Page 40 of Bound to the Dragon
“Stay with them,” I order one of my enforcers. “No food. No water. No bathroom break. Someone will tell me where they took Vigo and the others if they want to go home.”
The shifters in the cell look at one another.
“That’s right. I’ll release you if you tell me.” I raise a brow meaningfully. “You have my word. No repercussions. No retaliation. Just tell me where they are and if they’re unharmed and?—”
The female shifts back to cut me off. “And if they’re not?”
The question hangs over us like a dead weight, and my stomach drops. I don’t want to imagine finding my Beta other than how I left him. “We’ll deal with one issue at a time. For now, we just want to know where you took them.”
She snorts, and there’s a general mumbling as if my answer is understood. I can’t make them a promise I don’t know the answer to. If something has happened to Vigo and the others in retaliation for how I dealt with the first round of rogue shifters…
Fuck. Why hadn’t Madison been honest with me from the beginning?
I need to get back to her, as much as I don’t want to deal with her right now. I’m not sure I can ever really look at her the same way again, mate bond or not.
Can my disgust with her override the pull I have toward her? I’m about to find out.
“Think about what I said. Go free and tell me where they are, or you can starve to death.”
There’s no response from the cell, and I leave them alone to stalk back up the stairs toward my wing, where I’d left my mate.
Maybe she can provide more insight, but she doesn’t even know where they took Vigo and the others. I wonder if there will be a request for a trade-off at some point. An ask for my mate in exchange for my Beta.
Would I entertain it in the rage I’m in?
A terrible part of me says yes, but my tightening chest tells me that there’s no way. I can’t fathom choosing that. I’m getting ahead of myself, anyway. No such ransom has been demanded, and it might never happen.
Scaling the stairs, I head toward the second floor but leave the enforcers in the hall with explicit instructions to wait for word on Vigo and the other captives.
“She hasn’t left the suite?”
“No, Alpha,” they reassure me. “We’ve been here the whole time.”
I enter without knocking, wanting to catch her off guard.
It’s me who’s caught off guard, though. Madison is nowhere to be seen.
“Madison?”
I search the bedroom, the bathroom, and the balcony, but she’s gone.
Livid now, I race back out to confront the enforcers on guard. “You said she didn’t leave!”
Baffled, they look at one another. “She didn’t come out this way.”
Cursing loudly, I retreat into the suite, rifling through the closet, looking for missing outfits, but all her clothes are still inplace. She must have snuck out via the balcony, either in her crow form or down the trellis. I should have known she wouldn’t stay put.
“Where is her mother?”
Both enforcers give me a blank look.
“Lynelle. Where is Lynelle, Madison’s mother?”
“I don’t know, Alpha. We’ve been up here the whole time.”
That’s my first order of business. Finding Lynelle.
It doesn’t take me long to find her. She’s still on the estate, in her typical state of hysteria, but I put an end to it immediately. I don’t have time for histrionics.
