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CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

logan

H oly fuck!

“Emma! Where are you?” I bellowed.

I searched the faces around me for Emma, seeking her but not finding her, searching for her, needing her more than anything else in my life.

She wasn’t where she should have been, down near the enchanted magnolia, and my blood ran icy cold through my veins, dragging the pain of loss with it. A black cloud lingered where she’d been a moment before, unmoved by the burst of shifter magic through the Conclave.

Fuck Acheron and his dark minions. I’d tear him limb from limb and send him to hell.

“Out of my way!” I bellowed, hurrying toward the enchanted tree as I pushed through the crush of alarmed shifters.

Maybe I should care more: tell them what to do, direct them, help them. Yet none of them mattered to me as long as I didn’t know where Emma was so long as she wasn’t in view.

Some of them seemed panicked, but most of them hunted through the amphitheater. The magnolia burned, surrounded by shifters who stared on in horrified silence.

A thousand bodies surged throughout the space, but only about a hundred moved toward the rear of the gathering place, jostling and bumping into one another.

Again, I spun toward the place where Emma had been the last time I’d glimpsed her.

Only a wafting cloud of dark smoke remained.

She was no longer seated in the corner of my mind, and my heart squeezed in a vice made by a panic so large it made my arms ache, turning them weaker than they were and making my legs threaten to buckle.

Emma was gone. Our multimorph, the savior of the shifters, had vanished. She had completely disappeared in a puff of smoke.

I sprinted to the vacated space and nearly wretched on the stench of Acheron’s magic. What a disgusting death mage. Magic could be beautiful, wonderful, incredible, but he used it to ruin and consume, perverting what it might have been.

“Where is she?” I roared, spinning in place, searching for her rainbow hair and flashing eyes.

Yet my mate was nowhere in the protected gathering place. I’d blinked, and she’d disappeared.

How had we missed the layout of the trees ?

Hundreds of shifters changed into their animal forms throughout the gathering place, and the wind whipped around us.

Ravens flew overhead, bears roared, and big cats darted in all directions.

Torbin and Marcus moved through the large space while the magical magnolia tree blazed.

Several shifters tried to use available liquid to put it out, but the flames didn’t diminish.

“The trees took her,” Olivia gasped, holding her hands up and studying her bubbling skin. “How did the trees take her? What the hell did he do?”

“Aye, it was the trees,” Jasper panted, “and she had a spell cloaking her, burning through her. We couldn’t help her, couldn’t save her.”

Olivia shoved her burned hands into the ice chest, still filled with ice left over after serving drinks. Jasper crouched down beside her, his face twisted in pain. The ice clattered in the cooler as his hands joined hers.

“Jasper, what happened to her?” Olivia whimpered. “Where did she go?”

The fox shifter stared through me. “I don’t know.”

Olivia groaned. “She’s a healer, not a destroyer, so none of that was something she did without knowing. That couldn’t possibly be her magic.”

“You two shift and get healed up. We have to find her,” I ordered.

“What’s he doing with her?” Olivia rasped.

I had no answer, but a shiver ran through me. Conjecture didn’t help. On my watch, we lost our magical tree… and our magical Emma. However long it took, I’d find her.

I lapped the large amphitheater, sniffing the air and consulting with my wolf. A hint of her caught my nose, but her scent had been wrapped in the stench of Acheron. Without the bond between us, I probably wouldn’t have been able to sense it at all, and I lingered in the place she had been.

Olivia and Jasper summoned their animal selves, sending a gust of wind over my skin and a surge of responding magic through me.

The red fox and the blond wolf stood close together, their eyes radiating sorrow at me…

as though their pity helped anything at all.

Then they disappeared into the crush of the crowd of shifters.

My mouth twisted into a grimace. I bit back a furious yell as I waited for Torbin and Marcus to report.

In all of our secret work to locate the traitors, not once had I considered the gathering place to be a threat, but of course, it was the only place Acheron knew Emma must appear, in accordance with our histories and our customs. The annual Hunter’s Moon Conclave had been a logical assumption.

The spell must have been fashioned to attack only the multimorph, and the tree had gotten caught in the crossfire, collateral damage in an attack meant only for the special magic from a special shifter.

