Page 2 of Found (Mate Rejected #8)

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MACK

I spent all the rest of the night searching for Aerin as the rest of my pack battled to put out a fire in the den that threatened to burn the entire house to the ground.

I drove all the roads around Winter Lake.

It was 2 a.m. when her fated mate took her, so no one was around to notice what car he appeared in and which direction he went.

I drove until I realized I had no clue where I was driving, that I could be going in the completely opposite direction to the road he took her, and I made myself turn my car around and drive back to the house.

It’s 8 when I park outside my house.

I hadn’t realized I had been gone for so long.

Someone boarded up the broken den window, and though the scent of smoke lingers in the air, all the fire is out.

There’s a ball of dread and tension growing in my belly, and I can’t shake the feeling that I let Aerin down. I told her over and over that she was safe. That I would always protect her and the baby, and I failed.

When the back of my eyelids prickle as a spike lodges in my throat, I remember our walk in the forest days before.

“I bet you never cried a day in your life.” Aerin is grinning at me. Her hand feels soft and warm in mine, and she’s beautiful, but that’s nothing new. She’s the most beautiful woman in the world.

She was wrong.

When my dad walked out on me and the rest of the pack, I cried. I hadn’t thought I would, but I had nothing and I had no one. Just despair.

She’s gone. Aerin is gone and I don’t know how I’m going to even begin to get her back. Shane took her, and when I catch up to her, the first thing I will do is rip Shane’s throat out. He deserves nothing less.

But first thing’s first, I can’t sit here wallowing in guilt for failing Aerin.

I cut the engine and swing the door open.

I’m getting out of my car when the front door swings open and Bennett fills the open doorway. His eyes flick from me to my empty side. “You didn’t find her?”

He’d wanted to come with me. I told him he needed to put out the fire. I had my cell phone. If I found something, I’d call him.

Instead, I feel like I wasted hours aimlessly driving around, the only car on the road for much of the early morning.

I shake my head. “He took her and I have no?—”

Movement just behind him catches my attention and Bennett steps aside, revealing an unexpected face.

Clary, the shifter from New Mexico who came searching for his missing omega mate who someone had kidnapped two weeks before.

I’d ordered him to leave when he’d admitted to watching Aerin and later, startling her so badly that she fell down a hill and knocked herself unconscious.

He had said he wasn’t sure if he could trust us, so watched from a distance to make sure we weren’t part of the missing omega problem spreading through packs around the country. But he’d made Aerin fall. I wanted him gone from Winter Lake, and gone from anywhere near Aerin, so he couldn’t hurt her again.

But now Aerin is gone—taken—and I’m struggling to cling to my anger that he came back. I just feel numb and hopeless.

“He came back,” Bennett says unnecessarily when I stare at Clary.

“I know you ordered me to leave, but I can help you. And you can help me,” Clary says.

“He helped with putting out the fire,” Bennett adds. “We couldn’t have done it without him.”

“Chris?” I ask, hoping at least something has gone right today.

The last time I saw him, he was flat on his back, blood pumping from his neck. Skin tinged a bluish-white, and barely breathing.

I’d stayed with him for fifteen minutes as we’d battled to save his life.

It had been Adela and Helena, doing the bulk of the first aid, who had said there was nothing I could do. That they knew what to do. I had to go after Aerin.

Bennett, Tina, and Aerin’s grandparents had been fighting to put out the fast spreading fire.

I’d ordered Penny, Colton, and Warren to secure the perimeter and make sure we weren’t facing an attack.

Adela and Helena had been fighting to save Chris’s life as Zoe, his mate, gripping his hand, seemed to be willing him to live. Blood was pouring from a wound on her head, but she’d barely seemed to notice Adela bandaging it.

“Will pull through,” Bennett says.

I relax. That’s something to be relieved about.

I had to go after Aerin, but I hadn’t wanted to leave my pack.

And I’d left them to search for Aerin, but come back empty-handed. Chris could have died while I was gone. My house could have burned down. There could have been another attack and I wouldn’t have been here to defend my pack.

More guilt eats at my belly.

“He’s upstairs with Zoe and the others,” Bennett continues. “Not sure anyone managed any sleep, but we’ve been doing hourly patrols, so everyone had a chance to get some rest. There’s been no sign of anyone or anything.”

