There wasn’t a dish in my house that hadn’t been smashed in the time since Kallie left. I could’ve easily blamed it on the Mate Craze, which felt like an infection, that while hovering in Kallie’s presence had now settled into my bone marrow for the long haul.

It didn’t matter. None of it fucking mattered without her in my life. This house would rot beneath my feet. Earth would keep turning along with my mind turning to ash and beast. Her life would go on, and one day she wouldn’t think of me anymore, maybe when Rhi reminded her of that spring break where she visited that small town.

I pushed the refrigerator over just to prove my point, watching the contents spill out, like my sanity would spill out sooner than later.

One day I would simply turn into my dragon and never turn back.

He would rather I found Kallie.

My dragon was clawing me open from the inside, begging me to get free, begging me to bring her back. He could do what he wanted—chew on my bones, gnaw at my organs—he wasn’t getting his way this time, and the beast would just have to deal with it. His vision and words to me were clouded by his rage and his undying mourning for the mate that could’ve completed our existence.

Exhausted from the mental anguish and needing anything to help, I laid on the floor, cool and inviting, to clear my head. There, I could close my eyes against the pressing pain between my temples and the wringing inside of my chest.

A vision of Kallie came to my mind. The tears rivering down her face. The impact of my words grasping her consciousness. The betrayal was written in her stare and in the cries from her throat.

If I didn’t know better, I would’ve thought the female really did love me and wanted to be my mate, not to save me, but because she wanted a life with me.

What else was I supposed to do? I wasn’t going to do that to her. I loved her. When you love someone, you do what’s best for them, despite yourself.

One day she would’ve hated me.

Whether it came with old age or tired bones, she would look at me one day, and maybe not out loud, but she would say to herself that she should’ve run while she could. She should’ve never come to this town. She should’ve never gotten in my truck or sat at the table with me that night at the diner.

When she looked at her mate, the only thing she would be able to see and feel would be regret. It would eat her alive.

I would look in her eyes and see the pain. She would stop looking at me the way she used to, or avoid eye contact altogether.

There would be a space between us in the bed.

Everything would change. And after everything she gave, I would’ve lost her to regret anyway.

I couldn’t allow it. I wouldn’t allow it.

With my eyes still closed, I felt the jolt of sadness sink down further, the sensation crept to my chest, to my neck and made my visible scales burn like I had dipped them into hellfire. In the reflection of my glass door, I saw the scales glowing, shimmering from teal to red, the colors that signified my rank as Alpha to this clan. Without a mate, that would be over, too. Samson would take over even though my father thought he was incapable of putting the clan before himself.

“What the hell?” I yelled out to nothing but the walls of my home.

For a few minutes I lay there, flopping on the cedar planks like a dying fish. I reached inside myself to connect with my dragon within, who was in just as great of pain, if not more.

What is it?

Pain.

Pain from where? What is happening to us?

Somehow, I wrestled myself onto my hands and knees and tried to fight the pain. I needed to shift, maybe this was the Mate Craze taking its full effect, the madness seeping into my marrow. Already, she was probably getting further and further away from me and this was my punishment finally fulfilling its vow.

The raw undertaking took hours until my dragon pulled me out with three words.

Not us, her.

There was no translation required. I didn’t need to verify what he was saying or why. It simply clicked.

My mate was hurting. My writhing was hers. My pain was hers. My sinking into the blackness of unknowing belonged to her heart.

No matter what happened earlier in the day, there was no way I would stand for her hurting.

I wretched myself off the ground, found my phone, and called Derrick, one of the hidden guards at the entrance to the town.

“Yes, Alpha.”

“Did Kallie leave this town?”

“Yes, Sir. She left about an hour or so ago.”

“Headed which direction?”

“West, Sir.”

“She’s in trouble. Leave your post, follow the direction she took and find her. I don’t care how long it takes. Go!”

Derrick would be able to get to her way faster than me. I had to pull myself together. My mate needed me now.

I pulled on a shirt, only to cover my scales, and got onto my bike, zig-zagging through the town with enough speed to warrant Samson dropping his food at the diner to see what I was doing.

