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Forty-Nine

ALEC

The moment sun falls, the enchantment does too and I’m out of the basement as the High Priestess walks through the front door, arms leaden with shopping bags. It’s sickeningly normal and humanlike, but the lack of Harlow behind her only confirms my suspicion.

In the past few hours, there’s been a myriad of emotions from her ripping my insides apart. Shock, panic, concern, betrayal, and curiosity. It’s a jumble making no sense.

But this witch will answer for all of it.

I’m in front of her instantly, my hand around her throat. Her shopping bags slip from her arms and crash all around us, items spilling out.

“Where’s Harlow?”

She struggles, nails scratching pointlessly at my skin. “With…you…”

If she thinks Harlow’s with me, then it’s either a good fucking lie or something is worse than I believed.

My grip loosens slightly, but I don’t let her down. “She went to your shop.”

The witch’s expression goes deathly pale and her reply guts me all over. “My shop is closed today.”

I haven’t felt fear—true fear—in a long fucking time.

“So where is she?” I ask it, but it’s a question more for me than her before I take off to town, uncaring if humans mingling out late notice the inhuman blur. I track Harlow’s scent to a small shop, following it to the back room.

Morgan in all her witchy abilities manifests in front of me. “Smell anything?”

“Yes.” My Bride’s scent tinged with fear, enticing my fury, and the others overlaying it. “Two witches.”

If witches were involved, Morgan’s the most likely suspect, but she ignores me, instead closing her eyes and holding up a finger for me to wait.

“Magick leaves signatures; it’s how I found Harlow the other day.” The sudden silence is deafening, a tick, tick, tick from across the room telling me how little time I might have. After an agonizing moment of planning two deaths, Morgan opens her eyes with an irritated huff. “They’re not anyone from the coven, which means they’re outsiders and I can’t sense them. It’s Dark, though. And strong.”

“So she was taken?”

The thought shifts to the primal side of me. The side where every thought shuts down, leaving me with a very basic focus: to hunt the bastards, to destroy them, and to reclaim my Bride.

Harlow. Hellion, answer me. Be okay.

The bond is silent. No emotions. No thoughts.

Fuck.

It unlatches the final switch, freeing the monster within—and his determination to kill.

Whoever thought to take my Bride is fucking dead . They’ll be destroyed, ripped apart, and I will be merciless.

I head out of the back room. I’ll trace her scent. I’ll follow the bond. I’ll find her.

The witch calls after me, running to catch up, but the monster doesn’t care. She’s a witch and any witch outside Harlow is the enemy.

“I’ll contact the coven. We’ll find her. We’ll get her back.”

I don’t reply, my mind already gone, searching.

By the shop’s entrance, utter and complete loss punches me in the stomach. Grief without an explanation, a cruel twist of the empty cavity where my heart once beat. Now, a useless organ long inoperative and only brought to life by its mate.