Page 6 of Rising Darkness

The last thing I saw was Tye reaching for me with the dredges of his strength. Then a portal opened, and Elan’s magick wrapped around me and hurtled me through it. I landed in a dank stone room surrounded by bars.

On an agonizing gasp, my eyes fluttered closed as Elan’s deadly promise echoed around my prison.

“You’ll help me bridge the realms, Lorn,” he sneered. “Or I’ll start picking apart your harem one boy at a time until they all lay dead at my feet.”

Panic exploded through my chest, but I couldn’t grasp it, couldn’t fully embrace the severity of his threat. Unable to move or respond, a single tear squeezed past my lashes to trail silently down my cheek as I passed out from the pain.

Chapter Three

Dason

Icrashed back onto the broken asphalt alongside my brothers. Chasing Lorn through the portal that asshole had taken her through had proven fruitless. I hadn’t been fast enough. Her signature was gone, and no matter how many times I’d portal jumped trying to catch any trace of her, it was like she’d never been there.

She was gone, and my puma was seeing red.

Every muscle in my body tensed tight enough to snap under the exertion of my roar. I hadn’t moved fast enough to save her. To stop that fucker from stealing her from right under our noses.

To say I was angry would be a goddamn understatement. I was furious, livid, enraged.

And my self hate was just as strong.

Challenging Jolon, someone Lorn loved, was a stupid, foolish decision. My head spun, and I couldn’t think straight through the cloud of rage except to blame myself.

Lorn hadn’t wanted to see her mates tear each other apart in a bloody battle of power and position, and that was the crux of everything.

If I hadn’t picked a fight, Lorn would have been standing right fucking next to us instead of a block away. I would have been able to reach her before she’d been taken. And now I didn’t know where she was or if she was alright.

Again.

Shifting back, my chest heaved as I released a torrent of power at the side of the nearest building. Chunks of rock went flying and debris rained down on our heads as the blast sent the old stone crumbling.

The destruction called to the darkness that lived deep within me. Every shadow touched had that core of both light and dark magick, touched by good and evil. Usually, I was well balanced, if not leaning toward the light. But right now, I embraced that dark, dangerous side that promised retribution. I wanted blood. And I wanted it right fucking now.

Someone was going to die for taking my mate.

I needed to find her and make sure she was safe. Then I would end whoever had the gall to threaten my pack.

One last burst of magick sent the rest of the building into collapse, and I finally felt in control enough to turn and take stock of the rest of the guys.

Striding toward them, I noticed Jolon was a taut statue, staring at the place Lorn had been a few minutes ago. Silent and deadly, he looked ready to kill with his nearly white eyes and lethal stare. Silver tendrils of magick crawled from him, tasting the air where the portal had appeared, searching for any trace left over from the attacker’s aura.

Kota was on his knees, hands in his hair as though he wanted to rip it from his scalp just to counteract the emotional pain of losing his mate.

A red glow shimmered around our misfit group as Chayton protected the rest of us, focusing on the only thing he could control while he waited for Axel, who had disappeared alongside me the second Lorn was kidnapped. Tracking was Axel’s strongest magickal ability. He was our only hope now. If anyone could find her, it was him.

Repeating that to myself, I desperately tried to hold on to my sanity.

Pacing back and forth, my pent up adrenaline had me opening and closing my fists with the need to hit something. Without another outlet, I was a ticking time bomb, but I contained myself. Barely.

It didn’t look like Syler fared much better. His elemental powers were out of control, and he’d cracked the hell out of the ground. Features of his grizzly bear slid in and out of place, blurring from one form to the next in an uncontrolled partial shift. While the silent giant was normally even-tempered with a soft spot for Lorn, he had a deadly protective streak, just like the rest of us.

I couldn’t take the silence for another fucking second when Axel finally reappeared. Running through the portal he’d opened, he skidded to a stop with a pissed off glower hardening his typically jovial features.

“That fucker!” he bellowed in anger. Bending at the waist, he gripped his head like it was about to explode. The dying glow of a locator rune faded on his forearm. “I thought I had him, but every hint of a trail was just an illusion. A distraction.”

Claws slid from my nails as I fisted my hands. Uncaring that they sliced at my palms, I let the blood drip to the ground. The pain of a flesh wound was nothing compared to what was going on inside my chest. My heart was in a fucking vice, and it was hard to breathe. My entire world narrowed to what Axel had said.

He couldn’t find her.

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