Because they got what they came here for.

Aerin.

I slam the car door closed and walk inside, saying nothing. Today I feel worn down, slow, and like an old man. Maybe it’s shock. Maybe it’s the lack of sleep. Could even be exhaustion from the multiple shifts I did last night.

They move aside as I walk into the kitchen, pour myself a glass of water, and only distantly notice the tea stains on the floor, a broken chair in one corner, and that the dining table is slightly wobbly.

I sip from my glass of water as I think. I’m exhausted, running on maybe three hours of sleep, but I’m not putting my head down until I have Aerin back in my arms.

“Shane took Aerin, so he’s mixed up in this,” I say. “And I have no clue where to even start looking for her.”

Bennett and Clary, who quietly followed me into the kitchen, take a seat at the wobbly dining table.

“What are the odds the Dacre Pack forced him out after Bree killed his dad and he found himself a new pack?” Bennett asks.

I look at him. “The Raleigh Pack is dead. They don’t exist anymore. How did Shane discover something no one knew?”

Silence reigns for two beats.

“Maybe they went looking for him?” Clary suggests.

Bennett must have filled Clary in on our run in with Lester, one of my former Raleigh packmates, who we confronted in the forest near the Winter Lake Hotel. It was a distraction so Shane could hit the house and grab Aerin.

He has his own pack, so he’s only here to find Leah, his missing mate. After that, he’ll be returning to his home in New Mexico.

“You think they’re using Shane to get what they want?” Because it’s what I think.

Everyone knows Shane was Aerin’s fated mate. That she ran from him, rejected him, and built a new life for herself here, in Winter Lake with me. They know this because Aerin is the daughter of one of the most well-respected Alpha’s in the country: Douglas Boone from the Boone Pack.

I try to keep focused on just getting Aerin back, but I keep thinking of everything she told me about her life with Shane and how unhappy she was because of how he treated her.

Aerin is now back in the hands of her abusive former mate.

I promised her she would always be safe with me. And I didn’t just fail Aerin. I failed Thumper as well.

“Mack?” Bennett prompts.

I clear my throat. “So it looks like the Raleigh Pack is back, or at least we need to act like they’re back, and they’re grabbing omegas to make a new name for themselves. We need to figure out where they are.”

“And go after them.” Clary sits up in his seat, eager.

Bennett bounces his gaze from me to Clary and adds, in a lower voice, “We have to be careful about how we get them back because it sounds like they have more hostages than just Aerin and Leah.”

Shane has gotten himself wrapped up with the Raleighs, somehow. Lester is dead, and I didn’t get the impression he was the one in charge of everything that’s happened last night. I don’t believe for one moment he set up the distraction in town.

Someone dug pits in the ground, covered them with leaves, and I nearly fell into one of them. Which reminds me…

“We need to clear up that mess back in the forest near the hotel,” I tell Bennett.

Getting Aerin back is a priority, but we don’t need the inhabitants of this town stumbling over a bunch of dead wolves in the forest and potentially killing themselves by falling into one of those pits with wooden stakes.

Bennett nods. “Colton, Penny, Warren and Tina can go bury the bodies and do something about those pits so a hiker doesn’t fall into them.”

“Even just removing the stakes and burying the bodies will be enough. People can wonder about the pits, but at least no one will die falling into one of them.” I push my chair back from the table.

“When do we go after them?” Clary is still eager.

“After I’ve checked on my pack.”

“But—”

I look at him. “That’s non-negotiable. I spent the better part of four hours aimlessly driving around with my window down, sniffing and looking. And I found nothing.”

“But we have to do something ,” he bites out, frustration in every line of his body.

“And we will.” Swallowing my mounting frustration, I soften my tone so there’s a little less of a growl in it than before. “I get that you want to go now. I do too. But we need a plan, and we have nothing. I need to check on my pack.”

“I’ll take a walk outside,” Bennett says.

“No one will attack now,” I say on my way out of the kitchen.

It’s morning. Whoever is behind this, presumably the new Alpha of the reformed Raleigh Pack, already has what they came here for.

Aerin.

