Page 17

SEVENTEEN

SOL

S ol sat naked on the bed, staring blankly at the door Helena had just walked out of. The sheets underneath him still held her scent—cinnamon and vanilla. His chest felt hollow like someone had carved out everything inside him with a dull knife.

Centuries of living, and nothing had prepared him for this particular pain.

“Fuck this,” he growled, surging to his feet. His wolf scratched at his insides, raging at the abandonment. He snatched his pants from the floor and yanked them on, followed by his shirt, which he buttoned with shaky fingers.

She’d taken him to heights he’d never known existed, then walked away like he meant nothing to her. He shrugged on his suit jacket, his hurt crystallizing into something harder, something that burned through his veins like liquid fire.

“She really just walked out,” he muttered, straightening his cuffs with unnecessary force. “On me. Her mate. Her fucking alpha.”

He slammed his fist into the wall, leaving a spiderweb of cracks in the plaster. The pain barely registered.

Yet even through his rage, understanding flickered in his mind. Helena had built a life before him—a career she’d worked hard for, people who depended on her. As alpha, hadn’t he made countless sacrifices for his pack? Hadn’t he put duty above personal desires for centuries?

“Damn stubborn woman,” he growled, a reluctant smile tugging at his lips despite everything. Her strong will was part of what drew him to her, that fire that matched his own.

She wouldn’t come back on her own. Not Helena. Too proud and too passionate—too much like him.

Sol stormed from the room, his footsteps echoing down the stone corridor. Staff members scattered at the fury radiating from their alpha.

“Who saw her last?” he demanded of the first person he encountered.

“Deina was with her, my Prince,” a young servant replied, backing away.

Sol found Deina in the kitchen, supervising dinner preparations. She looked up as he entered, her eyes widening at his expression.

“My Prince?—“

“Who took her?” The words came out as a growl.

Deina wrung her hands. “A woman I’d never seen before. Tall, blonde. Human, I believe. She arrived in a black sedan.”

“Must be the friend from the restaurant. Tyanna.” Sol paced, his mind racing. “Did Helena say anything before she left?”

“Only that she needed to return to her old life.” Deina hesitated. “She seemed... conflicted.”

Sol stopped pacing. Something tugged at his awareness—a faint pulse of emotion that wasn’t his own. Fear. Uncertainty. Their mate bond, newly formed but growing stronger by the day, stretched between them like an invisible thread.

“Something’s wrong.” His wolf surged forward, senses sharpening. “She’s afraid.”

The realization hit him hard. He’d let her walk out and straight into danger, too wrapped up in his own wounded pride.

“Ready my car,” he barked, already moving toward the door. “And call Joshua. Tell him I’m heading into the city.”

As he stalked through the castle halls, Sol’s muscles tightened. Helena might have walked away from him, but he would never abandon her. Whether she accepted it yet or not, she was his Luna, his mate, his everything.

And alphas protected what was theirs.

Sol slammed the castle’s massive front doors behind him, his entire body vibrating with tension. His fire-red convertible sports car purred at the bottom of the stone steps, the engine running and ready for him. Normally the sight of his prized possession brought him a flicker of pleasure, but tonight all he felt was dread.

“Out of my way,” he growled at the servant who’d brought the car around, shoving a hand through his dark hair as the young wolf scrambled aside.

Sol slid into the leather driver’s seat, the rich smell doing nothing to calm him. Helena’s fear echoed inside him like a distant cry for help, the mate bond pulsing with an intensity that startled even him.

“Hang on, Luna,” he muttered, pressing the accelerator to the floor. The car shot forward, tires spitting gravel.

The road stretched before him, winding down from the castle grounds toward the distant city. Even at night, the route was familiar enough that his mind could focus on Helena. Each mile increased his certainty that something was wrong.

“This is what you get for letting her walk,” he berated himself, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. “Two hundred years of waiting for your Luna, and you let her just leave.”

His wolf was desperate to break out and track her by scent. But transforming would waste precious time.

The lights of the city bloomed ahead, the urban sprawl a stark contrast to his ancestral lands. Sol wove through traffic with dangerous precision, ignoring honking horns and shouted curses.

He screeched to a halt outside Helena’s restaurant, parking across two spaces without a second thought. The place stood dark and empty, the windows reflecting only the streetlamps outside. The “CLOSED” sign hung limply on the door.

“Dammit.” He slammed his palm against the steering wheel.

He pulled out his phone and dialed Joshua. His beta answered on the first ring.

“Any sign of her?” Joshua asked without preamble.

“Restaurant’s closed. Everyone’s gone.” Sol jumped out of the car, prowling the perimeter of the building. “I need her address. Now.”

“Working on it.” Joshua’s voice was steady, the perfect counterbalance to Sol’s rage. “My contact at city records owes me a favor.”

Sol paced outside the restaurant, breathing deeply to catch any hint of Helena’s scent on the evening breeze. Nothing.

“Got it,” Joshua said finally, reciting an address across town.

