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10

REMY

S eeing Addie as we headed around the front of the house was enough to send a bolt of fear spiking through me. I broke into a run as she started to get out of her car, breaking away from my friends as they were mid-conversation.

“Addie!” I yelled, hearing Katy and the others start running behind me.

I slid to a stop, my shoes catching on the gravel in front of her. My heart slammed painfully against my ribs as my brain spiraled to come up with a reason for why she was here and not with Mom. “Is it Dad? Did something happen?”

Guilt and fear churned in my gut. If something had happened to him while I was dealing with Lodge...

“No,” Addie replied, tears in her eyes as she thrust her phone at me. A tremulous smile curved her lips. “It’s Skye. She’s on the phone.”

The world stopped turning so abruptly that I wondered if I would fall off. Everything went still for one moment as time suspended.

I grabbed the phone, nearly ripping it from Addie’s fingers as I pressed it to my ear. “Skye?”

The only sound I heard was a tiny, hiccuping sob that absolutely gutted me. But I knew that sound all too well.

“Babe, hey.” I swallowed hard, even if I could have broken down and started crying with her. “Talk to me.”

“Sorry.” She whispered the apology as I turned away from Addie and my friends.

That didn’t matter. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” she answered, her voice stronger. I could picture her straightening her shoulders and pulling herself together. She was a master at smothering her emotions. “I’m fine. I’m just... God, I tried calling you and you didn’t answer, and I thought the worst.”

Fucking hell.

I winced, kicking myself. “I left my phone in the car.”

Which was probably the stupidest thing I could have done when I had no idea where she was. But what were the odds she would call in the fourteen minutes I had been away from my phone? I had been heading back to the car now to get it.

“Mom told me about the challenge and your dad. I’m so sorry, Rem.” She sniffled again. “Is Gabe okay? Are you okay?”

“Dad’s hanging in there, and I’m fine. Where are you? I’ll leave now to come get you.” The plane would be taking off to head back to Brooks Ridge any minute, but maybe I could stop it. Hell, I would charter a private plane if I had to.

A strangled sound escaped her. “You can’t.”

“The hell I can’t,” I replied, practically growling the words as my hand tightened around the phone.

“Remy,” she sighed, sounding defeated, “I’m not anywhere near you right now.”

“That’s what airplanes are for,” I clipped out, turning and looking at Rhodes.

He was already on his phone. He covered the mouthpiece and told me, “I stopped the plane. Find out where Skye is, and we’ll go get her.”

We’ll go get her.

My friends looked at me with determination and hope. They would follow me into the devil’s house to bring her back because they loved her, too.

“There’s a storm coming in, and Dimitri said we’ll be stuck here for days,” Skye said bitterly into the phone. “You wouldn’t make it.”

“Who the fuck is Dimitri?” I snarled, wondering where she was and who the hell she was with.

Whatever adrenaline I had spent taking down Lodge was roaring back to the surface now. I had no idea if Dimitri was a friend or keeping there against her will. Maybe he was someone else from Long Mesa.

“Daniel,” she corrected. “It’s Daniel. From the Summit? He was with Elias.”

“Wait, you’re with Daniel?” I asked, frowning as I tried to keep up.

“We were looking for you when the bomb went off,” she explained. “The blast knocked me out—”

“What?” I demanded, fear flashing through my body.

“I’m okay, I swear,” she assured me. “He got Tate and I out of there and brought us to his pack.”

“Daniel didn’t have a pack,” I muttered through clenched teeth. I looked at Dante and Ryder. “But Tate’s with you?”

“Yes,” Skye said quickly. “Tell Dante she’s fine .”

I gave him a tight smile. “Skye said that Tate’s okay. They’re together.”

“Thank fuck,” Dante muttered as Ryder sighed heavily, leaning his forehead against Dante’s shoulder. “Can we talk to her?”

“She’s not with me right now,” Skye informed me, clearly hearing Dante’s request. “She’s... sleeping. I’ll have her call him as soon as she wakes up.”

“Skye’s not with her. She’s sleeping or something” I told him, but that didn’t sound right. I had known Tate for years; she wasn’t the type to sleep through a crisis.

Dante frowned, clearly thinking the same thing I was.

“Skye, where are you?” I pressed. “Daniel’s pack was from Arizona, right? We can be there in a few hours.”

She laughed, but there was no humor in it. “God, I wish. Daniel isn’t Daniel, Rem. His name is Dimitri, and he’s... Jesus, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but he’s my brother. Kind of. It’s a long story. We have the same father.”

Wait.

What the actual fuck?

My hands started to shake. “Babe, where the hell are you?”

The heavy pause between us sent my senses into high alert. I wasn’t going to like her answer.

“Russia,” she finally murmured.

I couldn’t keep the fury out of my voice even if I tried. “What the fuck do you mean you’re in Russia ?” The question exploded out of my chest with a growl.

“She’s where?” Katy demanded, coming close to me.

