Page 15 of The Piece You Stole

“They have to leave those fancy high-rises and townhouses sometime.”

Defiance is making Kade stubborn.

We don’t have time for stubborn.Saigedoesn’t have time for stubborn.

“And how many shifters live east?” I ask, barely clinging onto my need to snap at him to justlistento me.

Silence.

“Because not long ago you told me that a pack carves out their piece of the city and claims it. So, tell me, Kade, how many shifters live east, and how long will it take you to sniff the length and breadth of it before you sniff the right one?” My voice gets sharper with each word, but this isn’t anger speaking. Not yet.

This is fear.

For Saige.

What could they be doing to her while we’re wasting all our time fighting each other instead of coming up with a plan to get her back?

Shaking my head, I rake a hand through my hair and turn away. “You know what, go. Do whatever the fuck you want to do. I’ll do things my way.”

Not like I have much of a plan, but rushing into a fight with a pack at least twice as big, won’t get Saige free any faster.

As I take the stairs two at a time, I cling to the hope that Kade will see reason and follow me up. Even if we had Dariel on board, the odds of getting Saige back weren’t great, not against six or more shifters. But with just me alone?

Focus on the plan, Aden. Focus on how you get her back. Anything else is just a waste of time.

Someone will know something about this pack. I didn’t get a good enough look at them all, but they had money and a lot of it. They would live in the most expensive buildings, and if I can figure out which ones those are, it’s a start. It would have underground parking, but that doesn’t matter yet. For now, knowing which building they could be in will narrow things down.

After grabbing the map from the kitchen, I head straight for the living room TV cabinet and the drawer Greg likes to leave his laptop. As I pull the drawer open, some small sound has me whirling around.

Please let that be Kade using his brain for once.

But there’s no one in the doorway. A moment later, it hits me that the sound came from downstairs.

The front door snicking shut behind Kade, most likely.

For the first time in years, I’m on my own. So is Dariel, and so is Kade. And it’s a real lonely feeling. Hollow, and strange.

I lower my head and get to work.

I don’t let myself think of anything else but getting Saige back.

CHAPTER 5

SAIGE

Afinger glides along my right cheek, my jaw, and my chin. The touch is so gentle, so light that I know it can’t be Rylan or any of his pack. A hand angles my head a little up and to the right, pulling on the wounds in my neck.

I whimper.

The hand releases me.

It hurts too much to move, so I don’t. I wait for the pain to release its grip on me. If it ever will.

Pressure eases on my right wrist. After a soft snick, I slowly tip over. That’s when I remember the bite, the pain, and Rylan shifting back. As the world turned black, I remember the click the handcuff made when he snapped it around my wrist.

But now I’m free?

A gaze sweeps over my face, intense and probing. All I want to do is sleep, let my heavy body sink to the floor and stay there.

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