Page 23 of Into the Fire: After

I pulled back, looking for Taryn, to hold her close and kiss her while scolding her for leaving the cave, even if she hadn’t been alone.I’dscaredher?She’d scared the shit out ofme!

She wasn’t behind him.

“Taryn?” I called out, standing up. Maybe she was so tired she was still sleeping upstairs. That would make sense. She usually spent the days following her heat sleeping for upwards of twelve or fifteen hours a day, and that was without the life-or-death events of the last few days. I made my way toward the staircase. “Same bedroom?” I asked Brooks over my shoulder as I started to climb.

“She’s not here,” he choked out, face even more ashen as he stared at me with big scared eyes.

The world halted. It ripped open. Sharp and gory.

My hand tightened on the banister, my nails squealing across the wood. I tried to read his mind via his scent. Beta scents were naturally calmer, less distinct, but his was as bold and frenetic as it had been at the cave. There, it had been overly rich like body lotion.

Relief.

Now, it was like smoke stinging my eyes, billowing with nowhere to vent.

Fear.

Maybe he’d arrived after she’d left the cave. I didn’t doubt she would’ve come looking for me, as long as I’d been gone. Or maybe he’d found her and tried to convince her to leave, as I had, and she wouldn’t have it. I almost chuckled imagining her sneaking out of the cave, Brooks snoring obliviously inside. It was certainly in character of her.

That was okay. She couldn’t have gotten far. And the goons were gone, and we could use the car, honk the horn and call out for her. We’d find her.

I nodded, retreading my steps down the stairs. “Okay,” I said as the plan formed in my head. “Okay. We’ll split up. Between the two of us, we can find her.”

“Brea—”

“I amnot leavingwithou—”

“She’s already gone.”

My heart stopped beating in my chest. I swore it did. Something like hot concrete poured through my veins, holding my limbs painfully in place.

Made sense.

The world had stopped.

My heart had stopped.

So my body followed suit. Stopped. Paralyzed.

My mind, though, sprinted. Nova’s words taking on a villainous edge, a searing taunt.

The ones who die, they’re lucky. But the others… offloaded to the underground omega trades. Used up.

“No.” A croaked plea on the only air left in my lungs.

Not my Taryn. Please, god, anything you want take from me. Just not her.

Brooks grasped my face in two hands. “But we have a plan, and we’re gonna get her back. Get them all back.”

A plan? How could he have a plan? All our plans had ended before this moment—Taryn captured. My mind spun around the idea, unable to get a firm grasp of it.

My Taryn. My light. Behind enemy lines. My omega, in the hands of sadists who’d force her through excruciating torture for their own profit.

But Brooks had a plan. Good. We’d need a—

We.

NotI have a plan.He’d saidwe. We have a plan.