Housebound with the Blackridge Heirs novel Chapter 126

Chapter 126

Caden

We were at the southern edge of the First Packland, a strip of neutral territory where the trees grew too thick and the shadows stayed too long. I was pacing-no, I was stalking-the perimeter of a clearing, my claws sliding out and clicking against my palms.

“He’s playing us,” I snarled.

I turned to look at Tylon, who was standing by the SUV, his face a mask of such frigid calm. “We’ve been out here for hours, Tylon. We’re following ghosts while he’s doing god-knows-what to her.”

“We follow the trail, Caden,” Tylon said, his voice flat. He didn’t look at me. He was staring at a map on the hood. “Blind rage gets us nowhere.”

“Blind rage is the only thing keeping me from burning this whole forest down!” I roared, stepping toward him. I felt my wolf, snapping at the bars of my self-control. “You and your ‘planning. You and your ‘protocols. While you’re calculating, Maya is alone. She’s terrified. And you’re just standing there like a fucking statue. What makes it worse is we can’t even feel her”

Leo stood a few feet away, leaning against a tree. He looked hollow. His silence was even worse than Tylon’s coldness. He had been staring at the ground for twenty minutes, his hands shoved into his pockets.

“Say something, Leo!” I snapped, pivoting toward him. “Tell him he’s wrong. Tell him we need to go to the Blackridge border and start tearing throats until someone talks.”

Leo looked up, his eyes weary. “And then what, Caden? If we start a war, Rohan might kill her. If the Council sees us losing it, they kill her. Tylon is right. We have to be smart.”

“Smart?” I laughed, a jagged, ugly sound. “She’s our mate. We shared a heat with her, we bonded with her, and now there’s a hole in my chest where her heartbeat used to be. I don’t want to be smart. I want to kill the man who took her.”

I was about to lunge at the SUV, to smash the windows or the map or Tylon’s head, when the wind shifted.

It was faint at first-a sharp, metallic tang that cut through the scent of the forest like a knife. It was ozone and arrogance. It was the scent of the man who had haunted my nightmares since the day Maya arrived at the university.

Rohan.

“He’s here,” I whispered, my voice dropping into a guttural growl.

Tylon’s head snapped up. Leo straightened, his body tensing into a defensive crouch. We all felt it. The air in the clearing turned heavy, the temperature dropping as if the sun had suddenly burnt out.

Rohan stepped out from behind a massive, ancient oak tree at the far end of the clearing. He wasn’t hiding. He wasn’t armed.

He stood there with his hands raised, his dark hair messy and his clothes stained with what smelled like old oils. But it was the expression on his face that broke the last thread of my restraint-a faint, knowing smirk, as if he was the one holding all the cards.

I didn’t think. I didn’t wait for Tylon’s command.

I shifted halfway, my bones cracking and reforming in a split second of agony and ecstasy, and I launched myself across the clearing. I was a blur of fur and muscle.

I hit him like a train.

Rohan didn’t even try to dodge. He went down hard, the back of his head bouncing off a rock with a sickening thud. I was on top of him in an instant, my knees pinning his shoulders, my claws sinking into the meat of his chest.

I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t want a ransom demand. I wanted to feel his pulse stop beneath my fingers.

“Where is she?” I roared, my face inches from his. My fangs were fully extended, dripping with the saliva of a predator about

to feast. “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t rip your tongue out of your head right now.”

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