Sol hung up without another word, leaping back into his car. He drove like a man possessed, cutting through side streets and running yellow lights.

The modest two-story house at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac looked as unremarkable as possible. No lights shone from within. Sol parked haphazardly and approached the door, every sense heightened.

He knocked hard enough to rattle the hinges. “Helena!”

Silence answered him.

He pressed his nose to the doorframe, inhaling deeply. Her scent lingered faintly but stale. Days old.

“Fuck.” His patience snapped like a dry twig.

One powerful kick splintered the door near the lock. It swung open with a protesting creak. Sol strode inside, switching on lights as he went.

The house was neat and modest, everything in its place. The kitchen gleamed with professional-grade equipment—clearly Helena’s domain. A small dining table stood by a window, a single chair tucked neatly underneath. The sight squeezed something in Sol’s chest.

“How long have you been eating alone?” he murmured, trailing fingers over the back of the chair.

Upstairs, her bedroom smelled most strongly of her. Sol stood in the doorway, momentarily overwhelmed by the concentrated scent. Her bed was made with military precision, a soft blue comforter pulled tight. Botanical prints hung on pale walls. On the nightstand, a small potted herb—basil, he thought—reached toward the window.

Everything spoke of order and calm, so unlike the chaos he’d brought into her life. Yet through their bond, he felt only escalating fear. No feeling of homecoming. No relief at returning to this ordered life.

Sol moved methodically through each room, breathing deeply, searching for clues. His wolf prowled beneath his skin, agitated and ready to hunt.

That’s when he caught it—the faintest whiff of something familiar and unwelcome. Sol froze, and his nostrils flared as he recognized the scent. Victor. The bastard’s cologne hung in the air like a toxic cloud—expensive, pretentious, with undertones of wolf that no human would detect.

“Son of a bitch,” Sol snarled, his fist connecting with the nearby wall. The pain didn’t register through the fury boiling his blood.

“I told you,” he growled as if Helena could hear him. “I told you he’d come for you.”

Sol pulled his phone out of his pocket and punched in Joshua’s number, his breathing ragged.

“He’s got her,” Sol barked the moment Joshua answered. “Victor has Helena.”

“You’re certain?” Joshua’s voice was calm but tense.

“His stench is all over her house. Recent. Strong.” Sol saw a framed photo of Helena—she was laughing in a kitchen, flour dusting her cheek, that radiant red hair pulled back. His chest constricted. “We need to find them. Now.”

“Sol, listen to me. Come back to the castle first. We need a plan.”

“Plan?” Sol spat the word like poison. “My plan is to rip out Victor’s throat and bring my Luna home.”

“And that’s exactly why you need to come back first,” Joshua countered. “Victor’s not stupid. He’s planned this. If you rush in alone?—“

“He has my Luna!” Sol roared.

“Exactly.” Joshua’s voice hardened with authority, the voice of a beta who knew when to stand firm. “And rushing in blind is the fastest way to get her killed. Victor knows you. He’s counting on you to be impulsive.”

Sol’s jaw clenched so hard his teeth ached. The rational part of him—the part that had led the Sunflare pack for centuries—knew Joshua was right. Victor was dangerous precisely because he was calculating. He’d been exiled for attempted coups. If Victor had Helena, it wasn’t a simple kidnapping—it was a trap for him.

And if Sol triggered that trap... He couldn’t bear to imagine Helena being caught in the crossfire.

“I can have our pack searching every property Victor owns while you’re driving back,” Joshua continued. “We’ll be ready to move the moment you arrive.”

Sol shut his eyes tightly, his wolf howling in protest at moving away from the scent trail. But beneath his fury, the unfamiliar feeling of fear gnawed at him—fear for Helena. Her terror still pulsed through their mate bond, faint but unmistakable.

“She’s afraid about something,” he said, his voice dropping to a dangerous growl. “I can feel it.”

“She’s strong and smart,” Joshua reminded him. “She survived twenty-nine years without knowing her powers. And now that she does, she’s powerful.”

Sol remembered the fire in her eyes when she’d thrown her fire at him in a fitful rage, and the determination in her shoulders when she’d insisted on leaving him. She was powerful, indeed. His wildfire—His Luna.

“I’m on my way,” Sol finally conceded, every instinct screaming against it. “Have everything ready.”

He hung up and took one last look around Helena’s home, committing her scent to memory, stoking the fire of his rage. The mate bond tugged at his chest, pointing like a compass toward his Luna.

“I’m coming for you,” he promised the empty room. “And when I find you, I’ll never let you out of my sight again.”

Sol stormed out to his convertible, gunning the engine so hard the tires screamed against the pavement. The wind whipped through his hair as he accelerated well beyond the speed limit, his fingers tight on the wheel.

The highway back to the castle stretched before him, each mile away from Helena’s and Victor’s scent trail torture for his wolf. But Sol forced himself to focus on the strategy, and on what they’d need to find her.

“Hold on, my Luna,” he murmured as the castle finally appeared on the horizon, its stone towers looming against the night sky. “Your alpha is coming.”