Page 31 of Broken Arranged Mate (Badlands Wolves #4)

“Hello?”

Dorian’s voice is bleary, half-sleep-riddled when he answers the phone. For a moment, I think that I shouldn’t have called him, shouldn’t be bothering him with this—but it’s his sister, and I’m pretty sure his car was here.

If anyone knows where she is, it’s him. And even after everything he’s done for me, I’m not above bothering him in the middle of the night if he thought it was okay to do this without telling me.

“She’s gone,” I say, trying to keep my voice level. “Did you come to get her?”

After discovering she was missing, I ran around the house, sprinted through the dunes, thinking maybe she had gone out there again. I’d yelled her name and sent mentally for her in my wolf form—but there was nothing.

I’m normally controlled, strategic, but when I realized she was gone, it was like all logical thought flew from my head. Rather than follow her scent from the start, I kept circling the house, thinking she would show up on my next turn.

When I got back to the house and finally used my brain enough to follow the fading scent trail, it led weakly to the end of the driveway, then to the end of the road, where it seemed like she crouched in the shrubs for a while before leaving.

And the only other scent I could catch was her brother’s—the unmistakable smell of him and gasoline. His truck.

It carried with it that earthy, almost minty scent of the Ambersky territory. I’d recognize it anywhere—I rode around enough in that thing while I was staying over there. Dorian’s truck was here, and he never lets anyone drive that thing.

If it was here, that means he was, too.

“What?” Dorian asks now, voice thick with exhaustion. The man is always tired, which makes sense, especially considering the fact that he has two toddlers and three infants to care for. I can practically picture him rubbing the sleep from his eyes, trying to pull himself together. “ Who’s gone?”

“ Ash ,” I spit. “My wife. Your sister.”

I know it would be good to keep the anger from my voice, but at this point, I’m a little beyond caring.

If an arranged marriage to Ash was meant to keep the peace between our packs and bring the shifters together, then Dorian showing up in the middle of the night and ferrying her away is the opposite of that.

Worse than that, it makes me feel like the monster I’m desperately trying to convince myself I’m not.

On the other side of the line, I hear the sound of sheets rustling, movement, something like a pillow dropping to the floor.

I listen as I stand on the porch, staring at the Grayhide city in the distance, the adobe buildings rising up toward the nearly moonless sky, a few squares dotted with light. My patience is running thin.

Ash’s scent is already starting to fade. She must have been gone for at least an hour before I came to her door.

“…what the fuck ?” Dorian’s voice has gone from half-asleep to fully awake and far angrier than I was expecting. Is he angry that I’m asking? That I called?

Well, I’m pissed that he would come and take her without talking to me. I’ve never treated her like a prisoner, never told her that she couldn’t leave.

It would look strange, and our public appearances seem to be helping with the situation on the border, but I care enough about Ash not to make her stay here if she really wanted to go.

“I noticed half an hour ago—” I start, biting my tongue to keep from snapping at him.

“ No ,” he snarls, cutting me off, his voice dropping to an octave I’ve never heard from him before, sounding frantic. “Kira is gone, too.”

A call to both Emin and Aidan reveals that their mates have also left.

Emaline was the only one to leave a note, telling Aidan she was just going to help a friend and would be back in the morning.

Apparently, they’ve had issues in the past with one of them leaving in the middle of the night, and a deal that neither of them would do it without leaving an explanation behind.

“Not that this explains anything ,” Aidan growls.

Veva’s mother, Kellen—Emin, and Kira’s father, Argent, and the secretary from the Ambersky pack hall come together to take the babies and watch over them while Dorian, Emin, and Aidan leave, agreeing to meet me on the border when they realize that’s the direction their wives’ scents are heading.

“She took the truck,” Dorian says over the speaker. “How did she take it without me hearing? And she left her phone here.”

“It looks like she ran out in a rush,” Emin adds about Veva. “Her phone is gone, but her wallet and bag were left behind.”

Aidan is considerably less worried. “So they wanted to have a little adventure,” he says. “I mean, I still think we should find them, but it’s not like they were taken .”

The line falls silent, and Dorian says they’ll be at the border within an hour.

Once more, I move through the house, searching for Ash in case she’s still inside, and I somehow missed her.

Then, a sinking feeling in my stomach, I race for the border myself.

It’s closer to me than it is to them, but they arrive in under an hour, like Dorian said, which means they were pushing themselves to the point of exhaustion.

When in our wolf forms, and with the help of the Amanzite, we can often travel much faster than we would even in a vehicle. But that many miles in under an hour is almost troubling.

Dorian shifts back into his human form, gasping for air and pulling a flask from his pocket, which he tips back and dumps into his mouth. It’s water, and Aidan takes it when he’s done. I pass my bottle to Emin, who’s doubled over, his hands on his knees as he tries to replenish his lungs.

“Fuck, Dorian,” he wheezes, hand shaking as he takes the bottle from me. “I’m way too fucking old for that shit.”

Aidan lets out a half-hearted laugh, and we turn together.

“Did you track her scent?” Dorian asks, tucking his flask away and crossing the border in long, purposeful strides.

“To a point,” I say, “but I think the car was going too fast when they pulled away for it to linger much.”

“Between the four of us,” Dorian says, then gestures between him, Emin, and Aidan, “and our mating bonds, we should be able to track them down.”

Once again, I bite my tongue.

I want to tell Dorian that Ash is more than just my arranged wife—she is my mate. And I’m done running from that fact. The second I get her back, I’m going to come clean about everything.

But he’s not the one I want to tell first, so I shut my mouth and nod, turning and shifting with them as we make our way along the highway south.

We must cut an impressive sight along the landscape—Dorian and me, alpha leaders, and Aidan, large enough to be one. My black fur, Dorian’s dark brown, Aidan’s gray, and Emin’s copper fur at the very end of our train, like the tail of a comet.

Each of us is able to catch a scent or follow a connection for a few miles, until we come upon a bend in the road that leads to a pile of debris on the road, heaps of rocks, branches, and cactus husks.

“They were definitely here,” Dorian says, shifting and reaching down, picking up what looks like a tiny pink bow from the ground. “This is from Kira’s pajamas.”

“I can smell Veva’s magic,” Emin adds, glancing around with a mixed expression. Part worry, part confidence. “Smells like a lot of it—she took down quite a few guys.”

And I’m crouching over a still-damp spot in the sand and dirt, where I can smell Ash’s blood mixing with unidentified blood. Her scent is strong here, and on it I catch the heady current of fear and anger, bright and fast adrenaline.

“Ash was here, too,” I say, looking up at the guys. “And I’m pretty sure she was beating the shit out of someone in this spot.”

Dorian actually laughs, letting out a puff of air that’s almost amused, but mostly pissed off and concerned. “That sounds like her. I bet she led the fucking charge, got everyone else into trouble.”

That sends a ripple of defensiveness through me, but I can’t argue with him when I realize it’s right. Ash is exactly the kind of woman to jump into a fight, especially if it means defending her friends.

Aidan has wandered a little away from the road, and when he turns and looks back at us, his eyes are flashing with recognition. “Emaline’s phone,” he says, holding up a smartphone in a pink case.

“Come on.” Dorian turns and faces up the road, where their scents trail off. “No point wasting more time here.”

The second I find Ash, I’m going to tell her everything.

And the second I find the person who dared to lay a hand on her, I’m going to rip them limb from limb.