It gave proof to the legend of the tree’s roots having soaked up the blood and the residual power of the last multimorph.

Had those trees been arranged like that forever or had Acheron worked his magic to trim the forest and wrap the existing trunks with spells meant to spirit Emma away to another place for him to work his black magic on her ?

Torbin lumbered to a halt in front of me, amidst the tinkling of little bells in his fur.

He jumped off of his front paws to stand while he shifted back into his human self as Marcus joined us.

A moment later, Jasper and Olivia had returned to their human forms, and they all collected in a semicircle around me.

“What are we going to do?” she asked.

“First things first,” I said. “Let’s evacuate these shifters. They’re in the way.”

With so many bodies, we couldn’t effectively hunt for Emma. Too many smells, too many shifter scents muddled the air, making it nearly impossible to trace Emma’s scent.

Torbin, Marcus, Olivia, and Jasper all worked together to remove everyone from the Conclave.

With their arms outstretched, they started directing traffic out of the invisible building, and a surge of several hundred marched up the aisles of the seating areas as Torbin and Marcus boomed instructions behind them.

When she spoke to worried members of the clans, Olivia’s face softened, and Jasper shook the hands and squeezed shoulders of others.

Shit.

My compassion had drained from me when Emma had gone.

At least Olivia and Jasper were keeping their heads on straight, and I hoped they were giving helpful advice to every shifter as they left.

I hadn’t once considered how frightening the burning magnolia tree or the disappearing multimorph might have been for them.

Emma twisted up my insides in ways I still couldn’t fully comprehend.

Within twenty minutes, all the other shifters had gone and only the alphas remained, and I stood in the spot Emma had been spirited through, ready to give chase.

But someone was still the traitor…

Maybe someone still here.

Acheron wouldn’t have been able to slip past the warding on this amphitheater. Someone had helped orchestrate the kidnapping.

Flynn stopped beside me. “What are we going to do?”

“Torture a traitor,” I growled.

Marcus grinned. “About time we do this the right way.”

The dozen remaining alphas froze where they stood.

“Beg pardon?” Torbin rumbled. “I’m not sure I’m prepared to?—”

I held up my hands. “I don’t give a fuck what you want, Torbin. Acheron has our multimorph.”

“Still, that’s no reason to?—”

“I don’t give two shits anymore. If we do what we’ve always done, we’ll get what we’ve always gotten, and I’ll do whatever I must.”

For Emma.

“Hear, hear,” Marcus hurrahed.

Olivia’s eyes widened. “Logan…”

Jasper said nothing, and I couldn’t tell if he was for or against. He could go fuck himself either way .

“What else would you have us do?” I demanded.

“Someone told Acheron about our previous meeting, and someone helped him set up the magical trap inside this warded space. Acheron never could have gotten inside, not with the magnolia down there. That’s what the last multimorph gifted to us with her dying breath. ”

Every eye turned toward the tree as a branch broke off the main trunk and fell to the grassy stage beneath it.

“The end of an era,” Torbin sighed.

“And it’s time we built a new one,” Marcus said. “We have a multimorph to rescue.”

“I’m not sure she’s the prophecy,” the raven alpha cawed, interrupting what I intended to do.

Three large steps put me directly in front of her. “Get out.”

Her mouth fell open in silent shock, and her beady gaze took me in.

“Get out,” I repeated, “or die.”

She flapped her arms as though she didn’t believe a word I said. “You cannot?—”

“If you’re not for us, you’re against us, and until we can sort it out, you’re not welcome here. If you won’t go, I’ll end your life and spit on your grave.” I would give up everything to save Emma, even my future with her.

Jasper marched to her side, hooked his arm in hers and started dragging her toward the exit. “Ye heard him.”

I had to be certain they intended to help us save Emma. I didn’t have time to delve them all, and I couldn’t spare Torbin for a moment longer than it took to start out after the scent trail that was already disappearing.

I turned to the others and pointed to the exit. “If you don’t understand why I have to draw the fucking line, then you don’t get to fucking be here.”

One by one, they filed out until only Marcus, Torbin, Jasper, Olivia, and Flynn remained.

