, he wasn’t able to catch Valerie’s scent, either, but he said that same strange smell from the fire was hanging in the air, driving him insane.
“Maybe I should just try calling him,” Phina says, looking down at her phone, a grimace on her face. “I—”
But before she can finish that thought, Felix comes flying out of the firehouse, his eyes locked on me.
“I know where they are!” he says, practically screaming. “I know where to find them!”
“How?” Phina asks, blinking. Behind her, Xeran is already moving toward his truck.
Felix looks to me. “Remember that weird smell I kept picking up at the fires? Fuckingsalt water taffy.”
“The old factory,” Xeran says, but I’m already on my bike, already throwing the helmet on my head—more out of habit than being able to really think about it.
Xeran says something about getting Phina out of there. Realistically, I know that I should stop, make a plan, but my brain doesn’t belong to me right now. The wolf has taken over, and he doesn’t want to plan. He doesn’t want to strategize. He just wants to get to my mate as soon as physically possible.
I know where the old candy factory is. It sits on the outskirts of town, opposite the ridge. We always assumed the reason it never caught fire had to do with the equipment inside, or with the large patch of concrete it sits on.
We always assumed that maybe the daemon fire was just not that interested in the factory.
But maybe that was wrong. Maybe Lucian’s gang has been operating out of the factory, keeping it safe, protecting it from the flames.
My bike revs under me as I take a turn a little too sharp, adrenaline pumping through my body.
I know where to find my mate.
And when I get there, Lucian Winward will breathe his last fucking breath.
***
We shift and run once we hit a certain point in the road, where several craters slash through the asphalt. Running is faster than taking our vehicles, and safer, especially without knowing what the maintenance on those roads has been like in the years since the factory closed, and without a single streetlight along the way.
It sits up on the hill, silhouetted against the moon like a rotting tooth, its broken windows gaping black in the moonlight. Somehow, the sweet smell of burnt sugar still clings to the air after all these years, only slightly tinged with the sulfur and ozone smell of daemon fire.
When Felix shifts back to his human form, he laughs, coughs, and says, “I fucking knew it. Hey, Xer, this is kind of what the Sorels smell like—”
Xeran catches him in the stomach as we continue our march.
“Okay,” Felix wheezes. “Heard, boss.”
My brain only faintly registers what they’re saying. Most of my gray matter is consumed by Valerie. The only thing I can think about, focus on, until I have her again.
