Second Chance for the Barren Luna (Talia and Jason) novel Chapter 320

Nolan’s POV

Talia had been missing for three days now.

I had barely slept since Talia disappeared. Four hours in my desk chair was all I had managed. The mate bond was intact. She was there, unreachable but alive. Each hour without her drained me. It felt worse than the last time she disappeared because I had gone against my instincts. Something had felt wrong about that night, and I should have gone with her.

‘We will find her like last time, and we will make whoever took her pay with their life,’ my wolf promised, but it didn’t make me feel any better.

The morning meeting started at seven. Della came in first, her hair pulled back, the dark circles under her eyes deeper than they had been the day before. Marco entered after her. Solon sat quietly, already in his chair when I came down. Derek arrived last, clutching a map as he stepped inside.

"Any news?” I asked.

Derek was the first to respond. “Unfortunately, no, Alpha Nolan. We have nothing new to report.”

“We have searched everywhere we know to search and turned up nothing,” Della added. “It’s as if she has vanished in thin air.”

“What about you, Marco?” I asked.

"Same on my end,” Marco added. “No trail. No witnesses. Whoever took her was thorough.”

My claws dug into the wood of my desk. My patience was at its limits. How could we have no leads?

“Nolan, I don’t want to ask, but can you…” Solon started but trailed off.

“Have more faith than that, Solon,” I growled. “She is alive. I can feel her. That is the first thing I confirmed.”

“Then, why can’t you reach her?” Solon asked. His voice came out harsher than he intended. I didn’t hold it against him.

"I don’t know. My wolf has been trying since the first night. He gets nothing back. He tells me she is trapped, but he cannot tell me where,” I answered.

"Jason did this,” Della interjected. “It has to be him. The timing of the disappearance, the fact that it was Annie who led her away, it has to be Jason.”

I had also been thinking the same thing. Jason wanted to use Rudolf’s death to break us apart. When that didn’t happen, Jason switched to Plan B: just kidnap Talia.

"There is something I have not told you,” Marco stated, bringing me out of my thoughts. “I should have told you on the first morning. I thought I could fix it, but everything got out of control.”

“Say what it is, Marco,” I said.

Marco sighed, and Della rubbed his back. "After the Harvest Gathering, when Jason left Silverfang under escort, I decided to track him. I had two of my men follow him from a distance. They tracked him for two days, but lost him on the third day when they were ambushed by rogues. By the time they had cleared the rogues, they could no longer find Jason,” Marco explained. “He could have gone anywhere from where I lost him. I should have told you the day he disappeared. I am sorry, Nolan."

Anger surged in me, but then it faded to disappointment. I exhaled. I did not have the bandwidth for anger this morning.

"It is done. We work with what we have now,” I told him.

How could I even be upset with Marco? This was as much my fault as it was his.

I had let her go to the rose garden alone. I stood by the car and watched her walk down the path because she asked me to. I shouldn’t have. If I’d walked behind her, Annie couldn’t have taken her. If I’d been ten feet down the path, I could have stopped it as soon as it began.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify