No. No. Not saying yes. “We’re leaving.” I threw the car into reverse, ignoring Claudia’s yelp as she slammed back into her seat. Lucas would keep her from flying around the car. And I couldn’t let myself think about Axel.
Tessa would hate me—hate me—for doing this. But if it was between her and Axel? I would pick her. I would pick her every fucking day.
“Stop! Stop the car!” Tessa grabbed my arm. “They’ve blocked the road.”
Merde. I didn’t spare a second to question her. I slammed my foot on the brake.
I glanced around. The woods around us were too dense to drive through. Maybe there was something—a road or a path or something that the car could fit through—on the other side of the warehouse, but from what I could see, that was a long shot at best.
Which left one option.
“Then, we fight.” I threw the car in park and undid my seat belt, but Tessa’s fingers dug into my arm harder.
I turned to her with a growl.
If she wasn’t telling me what was happening, she wasn’t going to stop me from fighting. I would protect my mate.
I would protect my mate.
“They have guns. With silver bullets. You can’t protect me from that.”
I hung my head for a second. “Tell me.”
“I can make this all go away—I can save you and my cousin and Lucas and my brother—if I go with them.”
Claudia and Lucas started arguing from the back seat, but I ignored them. I stared into her dark brown eyes and hoped that I could see something in them that would give me hope.
But all I saw in the dark depths was her terror. Her regretful sorrow. Her guilt.
No. They wanted to kidnap her. The call from Axel…was he even there? Was this all fake? “They can’t have you. I will—”
“No matter what you do, every time I saw it through, it ends with them taking me and leaving all of you filled with silver bullets. I can’t say that you died, but I don’t know that you could live through that. So, we have no other choice. I have to go to them. I have to—”
C’est des conneries! “They can’t have you.”
She gripped my face in her hands, her fingers so cold with her fear. “You’ll find me. I trust you to find me. But my brother is inside that warehouse. He’s been shot, but he’s alive. I need you to turn him. Please.”
She’d lost her mind. She wanted me to let them take her, and while they had her—doing whatever they wanted to my mate—I was going to bite her brother and hope he survived the change? I wasn’t certain about whether his curiosity would suffice as consent, either. No wolf had been stupid enough to risk tribunal twice, but I would if I bit him.
God. I couldn’t let her out of the car.
What? What was I going to do? I had to think. “Chérie! I can’t do—”
She pressed her face close to mine until all I could see were her glowing eyes. “I’m going to say this, and I want you to hear me. I’m not sorry. Not for one day with you. I know that I’m tired and exhausted, and I hear you when you think that you’ve done this to me. That you bit me and that it’s your fault that I’m tired and that we’re in an endless cycle of fights because of it. But I don’t regret it. My life is infinitely better with you.” She pressed a kiss to my lips before pulling away.
It felt like goodbye.
She was tearing my soul in two.
“I wanted a break—a vacation—but we’re not going to get one. I need you to stay strong. I need you to find me. I’m going to run to the van that’s blocking the road, and you’re going to go in there and bite my brother. You’ll stay with him to make sure he transitions. And when he’s in the clear, you’re going to find out who these people are. And when you do, you’re going to come get me.”
She opened the bond wide, and I saw. I saw what she’d seen. I saw her memories. I saw through her eyes as she watched me die. And then they dragged her away screaming. Again. And again. And again.
And then—through some trick of our bond—I lived it again from my own eyes. I felt the burn of the silver piercing my skin. I felt myself die.
And by the time I was done seeing it, she was gone. The phantom pains of injuries I’d never lived were still there, but she was gone.
Tessa was gone.