“And Tate’s with her?” Ryder exclaimed, stunned by the news.

I waved them off and moved away from them as they started talking.

“Explain,” I ground out, barely able to breathe the word around my clenched teeth. Every muscle in my body is locked tight, ready to physically attack the distance between us and smash through it.

“It’s a long story, Remy,” she said softly, her voice soothing the jagged edges of my nerves.

“I’ve got time.”

“Dimitri came to the Summit to watch Elias,” she started slowly.

“Why?”

“Did you know Elias came from Norwood?”

I jerked in surprise. “No. I had no idea.” I tried to remember if I had ever bothered to ask where Elias was from. He had been at the school before I started. Probably since Dad was my age and the Council recognized that the birth rate was declining.

Elias had been convinced that the younger generations held the answer to the death of our species. He had come to the school to watch younger generations and foster connections between packs. He had spent most of his life moving through packs, studying them and observing. No one had ever questioned his origins since he claimed no official allegiance to any one pack.

Most considered him a lone wolf.

“Elias had been working with the Alpha here. Nikolai.” She paused. “That’s my... dad.”

“So, your dad is working with Norwood?”

“No,” she said quickly. “Nikolai has been working on the population issue for the last few years, I think. I don’t know exactly how it works, but the population here is doing better than in America. Elias wanted to use what Nikolai was doing back home.”

“Okay,” I said slowly. “I’m not seeing why that’s a problem or why that means you’re currently an ocean away from me.”

“What Nikolai has done here, they use volunteers. Elias has been working with Norwood on the same type of program. But they’re doubling down to make sure their pack doesn’t lose numbers.”

“They kidnapped the women.” Not that the proof would do us much good now; there wasn’t a Council to take our findings to.

“And the girls from school,” she confirmed. “Dimitri isn’t sure why, but he plans to ask Elias when he wakes up.”

“Elias is with you?”

“Yeah.” Another heavy pause. “So is my uncle.”

I scowled into the phone. It was a miracle I hadn’t cracked in half with how tight I was holding onto it. “Explains why we didn’t find his body. I thought... I thought he took you.”

“More like Dimitri took him ,” she corrected with a weak laugh.

“Why?”

“I’m not entirely sure,” she replied. “But I don’t think it’s because he had extra room on the plane. Dimitri used some kind of drug to knock him out. He did the same thing to Elias.”

At least they were unconscious. That was something .

“And Tate,” she mumbled under her breath at the last second.

“What the—”

“Shh,” she hissed. “The last thing Dante or Ryder need to know is that Tate is currently drugged.”

I wiped a hand down my face and lowered my voice. “And why are so many people currently unconscious?”

“The blast knocked me out. Tate was awake. It was the only way Dimitri could get her to come, too. He knew Norwood was behind the explosion—he came to the cabin looking for you and Gabe to tell you he thought Norwood was planning something. He overheard Elias on the phone with Damien. We were on our way to find you and Tate ran into us. The explosion happened minutes later. I guess Dimitri thought he was protecting us.”

By taking my mate to the other side of the fucking world.

I definitely owed him a big thank you.

“Tate’s fine, Remy, I swear. She’s sleeping off the last of the drugs.” Skye released a shaky breath. “Mom told me about Luke. I don’t know how I’m going to tell her that her dad is gone.”

“We’ll delay the funeral until she gets back,” I told her quietly. “Until you’re both back.”

“They think the storm will clear in a few days, a week tops.”

An entire fucking week with Skye gone.

It sounded like my own personal circle hell.

“It’s barely been two days since I’ve seen you, and I can’t stand it,” I told her. “A week is going to be torture.”

“I’ll talk to Nikolai and Dimitri. I can probably get my own phone and we can video chat. That’s something, right?”

I sighed, ducking my head at the hope and sadness in her voice. “Yeah, baby. We’ll make it work.”

“I miss you,” she added so softly I almost didn’t hear.

“I miss you more. Are you sure you’re okay?” Storm or not, if I sensed in any way that she wasn’t perfect, I would fly into the closest airport, shift, and run across Russia to find her.

“I’m okay,” she replied softly. “Maybe me being here is a good thing. I can find out what Elias knows. Mom said Norwood is causing problems? If I can figure out what they’re planning, it might help.”

The phone in my hand beeped and I glanced down at the low battery warning with a hiss. “Babe, your mom’s phone is dying.”

“It’s all right. I need to go see if Tate is awake yet. I don’t want her waking up with me not there. I’ll call you when I can, okay?”

“At least once a day,” I corrected firmly. “If I don’t hear from you, I’m coming to get you.”

“Deal,” she agreed, and I could hear the smile in her voice. “I love you, Remy.”

I closed my eyes, bracing myself against the wall of emotion threatening to bury me alive. “I love you, too, baby. I’ll talk to you soon.”

I waited until she hung up before turning around. I ignored all the questions from my friends as I stared at Addie980.

“Tell me everything you know about Skye’s dad.”