Chapter Ten

Kian

“I swear, if you don’t put your foot down on that pedal, I’m going to kick your ever-loving ass.”

Whit snorted, taking a turn far faster than was probably safe but not nearly fast enough for me. “Well, aren’t you a chipper son of a bitch? Why don’t you just sit there and be a passenger, yeah? I’ve got the driving covered.”

“Fuck.” I grabbed the oh-shit handle as he slid through another turn, the truck shaking its resistance. My body ached with exhaustion, but I pushed through it for this final leg. Had to. For four days, Whit, Audrey, and I had driven down through Canada and into the lower forty-eight. We’d taken shifts, refusing to stop for anything but the most vital necessities. Four straight days of driving hell-for-leather from Alaska, and we were almost there.

Whit was tackling the road known as the Dragon.

Thank fuck we’d been able to track down a shifter along the way who knew this place. He couldn’t give us directions to Nyla, but he gave us a map to the neutral territory around Deals Gap and the borders of the land belonging to the MacDonald clan. Of course, I’d still have to find my mate, admit I could shift into a polar bear without her thinking I was insane, prove my worth as a partner, and convince her to come back to Alaska with me. But that was all secondary—first, we had to survive this crazy road and get to Deals Gap. Then we could ask around for Nyla before breaking clan law and entering psy territory uninvited.

Hell, I’d shift to my bear form and find her by scent if I had to, let all those other shifters and psy see a real hunter in action.

I clenched my fist, growling, my bear ready to explode from under my skin. I was almost completely out of control, at risk of shifting at any moment. The stress of the trip and my worry for Nyla overriding everything else, making me weaker, making me susceptible to an unplanned shift. It didn’t help that I’d barely slept in four days.

The first two nights, I was too worried to sleep. I’d instead spent the time driving, focusing on the miles between Nyla and me, running on pure adrenaline. After that, I slept at odd times, staying up all night to drive with Whit since Audrey couldn’t see as well in the dark. She drove during the day, which I also stayed up for, afraid her human reflexes wouldn’t be able to handle such harsh terrain. Even when the road was flat and open, I stayed up. Watching. Impatiently waiting. Pushing her and Whit to drive faster, go farther. The lost sleep exhausted me, stressed my body, and put me massively on edge since it meant I’d lost contact with Nyla. Even when I did sleep, she didn’t come to me. I hadn’t seen or felt her for four days, but I knew something was wrong. I was just too far away to know what. Until today.

“Almost there,” Whit said as the road opened up a bit. We flew into a small town, the kind of place you missed if you happened to blink at the wrong time. There wasn’t much around—some kind of business with a ton of motorcycles outside it and a sheriff’s office about the only things notable. Well, that and a tree.

“What the hell is that?” Audrey asked as we climbed out of the truck.

I shrugged, staring at the sign above my head. “The Tree of Shame.”

The tree stood almost as a memorial, parts and pieces of what looked like busted-up motorcycles all over it. Hundreds of items hung from the branches, evidence of some kind of offering. One I had no interest in learning about.

“God, I can almost feel her.” I spun, taking in the place. A man walked out of the sheriff’s office at that moment, so I pounced.

“Excuse me, do you know a woman named Nyla? She’s about” —I held my hand up to the spot where her head had rested so many days ago— “with dark hair and light eyes.”

The man shook his head and mumbled a quiet no before speeding across the street. Running away from me.

“Kian,” Whit said, grabbing my arm. “You need to calm down. You’re scaring people.”

“I don’t give a fuck,” I growled, yanking my arm from his hold. “I can feel her—do you get that? She’s close, but I can’t pinpoint where and I can’t exactly make the shift to hunt her down.”

“Bro. Do you smell that? There are humans and other shifters here. Wolves and cats of some kind. We need to settle the fuck down. We don’t know shifter law down here.”

“I don’t care about other shifters.” I yanked on my hair, pulling hard as all the hope I’d had on the road evaporated. “She’s close, but something’s wrong. I can feel it. I need to find her. I need to find my Nyla.”

“Who are you, and what the hell do you want with Nyla?”

I spun, coming face-to-face with a light-haired man. Young but not overly so, he was probably a full foot shorter than me, but he looked fierce and ready for a fight. A man defending someone he cared about. That thought made my stomach drop as my bear growled in my head. It was a reminder that, though Nyla was my mate, I didn’t know her. Didn’t know her life. Jealousy was a bitter pill to swallow as I wondered how well this guy did.

“You know Nyla?” I asked, almost afraid to know the answer.

He nodded, waiting, giving me nothing.

I glanced at Audrey, who looked from me to him, waiting. No help.

“We, uh…we met…online—”

“Nope.” He turned as if to walk away. “You’re going to have to do better than that, stranger.”

“Please,” I said, jumping in front of him. I glanced around, making sure no one could overhear, then leaned in. Fuck, I was probably breaking some kind of clan laws by admitting what I was about to, but I had to try. She needed me. I could feel it. “She came to me in my dreams. We’ve been talking—”

He scowled and turned to leave again. “Nope.”

I panicked, not knowing what to say to convince him. Desperate and clinging to my last drop of hope, I caught Audrey’s eye again. She held up her hands, making symbols, exaggerating the motions of her hands to remind me.

“I learned to sign the alphabet for her,” I yelled to his back.

