It was a lot of ifs, and I hadn’t had a lot of luck lately.
God. Tessa liked to talk about her shit luck, but damn it if I needed some good luck to hit her now. To hit us.
I tried not to listen to the words as their voices grew louder. I let the chanting fade into the background while I stared up at the stars, waiting for something to change.
Suddenly everything was quiet.
They’d finished, but I didn’t feel anything. No power. No magic. Not even the faintest twinge along my bonds.
I closed my eyes, waiting, hoping, praying that something had changed.
“Do you feel anything?” Claudia’s voice had me sitting up. She stepped forward, and I knew she was worried that it hadn’t worked. Because this wasn’t the first time she’d tried a spell. This wasn’t even the first time we’d tried a spell with all eleven—twelve counting me—remaining council members.
Lucas stepped up to his mate, holding her hand. “Anything at all? Any change?”
I shook my head, and there were a few curses and grunts and then silence.
I wanted to scream with frustration, but these were my friends. They were trying the best they could to fight the magic that they had no way of fighting. “No change at all.” I forced my voice to stay steady.
“Try again. Maybe it’ll take a second for the spell to damage the magic on your bonds.” Chris stepped into the circle. “Tessa’s your True Mate. What you have can’t be broken. It’s still there. It has to be.” He was close with Tessa, and the fact that we couldn’t find her weighed on him almost as much as it did on Axel and me.
I’d been jealous of Chris and Tessa at first, but then I saw what was really between them.
They were friends. Maybe even best friends. I was sure that would piss off Meredith. She’d fight him for the title, but it was true. And I was sure that Axel would want in on that fight. He’d been her best friend—her only friend—until I bit her.
But I wasn’t alone here. It wasn’t just me feeling desperate about finding her. It was Chris. It was Axel. It was Claudia. It was all of us. Tessa changed our lives in such a massive way that none of us would stop fighting to find her.
I saw the desperation in Chris’s eyes as they went from human glass-blue to the bright electric of his wolf.
“Okay. I’ll try again.” I closed my eyes and pictured all the bonds. I found the pack. My friends. A few of my family in France. But the one shiny, glittering, glowing golden rope that tied me to my mate was gone. There was nothing there.
Nothing. There.
Just an empty void where my bond should’ve been.
I shook my head as I opened my eyes. “What do we do now?” I asked, hoping that someone would have an idea.
Everyone started looking back and forth among themselves, but no one said a word. They didn’t say a word because they didn’t need to.
We were at an end. An impasse that was thicker, higher, tougher than any of us could fight.
They needed to keep doing what the council needed to do—to fight against evil, to keep the supernaturals from war, to keep this realm safe from the demons beyond.
But I couldn’t do any of that.
Not anymore.
Not without her.
They might be giving up, but I wasn’t. I’d find another way.
I wasn’t sure where I’d go from here, but wherever I went, I’d do it alone.
Chapter Eleven
DASTIEN
One Hundred Thirty-Five Days Missing