“Probably not,” he concedes as he heads out of the front door. “But it won’t hurt to have a quick walk around anyway.”

The sound of soft snores drift from behind my spare bedroom as I jog up the stairs. The nursery door is closed, and it’s too painful looking at it and imagining that it might never be used as a nursery. That Aerin might never see the surprise I prepared for her and Thumper.

I focus on the murmurs coming from mine and Aerin’s bedroom.

It’s the biggest room in the house, so this is where we got Chris and Zoe set up before I went after Aerin.

When I push the door open, the smell of coppery blood and pain hits me in the face.

Chris is in bed, sheets covering him up to his chest, and his neck is heavily bandaged. In a basket I pass on the way to the bed, are the bloodied towels we used to save his life last night. Even with the window open, the smell of pain and blood is heavy.

“How is he?” I ask Adela, dropping into a crouch beside the bed.

“Stronger than he was last night,” Adela says. “He’s sleeping easier.”

There are fewer lines of strain around his mouth and eyes.

Helena is sitting with her back to the wall next to the window, eyes closed, exhausted and a slightly greenish tinge to her face.

She was suffering from morning sickness these last few days. It must have been bad this morning for her to be sleeping. Adela probably encouraged her, but Helena is an enforcer. She’d have stayed up for three days if that’s what was needed.

“She looks green,” I say.

Adela sighs. “She said she was okay but she’s been struggling.”

“I told her to sleep.” Zoe’s voice is quiet. “She’d done more than enough.”

I look at Zoe, who hasn’t moved from Chris’s side. She’s still tightly gripping one of his hands, and the bandage she has around her head is clean. No more blood soaks through it the way it had last night.

“How’s your head?”

“What head?” her voice is dry, the faintest bit of humor in it. But she sounds exhausted.

I offer her a faint smile. “You should get some sleep.”

“I will when Chris wakes up,” she says firmly.

I nod, not pushing her.

If that was Aerin on the bed with her throat ripped open the way Chris’s had been, I’d not sleep either. “Okay.” I refocus on an equally exhausted looking Adela.

She shakes her head. “I’m fine. Gregory and Jude are sleeping. So are Penny and Colton. When they get up, I’ll rest for a bit.”

There’s no arguing with Adela when her mind is made up, so I don’t even try. “How’d you stop the bleeding?”

“We had to sew it,” Adela says. “He would have bled out otherwise.”

They must have done it soon after I’d left because if I’d known just how bad the wound was, I’m not sure I would have left.

Chris had claw marks lacerating his chest. When I pull the sheets down, there are scabbed over and healing scars, a sign they are well on their way to healing, but it’s clear what had caused those scars.

A wolf.

Human skin does not stand a chance against wolf claws.

“He shoved me out of the way.” Zoe’s voice is still quiet and her fingers spasm around Chris’s slack hand. “I don’t know how he heard them before me, but he was so focused on protecting me, he didn’t protect himself.”

My eyes return to Chris’s chest.

For a shifter to bleed out from a wound is rare. If Helena and Adela hadn’t thought to sew his throat wound closed to give his natural shifter healing ability time to work, he would have died.

“Why do this?” Clary’s voice comes from behind me.

I don’t turn to him as I speak. “Set enough small fires and they form a big enough distraction that you can grab the thing you came here to grab. They came here for Aerin, but Aerin was never alone, so they had to remove as many obstacles blocking them from her as possible.”

Half the pack was dealing with the wolf at the hotel. I don’t believe the scratches we’d found there were a wolf trying to claim my territory the way I’d thought before. The scratches were an attempt to throw us off the scent.

When we were at the hotel, they attacked Zoe and Chris, which they knew would mean more of the pack would need to get to them. And the fire in the den. Another distraction so Shane could get Aerin away with less chance of being immediately followed.

“When are you going after her?” Adela asks quietly.

“As soon as I know where to look.”

“Good.” Adela nods. “And Mack?”

“Yes?”

Her gaze sharpens. “Try not to leave too many alive, hmm?”

It’s easy to forget sometimes that Adela is a shifter. She was a nurse. She’s maternal, a carer and a protector. But someone just attacked and nearly killed Chris. She has as much of a predator in her as the rest of us do.

“I won’t.”