Page 52 of Claimed By Blood

With her gone, I look directly at my co-alpha and announce, “We have a problem.”

“Let me guess,” Gideon retorts. “Shecaused it?”

“Will you juststop!?” Finn rubs his eyes, dislodging his glasses in the process. “For one second. Please. All this anger is—”

Whatever he might’ve said is drowned out by Immy.

“This boorish coward won’t go after Evie. We have her last known co-ordinates, and I, for one, am not content to sit here and wait for her to turn up dead.”

The redhead stalks from the room in a cloud of anger, and I glare at Gideon.

Silas gets between the two of us before either of us can say anything. “You want to argue, do it away from Finn. He’s straining, and this bastard’s probably made it worse.”

The beta doesn’t wait for either of us to reply before crossing to the sofa and hauling the omega into his arms. Watching Finn relax under the attention soothes something in Gideon, and his eyes soften. But a second later his jaw clenches and he spins to give the two of them his back.

Good to know he’s still the king of mixed signals.

“What the fuck happened down there?” he asks, and I can tell he’s struggling to keep his tone modulated so as not to upset our omega—not that Finn and Silas are paying the two of us much attention right now. “We lost your signal when you went too far underground and it never resurfaced.”

“Got ambushed,” I grunt. “I literally can’t remember anything after I climbed down to the base of the cistern.”

“Finn and Mia have sent drones to map the entire sewer. We can’t retrace your path,” Gideon grabs a tablet from the table and flicks a hologram into the centre of the room. The elaborate warren of tunnels is seemingly random and punctuated by red dots travelling through it.

“That is where you entered,” Gideon continues, pointing at an orange point in the top. “And this is your path.” He taps the dot, and a matching orange line traces its way through the sewers. “You left the sewers somewhere around here, but as you can see, the route no longer exists. The arrows you followed are gone, and according to this, you walked through solid rock at several points.”

“There was a fake wall which blocked off the last tunnel,” I recall. “Eve found a way to open it.”

He rubs at his eyes in frustration. “Well the drones don’t have that ability. The trackers stopped working when you jumped down to the cistern, meaning you were probably out of range, or the signal was jammed. Even with Finn’s thrall bond to guide us, the sewers are a labyrinth. If we go down there, we could be lost for weeks.”

“Does it matter?” Immy demands. “It’s still our only plan.”

The alpha glares at her. “We’re not going to be any help to Evelyn if we’re wandering around, lost in a tunnel.”

“Any help to who?”

Both Gideon and I whirl, pinning the intruder in the doorway with a glare.

“Where thefuckhave you been?” I growl.

“Tone!” Silas growls, reminding me that both he and Finn are here too.

“Why?” Draven’s eyes travel over the group, pausing on Immy, and then on Finn curled up in Silas’s lap. “I had a lead, I followed it, but it was a dead end. Then I was taking care of a few things, but the damned sun came up and took me out of commission. What’s going on?”

“We found Samuel—” Vane begins.

“Or rather, he found Evie,” Silas finishes.

The hybrid raises a single brow at his brother. “She was taken, and the rest of us were dumped in a town miles away.”

Draven’s expression sharpens, turning dark and terrifying in a blink. He holds up a hand for silence, and a heartbeat later, he frowns. “She feels fine.”

The quiet, blade-like fury radiating from him doesn’t cease, but he does turn it down a few notches before he looks to Finn for confirmation.

Wise move. Turning that kind of anger towards the omega wouldn’t have ended well.

Finn chews at his lip and adjusts his glasses as he does the same thing. “Yeah, no signs of torture yet. It’s more like she’s asleep.”

Just like Morwen. They must’ve used a bigger dose on the older vampires. Maybe they miscalculated, or perhaps she’s being moved far enough they needed reassurance she wouldn’t wake up.

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