Page 52 of Broken Arranged Mate
I walk down the hallway and toward her room, but her scent isn’t as strong as I’m used to. The hairs on the back of my neck rise, and I knock once before calling her name.
“Ash!” I let my forehead fall against the door, but I can’t hear anything inside. “Ash, can we talk?”
Another beat of silence follows. “Ash!” I try again, panic starting to rise up in my chest. “Are you okay?”
When she doesn’t answer again, I warn, “I’m going to break down this door if you don’t answer me. Just tell me you’re okay in there!”
Still nothing comes, and I draw back, slamming my shoulder into the door until it buckles under the force, and I stand in the wood shards, breathing hard.
My wife is nowhere to be seen.
Chapter 30 - Ash
“I’m telling you,” Veva says, looking up from the crude map in her hands, eyes cutting to Kira in the driver’s seat. “We arelost.”
“We were supposed to go left at the weird cactus,” Emaline says, glancing backward, her fingers digging into Veva’s headrest.
“The one that looked like it was flipping us the bird?” Raegan asks, from her spot wedged next to me, eyes wide. I hadn’t realized she was added to our group chat, but when she saw the text about getting me out of there, she was immediately on board.
“It looked more like a peace sign,” Emaline says, brow wrinkling.
“We’re not lost,” Kira cuts through the din. “I can get us home. You can trust me.”
“I trust you,” Veva says, eyes falling back down to the map. “But I donottrust your navigational skills.”
“Can’t you look at your phone?” I try speaking for the first time from the backseat. Kira’s eyes find mine in the rearview mirror, and I watch the flush rise on her cheeks.
“I, uh—” she gives a little chuckle at herself. “I forgot it.”
“You…forgot your phone?” Emaline asks. “That doesn’t sound like you.”
“Mom brain,” Kira says, like that explains it, and the other two women nod knowingly. I ignore the twisting in my stomach, the urge to be in on this joke. Raegan, next to me, shoots me a glance, and it makes me feel better.
“What about yours?” I ask Veva. She pulls it from her pocket, then laughs incredulously, shaking her head.
“It’s dead.”
When I look at Emaline, she shakes her head, flashing the screen at me. “I tried already. No service for me out here. Do you have yours?”
“No,” I admit, dropping my gaze back to my hands. “I thought…I thought Oren might be able to track it.”
The car falls silent, then Veva asks, a hard line to her voice, “Ash, do you think he’s going to hurt you?Hashe hurt you?”
“No,” I say it quickly, hating the idea that anyone would think him capable of that. “No. It’s just—that premonition, or whatever it was—it was so realistic. The blood was everywhere.”
“My brother wouldn’t do that,” Raegan says, the confidence in her tone reassuring. “But that doesn’t mean you’re not entitled to the way you feel about it. It will be good to take a break, I think.”
Kira nods and meets my eyes in the mirror again. “Trust me,” she says, voice low, and she refocuses on the road. “Your first premonitions can be tricky. Either simply incomplete, or you just don’t really get how to read them yet.”
Silence falls over the car. I don’t know how much Emaline and Veva know, but Kira has first-hand experience with misreading a premonition. One of her first came when we were still in high school together, and when she tried to tell everyone an attack was coming, she got the details wrong.
Gramps died that day. As a teenager, I’d blamed her, just like everyone else did. But as I got older, I realized she was just akid, like me. A kid that this pack hadn’t treated too well to start with.
I’d had the luxury of being insulated by my family, the granddaughter of the alpha leader, and the sister of the incoming alpha leader. Kira did not have that luxury.
“Lately, it feels like there are two sides of me,” I say, knowing I’m being more vulnerable with them than I’ve ever been before. “The side that’s logical, and understands reason, then this side that just…wantsall the time, and makes my brain a hurricane when she doesn’t get what she wants.”
“Aidan would probably call the second one your wolf,” Emaline laughs.
