Page 165 of Broken Souls

Tears burning my eyes, I suck in a breath before we turn the corner. Rudy squeezes me with the arm he has around my waist. My heart in my throat, I take that final step. And then I cansee.

Mother is kneeling over Dayne, her hands glowing over a fist-sized wound in his stomach. The hole is just like the one Micha had when I found her in the basement. Antonio was here. And he came for her.

Shoving away from Rudy, I lunge for our mother. “You were supposed to protect her!” I yell. I grab her by her hair and pull her to her feet. I don’t care that she’s in the middle of saving Dayne. He might be family, but he isn’t mywife.

“Where is she?” I roar as I shake her. “Where is my wife?”

“She’s alive!” she says, and my grip loosens as my chest is hit with too heavy of a blow. “Antonio took her. I tried to stop them –”

I backhand her across the face hard enough her hair rips out of her skull and stays in my fingers. She stumbles away from me. “If you tried, you wouldn’t be here!” I shout.

I go to lunge for her again, but my body can’t move. I’m trapped by the power of Ezriel’s telekinesis. I struggle against him, gnashing my teeth and spitting in fury. I feel like an animal. A basic beast who only wants one thing.

“Where is she?” I scream.

“I don’t know,” Mother says as she turns back to me. She doesn’t heal her swollen cheek from where I hit her. “I only got here after they already cast the transportation spell.”

I scream as I strain against my invisible binds. Ezriel is holding every atom in my fucking body. My eyes turn to him. He still has strength to stand, but I can detect the harsh beat of his pulse. He’s worn out from his fight with the hybrid and werewolves. If I keep pushing, he’ll break. Then I can kill the bitch in front of me for not having been by my wife the entire time.

“You should’ve made sure they got to the basement!”

“I know!” she says. “I’m sorry. I thought I stopped them all before they got to the house. If I’d known they had a transporter –”

“Look at the plants!” Even the ones inside the house are all dead. “They obviously had a fucking witch!”

Not many witches know how to work a transportation spell, but I don’t care. She should’ve known Antonio would have something up his sleeve.

“He took my wife! You let him take my fucking wife!”

I pull against the binds of my prison again. All my muscles strain for release.

“Enough,” Khalid says softly but firmly as he moves between us. He faces me, his mien dangerously calm. “Mother, finish healing Dayne,” he orders. “We don't need another casualty. Then get out of the house.”

She doesn’t say anything as she obeys.

Khalid clasps my shoulder as he looks me in the eyes. “We’re going to find her, Varius. We’re going to tear apart every single one of his compounds if we have to, but we will get her back.”

“He’s going to torture her.” My voice breaks, a cracked and raw insight into the state of my soul.

“I know. But your anger isn’t going to save her.”

I crumble beneath that truth. I’m doing nothing to help my little monster.

Closing my eyes, I force myself to breathe.

Khalid squeezes my shoulder again, and I shudder.

“We’re going to find her, brother, and we’re going to bring her home.”

Latching onto his promise with trembling hands, I nod. I just hope she’s still alive by the time we do.

I’m numb by the time Mother is well gone and Ezriel releases me. Everyone has left me alone in the hall. Dayne has been moved to somewhere more comfortable for him to recover. He hasn’t regained consciousness, but Mother said he was stable and that he had been out by the time she had gotten here, so there’s no point questioning him.

I should’ve let him tattoo a tracking rune back on her. Fuck. I never should have had her burn the first one off out of paranoia that someone could use it to find me through her.

I should’ve –

Cutting that thought off, I force myself to focus rather than despair. I move from the spot where Dayne was to the biggest pool of blood that smells like her. I breathe it in, trying to feel her presence where it no longer is. Then I shift my focus to the other scents in the area, documenting the bastards I need to kill. There’s Antonio, there’s a male I do not know, and then there’s -