Page 95 of Reaper's Pack

He had taken her—our mate.

Ours.

Fate had given her to us on a silver fucking platter, and I’d been too damn stubborn to see it all this time. And now, after just a taste of paradise, it was gone. Ripped away.

“What happened?” Gunnar demanded, sweat glistening across his pale flesh after the shift, his chest heaving, his aura quivering with fury. “What the fuck just happened?”

Declan nosed around the sigil frantically, searching her out in his hound form and whimpering when he came up empty.

“I should have known—”

“You did know,” my beta growled. “You said it… We shouldn’t have assumed someone had taken him out.”

Declan shifted onto two legs at our side, his fear palpable but his presence strong. Focused. Unlike the time before Hazel, fear seemed to center his mind rather than send him spiraling into a panic.

“We couldn’t have known,” he muttered, swiping his hands through his hair. “This wasn’t here before. I swear, I didn’t scent it—”

“He set a trap,” I told them, toeing at the spot where I’d first seen that horrible orange cage shoot up from the earth. “As soon as she walked into it, she sprung it. This was planned. He was waiting for us.”

Rage made every word labored, so furious with myself, with him, that I could barely see straight, never mind trying to think my way through this.

We were alone.

Someone had taken our reaper, our mate, and we were unmonitored for the first time in our very long lives…

Never before had the pack been left to ourselves outside of a cage.

I glanced up and down the empty street, jaw clenched when a car ambled by on the road running perpendicular to this one.

“Her scythe…” Declan uttered the discovery like it pained him, and I watched him sprint over to the boxy grey warehouse to the left of the road. He slowed as he approached the locked garage door. Sure enough, there was Hazel’s scythe—just sitting there, useless, so far from its partner, from its fated mate. Did it feel the same sting of loneliness and loss that we did?

“Don’t touch it, Dec,” Gunnar called, halfheartedly trailing after his packmate, stopping at the concrete curb, arms limp at his side. The look he shot back to me said more than words ever could, but I felt it. For a hellhound who usually had all the answers, he hadn’t a clue where to go from here.

Neither did I.

A month ago, I would have ordered us to run. Teleport out of Lunadell—go north, into the wilds, find an abandoned wolf or bear den. Settle in for the winter. Hide our tracks. Regroup. Head somewhere new come spring…

Now, just the thought of leaving this street gave me fucking heartburn, fiery pain searing up from my gut, burning my throat, my chest.

I had felt her panic. I’d never really felt Hazel before, but since we had mated, I—and the others—had experienced flashes of her emotions, her physical sensations. Given we’d spent the last week fucking, really cementing our bond, it had mostly been her pleasure. But today, I felt her panic, her fear.

And I’d come running.

But not fast enough.

Just fast enough to watch her fall.

All my rage pounding through our pack bond was aimed squarely at myself, for my failing, but that wasn’t productive. If I sat stewing, nothing would get done.

“Gunnar.” I motioned to the bloody sigil smeared across the road. “Guard the portal. He may come back for whatever reason.”

My beta hopped to without hesitation, stalking toward the portal like he wanted to murder it.

“Declan,” I called, directing our attention to the base of the garage door, to the most powerful weapon just sitting there. “Guard her scythe. No one can touch it, but someone might try.”

My packmate crouched over it, not touching it, but close enough to bite an intruder’s fingers clean off if they tried to get around him. A furious concentration knitted his brows—almost made him look intimidating. Amidst all the other emotion storming through my insides, a wisp of pride shone bright; I always knew he had it in him.

Strength.

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