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“What?”

Her eyes went wide with terror as she turned back to the bed. “It’s not my mom! I don’t know who this is?! Where is my mother?!”

I called Dennington and he assured me that he had personally escorted Charlotte Lucas in the ambulance on the hospital transfer but he didn’t know what she looked like. Ruby had been ill, I had not asked her for a photograph.

“Where is my mother?!” Ruby cried out. “What’s happened to her?”

Dennington apologized, he stammered, “I can’t understand it! I asked for the nurses to take me to her, when I found her, I asked her if she was Ruby’s mother and she said yes! I am so sorry.”

“This is unacceptable!” I struggled to control my anger. “How is this possible? You will go to the hospital right away and find out what the mix up is. We need to find Ruby’s mother as soon as possible!”

Ruby interrupted me, “We need to go there, right now!”

I had promised Harris I would head up with the negotiating team later in the day, but Ruby needed me, I had to find her mother.

Captain Dennington promised to come fetch Ruby and take her to the hospital where she had been before. “Bring a couple of men, in case,” I said, lowering my voice. “We don’t know what we’ll find there. She may have been kidnapped.”

Ruby was pacing up and down. I could see she was distraught. She feared the shifters had taken her mother, perhaps had even killed her.

“She’s not strong, Luc, she won’t survive being in the tunnels like I was,” she whispered.

She was crying now, shaking all over. I took her in my arms. “I will find out what happened, I promise you.”

She pulled away and I saw doubt in her eyes.

“Are you coming with me?”

“I will meet you and Dennington later. I have to go to the peace talks.”

“I see,” Ruby said, turning away from me, a hardness in her eyes.

“I have to do this, Ruby,” I said but she wouldn’t meet my eyes.

I felt like I was losing her. Everything we had been through, the wonderful days at the hotel, all seemed to disappear like the afternoon fog.

“Do what you have to do,” she said in a flat voice, walking away from me.

“Ruby, wait!” I called out to her but she wouldn’t turn around.

I couldn’t let her walk away from me like that.

I went after her.

“Ruby!”

She turned around, her face wet with tears.

“I think they got her, Luc. They told me they would. I can’t believe that I was lying in bed with you, having sex and thinking only of myself while they tortured and killed her.”

“You don’t know that, don’t jump to conclusions,” I urged her.

“We got away. I tricked them! Of course they are going to punish her to get to me!” she was crying again and I tried to take her in my arms to comfort her.

But she broke away from me.

“I need to get to my mother!” she said, running away.

“I will come as soon as I can!” I called after her but I didn’t know if she heard me.