But, I wasn’t stopping for anyone.

After getting out of the town, I went the way Derrick said she’d gone. The treads of my truck tires, her truck tires, could be seen in the dirt. I could smell the light scent of her on the wind. Not enough to give me a good enough indication of what was happening to her, but enough to know that I was at least on the right track.

It was when I went through a crossroads and didn’t smell her anymore that I knew something had gone wrong right at that spot.

Except now, her scent was mixed with blood and something else I couldn’t put my finger on.

“Sir, something happened here,” Derrick said, when I got off my bike. He was already there, but with my tunnel vision, I hadn’t seen him.

“Search this area. There has to be some clue.”

We looked from the road to the trees. The swerve of tires was apparent, but other than that, the remains of the incident were gone.

“Here, Alpha. This looks like paint from your truck.”

When I turned to see what he was talking about, I expected a piece of metal or something else from my truck. But instead, what I saw caused all the blood to rush from my face and my dragon to tense in anger and hurt.

The paint Derrick spoke of was rubbed on the side of a pine tree, about four or five feet up the trunk.

I hoped to the Creator that Kallie wasn’t still in the truck when it hit that tree so high up.

I’d kill whoever did this to her.

My phone buzzed in my back pocket and I picked it up, thinking Samson or someone else had gotten word of the situation and found her.

Please let someone have found her and this was all a mistake.

“What?” I barked into the phone.

“Oh? Not so sweet now, huh Alpha?” In my blind rage I didn’t recognize the voice.

“Who is this?”

A cackle, along with some background noises filtered through the phone. “Come on, lover boy. I know you know your mate’s best friend’s voice. Don’t give me that shit.”

Rhi? What in the world was she talking about?

“Rhi? Where’s Kallie? What is going on?”

“Give me a break. Do me a favor. Ditch the little security boy and come to the place where your grandfather’s ashes were scattered. I know you know where that place is. Oh, and while we’re at it, don’t bring anyone else. If you do, your little mate will die knowing that you rejected her, didn’t want her in your life.”

“Don’t you fucking touch her!” I roared into the phone.

“I don’t really have to. It looks like she’s dying right here before my eyes. All that blood. You’d better hurry.”

There was no time to waste. I could feel Kallie’s energy fading while I talked to her best friend, or who she thought was her best friend. I tucked my phone into my pocket and jumped back on the Ducate, telling Derrick, mentally, to go home and not to tell anyone what he’d seen.

My knees treaded against the rocks and dirt roads as I took the turns at more than a hundred miles an hour. The place she spoke of, the place that my grandfather’s ashes were scattered, was at the very top of the mountain. It was a sacred place to our elders and to our clan. Every wedding, funeral, and anything else important took place there.

How dare she use it for such betrayal.

I nearly killed myself several times getting to that place, but by the time I did, best friend or not, if Rhi was responsible for Kallie being hurt, I would unleash my dragon and rip her head off myself.

“Come on, Kallie. Hang in there. Don’t you give up on me, darlin.”

Even though we hadn’t been properly mated, I prayed that maybe my words would get through and she would hang on. We had clan healers who could do double what traditional doctors could in half the time.

I could get there in time.

I had to get there in time.

I hadn’t even gotten off the bike fully before I began calling her name.

“Over here, Knox. We’re just getting started.” The voice belonged to Rhi, but the only thing I could see was Kallie, strapped to a pole, standing up with logs and rocks encircling her. Her mouth was gagged with a piece of cloth and her hands were bound with rope. There was something poured over her head. When I realized what my knees gave a little.

It was gasoline.

Like Rhi intended to burn my mate at the stake like some antiquated Salem ritual.

Now I was really going to kill her.

I approached Kallie, not caring where Rhi was, but when I did, I was stopped, as though there was a transparent wall between me and my mate. I tried again, over and over in vain, determined to release her, though it shocked me every time I tried.

“Can you please stop? You’re embarrassing yourself. Damn, I mean, you’re kind of embarrassing me. You can get her down. We can be done with all of this really quickly. Wanna know how?”