The Alpha’s Secret Obsession Now novel Chapter 33

Paul’s POV

‘Something is wrong,’ my wolf says before my eyes fully open.

I lie still in the darkness, cataloguing the information flooding through my senses.

The sheets beside me hold Sarah’s perfume—floral, cloying, wrong—but beneath that expected wrongness lives another absence.

‘Morgan’s not here,’ my wolf continues, restless. ‘Her scent has faded.’

The mountain air drifting through the cracked window carries pine and frost and the distant musk of morning dew, but not the scent that has become as constant to me as breathing.

Morgan’s presence has woven itself into the very fabric of this packhouse over months, I stopped counting, saturating hallways and common rooms and the garden paths she walks when she thinks no one is watching.

I notice it the way I notice the mountains outside my window—so constant that its disappearance registers before conscious thought can explain why.

‘She should be closer.’ My wolf paces through my consciousness with growing agitation. ‘She should be everywhere.’

I dress without haste, pulling clothes from the wardrobe with movements I keep deliberately slow.

There is a reasonable explanation for this uneasy feeling crawling beneath my skin, and I will find it without indulging the growing knot of tension coiling in my chest.

The bedroom door opens before I can reach it.

Sarah stands in the threshold wearing her silk robe, blonde hair artfully tousled around her shoulders. Concern arranges itself across her delicate features like she has practiced the expression many times before.

“I’m so relieved you’re already awake,” she says, crossing to me with quick steps that suggest urgency. “I’ve been worried about Morgan since before dawn, and I wasn’t sure whether to disturb you.”

My fingers still on my shirt buttons. “What about Morgan?”

“I went to her room earlier this morning because I thought I heard movement in the hallway.” Sarah’s hands twist together at her waist, the gesture almost convincing in its apparent distress.

“When I knocked and received no answer, I let myself in to check on her welfare.”

The pause she leaves hangs heavy with theatrical significance.

“Her room was empty, Paul. With all her belongings gone.” Sarah reaches for my arm with gentle fingers. “I’m beginning to fear she’s done something reckless.”

‘Move,’ my wolf commands, every instinct screaming that this conversation has already lasted too long.

I brush past Sarah without responding and stride down the corridor toward Morgan’s quarters.

My pace stays controlled, because reasonable explanations still exist and I refuse to accept alternatives until evidence forces my hand.

‘Faster,’ my wolf growls, but I maintain the same steady rhythm.

Morgan’s door stands closed, exactly as it should be at this hour. I turn the handle and push it open, prepared to find her sleeping or reading or doing any of the hundred ordinary things that would prove Sarah’s concerns unfounded.

The room stretches before me like a wound.

It’s too tidy. The surfaces hold no personal objects—no scattered hairpins, no books left open to mark her place, no trace of the small comfortable chaos that living creates.

The closet door hangs ajar, revealing mostly empty hangers swaying gently in some imperceptible draft.

The desk sits bare where I have seen her leave her small things, her journals, the pen she chews when she’s thinking.

My feet carry me to the window without conscious direction.

But that investigation can wait. Morgan cannot.

I leave the room without another word, brushing past Sarah’s frozen form with no acknowledgment of her presence.

The corridor stretches before me in shades of gray morning light, and my stride lengthens as I move toward the eastern staircase where my senior staff gathers for shift change.

Three figures snap to attention as I descend—Cormac, the grizzled veteran who trained me in tracking before I could properly shift; Sable, whose nose can distinguish individual footprints in a crowd of hundreds; and Wren, the youngest of my senior trackers but the fastest across difficult terrain.

Their expressions shift from casual alertness to focused intensity as they read whatever shows on my face.

“Morgan is missing.” The flat, controlled tone I use for situations too serious for volume emerges without conscious effort. “She left before dawn on foot, direction unknown. I want her location within twenty-four hours.”

Cormac exchanges a quick glance with his companions before nodding once. “Any indication of which route she might have taken, Alpha?”

“The window in her quarters showed signs of recent opening. Start there and work outward.”

My hands clench at my sides, the only visible sign of the storm building beneath my measured exterior. “Use whatever resources you require and report directly to me. This information stays contained until I say otherwise.”

Sable’s dark eyes widen slightly, but she voices no objection. The three of them disperse immediately, their training evident in the swift coordination of their movements.

I stand alone in the corridor as dawn light creeps through the eastern windows.

Twenty-four hours, I promise the hollow space where her scent should be. I will find you in twenty-four hours.

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