He stopped, turning to face me, his eyes wide. And I knew. He finally believed me.

“Please,” I said, not above begging at that point. “We found a way to communicate. She said I needed to hurry, and I did. I came as fast as I could without having to be stuffed into a tin can and shot through the sky. I need to find her.”

He looked me over, frowning. For what felt like hours, he stared as I held his gaze, refusing to back down, letting him know I was telling the truth.

“So you’re the one, eh?”

I nodded, my mouth too dry to speak.

“Took you long enough.”

I glanced at my brother, whose eyes had gone wide. “Uh, it was a long drive.”

“Next time, try flying.”

He turned, walking away again, leaving me behind with no more knowledge of where to find Nyla than I’d had when I arrived. My heart sank, my hope fading.

But then he stopped beside our truck.

“You coming?” he asked, looking over his shoulder. I nodded and ran to catch up, Whit and Audrey close behind me.

“It’s too far into MacDonald clan territory to walk, but I’ll get you there.” He hopped into the truck, the rest of us following. Whit pulled out of the spot and followed the man’s directions as I sat in the back seat with Audrey, my eyes glued to the road.

“You’re really late. They got her in the cave already,” he said as Whit parked the truck along some dirt road in the middle of a stand of trees.

I jumped out of the truck almost before it stopped moving, ready to find her, knowing she was close. “What cave?”

He paused, eyes wide. “She didn’t tell you?”

“We didn’t have a lot of time.”

“Hell, no wonder you thought it’d be okay to drive.” He led the way to a trail leading into the woods, his steps fast and sure. “The women of the MacDonald clan are all born with the gift of the Tallan, the ability to see through others’ eyes, hear their thoughts, and dreamwalk with them. The power to do those things is immense, and it comes on strong when the woman matures. When her mating call begins.”

He took a sharp turn onto another path almost hidden behind the trees, climbing upward through the mountain at a steep incline. “Without a strong man to balance the power within her, she’ll go insane. When a MacDonald psy starts to go insane, the Council steps in.”

“How do they step in?” Audrey asked, echoing my thoughts.

His jaw clenched tight. “They kill her.”

My bear roared, the sound too strong to hold in. The man stared at me with wide eyes as I struggled to hold my human shape. My hands squeezed into fists and my teeth lengthened, but I succeeded in blocking my bear. Though he wouldn’t be controlled for long if he thought Nyla needed him.

“They ain’t killed Nyla yet,” he said, still staring at me with trepidation. “But they locked her in the holding cave four days back. The Council met this morning, which probably means today is her day.”

“Why would they kill her?” Whit asked, helping Audrey up the path. All of us walking faster.

“To protect the secret of the clan. She’s refused to take a mate, see, and that means she’s slowly going insane from the power bleed of the Tallan. She needs a man to claim her so the two of them can balance out that power, but she’s stubborn and wants a true mate, not just someone assigned to control her. I offered for her—” he stumbled as I growled again, catching himself on a nearby tree “—I offered for her because she’s a nice girl who doesn’t deserve the fate coming her way. No one else would have taken her on because her Tallan is too weak. They see her as expendable. But she was always kind to me growing up, and I owed her momma a favor.”

“But she wouldn’t accept you,” Audrey said, glancing my way.

“Nope, and that put her in a worse spot,” Liam replied. “One of the Council members claimed her himself. He’s got enough pull to convince the others to allow the forced mating to go through, too. He’s also mean enough to kill her even if she does accept him, purely out of spite.”

“How. Much. Farther?” I bit out, the tingle of a shift teasing my spine. I would kill them all. For scaring her, for thinking they could control her, for locking her up and trying to take her away from me. I would destroy her entire clan to save her, but first, I had to get to her.

“Right over this last hill,” he said. Once we crested the top, he pointed down to a slight rise in the valley floor. “Just around that tree is the cave entrance. The Council may already be there or they may not, that I can’t tell you. There’s a guard shack not too far away as well, but you won’t have to worry about him.”

“Why not?”

He smirked. “He’s my brother. I’ll take care of letting him know he needs to go on break for a while. You three just get to the cave. Once you get past the Council, you’ll be fine. They’ve got her in a cell inside.”

“Thanks,” I growled, too far gone to care if he noticed. I moved to stride past him, but he grabbed my arm.

“You go in there, there’s no sticking around. And there’s no reasoning with the Council. They lost a MacDonald psy to a cougar shifter a while back and have been right pissed about it since. You get Nyla out of there and you run. Don’t ever let her come back.”

I nodded, understanding. This was it. I was a hundred yards from my mate, the woman who’d been haunting my dreams. And she was in danger. She needed me, and I was going to save her. Then I’d tell her everything. About me, about my life, my bear. I’d tell her and I’d ask her to come with me. To let me keep her safe. To let me make her happy. Because I would, I’d do everything in my power as her mate to make her the happiest woman in the world. I would cherish her, if only she’d let me.

Without another word, the stranger turned to leave, heading back up and over the hill the way we’d come. Whit, Audrey and I rushed down the hill, boldly walking across the open spaces, not trying to hide. We’d barely made it a quarter of the way when a feminine scream rang out through the forest, coming from the direction of the cave. My shift was immediate, my bear taking over my body in a split second and racing ahead. My mind focused on only one thing as I roared my fury.

Nyla.