Page 9 of Accepted Bonds

When we got to Nyra’s house, we parked the car a few blocks away before creeping toward the house.Looking in through the window in the living room, Aiden gestured toward me after a few seconds.

I moved toward him and when I stood beside him, I could hear the TV sounds of two movie characters arguing over who got to carve the Thanksgiving turkey.The window was too foggy to look through, so I stepped back to look at the house, searching for a window that we could use to sneak into the house without startling its occupants.

I found one and gestured toward Aiden to keep watch before opening the unlocked window that seemed to have been jammed and was thus unlocked.

Once inside the house, I crept toward the living room to find that the TV was playing, but there was no one in the living room.A small layer of dust covered the furniture, proving that the house had been vacant for a few days.

Even though I knew that there was probably no one in the house, I still crept up the stairs and checked each room, coming to the conclusion ten minutes later that there was no one in the house.

I holstered the gun I’d been carrying around with me since Aurora went missing and went out the front door of the Sameera family’s quaint home with my knife in my right hand.

Like he’d expected no one to be there, Aiden asked, “No one in the house?”

I nodded, sitting on the steps leading into the house.

“Did you find any clues?”He asked, moving closer to me as he pulled his beeping phone out of his back pocket.

His question renewed my hope, and I got up to go back into the house to search for clues only to hear Aiden exclaim.“Nyra sent me an address.”

“What?”I asked, turning back to see him staring at his phone like it was a god.

“Nyra sent me an address.According to this digital map, it’s just a few hours away.”

I turned immediately, jumping past two steps on the stairs and heading straight for the car.“Let’s go.”

“What ...We haven’t spoken to Caden yet,” He protested, following me closely.“We don’t even know if this address is relevant or not.Or if Nyra has Aurora.”

“It’s our only clue.We don’t have any other choice but to follow it.Nyra might be having a momentary second of remorse or concern or whatever she is feeling, but if we arrive there late, she might move Aurora away or, worse yet, kill her.”

“Get in the car quickly.”I opened the car door and jumped in, pushing the keys in with shaking hands, and starting the car.“Send the address to my phone first, and then send it to Caden and Levi.Tell Caden to send a small group of enforcers after us.We’re not sure if Nyra and her father are working with the pack in Red Bloom town, but we don’t want to be helpless if they are.”

As soon as he sent the address to me, I started the car and started steering the wheel with one hand as I linked my car to my phone and allowed the GPS to guide us to Aurora.

Aurora, I’m coming to get you.

7

Nyra

“Fine.I can’t watch you die anyway ...Maybe this was why you became my friend?Was this why you made me enjoy talking to you and being around you so much?To make me unable to sacrifice you for my family?”

I stared ahead as I complained to Aurora, but when I turned to stare at her, her light blue eyes, which were usually filled with warmth, were closed.And even when they were open a few minutes ago, she looked nothing like herself.

After only a few days, she had developed a sick, pallid complexion that was so different from her usually healthy and rosy complexion.Her lips were chalky, dry, and cracked in several places, and I realized that she might have been coughing so hard because her throat was dry.

I got up to get some water and a straw.When I used the straw to place some drops of water on her lips, she opened her mouth, even in her unconscious state, making me take a deep breath of relief as I helped her sit up and placed the straw on her lips.

A sharp pang of guilt lanced through my heart as I observed her unconscious form, her limp fingers clutching the water bottle.With each feeble gulp, the profound thirst she must have endured echoed in the room’s stillness.It felt like she had been lost in a desert of my making for days, and this water, her lifeline, was a reminder of the pain I had caused her.My chest tightened with a mixture of hurt for her suffering and remorse for my role in it.

After helping her lay on the bed properly so she didn’t wake up with a cramped neck, I sat down cross-legged beside her bed.

I had been hiding away from her in the past few days since Reuben and my father brought her to this hovel of a hideout.Therefore, I didn’t even know that Number 1 had decided to take such drastic measures as poisoning her slowly with Wolfsbane.

I knew she’d done it because she didn’t understand what Aurora meant to me.Before now, I didn’t even know how important she was to me.Since Aurora told me on the day I found out that I was her true mate, that her friend, Levi, was also her mate, I’d decided not to disrupt our relationship by telling her that she was also my true mate.

I hadn’t known that there was anything like Fae Omegas who could mate with multiple mates.So I’d pushed down every romantic feeling that had only become apparent when I reacted with joy to the knowledge that my best friend was my true mate.I was so used to hiding away my positive feelings and giving up the negative ones to my other personalities that it had been easy to deceive myself about my own feelings for Aurora.

But now that I knew how I felt, I couldn’t let her die.I also couldn’t let my father keep killing other people.

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