Page 8 of The Awakened Wolf

“What’s the news, Kenzo?” Max powered his way out of the elevator with an anguished grunt as his injured elbow brushed the frame. “Where are they? Is Yara herself again? Can I see her now?”

Ruby stepped toward Max with a servant’s blank smile. “Shouldn’t we tend to your wound first, Your Grace?”

Max gave her a sharp look for speaking out of turn, and she trembled as she curtseyed, the shudders betraying her placid tone. Something was wrong. Very wrong. I knew that already, but this seemed bigger than Sebastian’s anger. Had Yara died? Had Sebastian? No, Kenzo would be wrecked, and he seemed only… disturbed.

My heart skittered like a pebble tossed onto an icy pond. What if Sebastian had told him what happened? What if Kenzo knew he intended to release his claim again, and this time for good? I swallowed against the retch that rose within me. Had a fated mate ever done that? But we’d mated without a ceremony—without proof. Why tell Max the awful truth when he could just say I’d cheated on him instead?

“Answer me, Kenzo.” Max grabbed his unofficially adopted son by the shoulder. “Where is Sebastian? Where is my mate?”

“Pops…” Kenzo started, and then his eyes slid to Ruby.

“I ran into him on his way out, Your Grace,” Ruby said. “I was unaware that anyone was searching for him, or I would have tried to reach you. He was wearing the attire he usually donned, uh…” She hesitated, looking at Kenzo, who nodded. “…what he wore when he wanted to blend in with the humans.”

Max frowned at this but didn’t interrupt.

“Dark jeans,” she continued, “and a black motorcycle jacket, his newsboy cap, and… glasses?” She paused to wrinkle her freckled nose because shifters had perfect vision and she didn’t know him well enough to know he was making a private joke with himself about Clark Kent. But I did.

“Her Grace, Yara, was with him. He was pushing her in a wheelchair. She wore a scarf over her hair and face, but I was certain it was her because she was speaking with him as if he were little…” She trailed off.

There was a moment of silence. All of us knew what that meant. Yara was still having her fits and losing track of time. I’d harbored a hope that Damien’s death would snap her out of it, like the followers at the protest. But his hold on her had lasted for decades. Maybe there was permanent damage. Gods, that wasn’t fair.

“Did he say where they were going?” Max’s voice broke.

For once in the past twenty-four hours, I was certain he and I were on the same page. And it had foreboding written all over it, in every language imaginable.

“No.” Ruby’s red ponytail brushed over her shoulders. “Of course, I was thrilled to see Yara alive, but before I could inquire about her well-being, I noticed they had luggage with them. My first assumption was that there had been an evacuation order. I asked as much and Sebastian said, ‘Only for us.’” Her blue eyes filled with tears. “I’m sorry, Your Grace. I took him at his word and didn’t question him further. Or try to stop him. I…I didn’t know.”

Max cut her off with a wave of his hand, ignoring her sobs. He was shaking with fury now rather than pain. “Kenzo, please tell me that my stubborn mule of a son left a note or some indication of where he’s taken my mate?”

“I’m sorry,” Kenzo said, looking every bit as small and subservient as Ruby in that moment. “I looked everywhere I could think of, but wherever he went, he made sure it stayed secret. I’ve even called some of the packs he’d visited in his travels these past couple of years. I kept the questions casual, but it was obvious no one had heard from him in a while. It kills me to say it, Pops, but I’m out of ideas.” His voice pitched upward, cinched by concern for his closest friend. His brother. If there was anyone who’d know of a secret bolt hole, it would be Kenzo.

Max turned and punched the grass cloth papered wall of the lobby with an outraged howl. Followed by an agonized yowl. I cringed as he grasped the bloody stain on the shirt he’d put over his shiftskin before we left the abandoned subway station.

“Gods help that boy!” Max wailed, eyeing the new hole in the wall like it was the enemy. “How dare he take matters into his own hands? How dare he take his mother, my mate, without consulting me? What in Leto’s name has gotten into him?” He whirled, pointing a finger at me. “You. Elyse. Do you have any idea where he went?”

I stared down the barrel of that accusatory finger as a trickle of blood from the wound above reached its tip and fell to the floor. If this were a movie, the sound effects team would have made that a thunderous splash, but this was not a movie. There was no guaranteed happy ending, or even a bittersweet one for the audience to learn a poignant lesson from. It might just be over.

“No. I…I have no idea where Sebastian took Yara,” I stammered, searching for the right words, which did not include me blurting out, ‘And by the way, Sebastian’s not your son,’ so I tamped that panic-stricken impulse down.

“Did he say anything to you? Do you know why he might have run off without telling me?” Max’s tone shifted to a plea, the plaintive request of a man desperate to find his family. He may not have given Sebastian his blood, but he’d given him the rarest of role models, a sterling image of tender devotion.

He made Sebastian the man that he was, and that’s how I knew we were through. Sebastian would never abandon his mate, therefore I was no longer his mate.

You have to tell him what we know.

No. Absolutely not. Now is not the time.

That’s what you said about telling Sebastian and look at where that got us.

You’re hitting new lows in the not helping category. What if I tell him and he stops looking for Yara and Sebastian? Because he’s so mad.

Oh, shit. I never considered…

“Elyse,” Max repeated. “What do you have to say? Aside from Ruby here, you saw them both last.”

I swallowed hard enough for the roar of saliva sliding down my throat to drown out my wolf. “Well, Sebastian did seem upset, but he, uh, he didn’t tell me why.”

Max’s desperate expression hardened into stone. “You’re lying.”

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