I gestured to Flynn. “Delve him, Torbin. Your call.”

Flynn’s bushy eyebrows hit his hairline, but he didn’t shy away when Torbin put his hands on his shoulders.

Finally, Torbin said, “He’s as true as his brother.”

I nodded once. Whether I liked the fox brothers or not, I couldn’t save Emma alone, and Jasper had been loyal to Emma. He didn’t have to be loyal to me to be useful.

“What’s the plan?” Olivia asked, her gaze darting toward the exit.

“Find Emma,” I said, shoving a sudden rush of emotion aside. There would be time enough for all the feelings when she was back in my arms. Until then… “Her scent leads out the side of the warding. We’ll follow it.”

“How does it lead away?” Marcus asked. “She was magicked away.”

“The spell must have scooped her up and carried her away,” I said. “Shadow beings or…” I shoved my hand through my hair. “I don’t know what, but it’s what we have, so it’s what we’ll follow. If that doesn’t work, we’ll follow Acheron’s stench.”

They all nodded .

We stepped easily through the side of the failing warding as a gust of wind whirled around us, carrying all the colors of Emma’s hair.

I shifted to my wolf and the others followed—two red foxes, one bright red and one a slightly paler shade; a polar bear; a large panther; and a pale wolf.

The sun faded over the horizon, bathing the forest in golden light, and we made quite a sight if anyone was looking.

Time to see how far her trail would take us. Failure wasn’t an option.

H ours later, the moon rose over the forest as we chased Emma’s sweet aroma and Acheron’s stench through the Louisiana countryside, crisscrossing acres and acres of land, circling towns, and avoiding humans.

Clans, boundaries, and territories didn’t matter, not with the multimorph at stake. No, not the multimorph…

Not with Emma at stake. Over hills, through marshes, between trees, and on we ran, until Torbin nudged my elbow with his muzzle.

A rest.

I dragged the shifter magic toward me, crunching and writhing mid-stride before landing as a human. “We don’t have time!”

Torbin followed suit, already grumbling. “We will take time to save time. Sometimes rest is necessary to keep moving forward.”

“No.” The whine in my voice unnerved me. How had she completed upended who I was? Everything for Emma. “No, we can’t stop.”

Olivia stopped beside us, panting. “We have no idea how far we have to go to find her.”

“It doesn’t matter. We’ll go as far as we have to.”

She laid her hand on my arm, peering into my eyes. “We will, but arriving so exhausted we can’t rescue her? Fuck that noise, Logan. We’re not risking our chance to get her based on your mate-driven insanity.”

“Fuck off.”

When I tried to yank my arm away, her grip tightened. “Don’t make me do this.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’ll end you to save her, Logan. Don’t test me.” Her upper lip curled in an almost snarl.

Human-Jasper came into view behind her, mirroring her expression. Flynn and Marcus, too, and even Torbin grumbled his agreement.

I blinked. By gods, I believed Olivia’s threat was real, and they intended to veto my drive to press on. I couldn’t rescue Emma on my own, so I couldn’t lose all of them.

“The scent will fade,” I said, weakly.

“We’re not going to lose her,” Olivia answered. “She’s got to be here.”

Emma screamed my name.

I leaped to my feet. “Did you hear that? ”

“Nothing, lad,” Jasper said, glancing to the others who shook their heads. “What’s in yer mind?”

My hands clenched at my sides, and my eyes bulged. “It’s Emma.”

She’s in pain . I caught the words before they slipped out. They didn’t need to know I could feel the pain coursing through Emma right now. They didn’t need to know flames burned my skin as it did hers. No, I just gritted my teeth.

Olivia frowned. “Emma’s in your head?”

“She’s been there since she passed out in Red Tail, and I bonded with her while she was on the table.”

Jasper let out a low whistle and shook his head. “Ye two are going to be a mess when ye actually get a good fuck in.”

True or not, his comment didn’t deserve a response, not when Emma was close enough that I could now sense where she was.

Slowly, I spun in a circle until I pointed in the direction she waited. “She’s back in my head, so I know we’re close. She nearby, and I know how we’re going to find her.”

Acheron would die tonight.