The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate novel Chapter 377

Chapter 377: He Said I Need You To Trust Me

They cleared the fence and the forest swallowed them.

Agnes ran. Full speed.

Branches caught her dress, her hair, the skin of her arms. Andrew held on with the desperate grip of a child who had decided the angel was running and the angel’s running was his, and his arms were locked and his face was buried and his fifty pounds of starved, terrified body was the lightest and heaviest thing Agnes had ever carried.

She ran for twenty minutes. Past the outer wards. Past the patrol perimeter. Past the scent line where Viremont wolves would stop tracking because the forest beyond it belonged to neutral territory and pursuit into neutral territory required authorization that patrol captains lacked.

She stopped. Leaned against a tree. Her arms were shaking so violently the vibration was transferring into Andrew’s body. Her chest was heaving. Her wrists were screaming. Her lip was still bleeding. The cold had turned her fingers blue and her teeth were chattering.

Andrew had passed out. His body was limp against her chest, his breathing slow and steady, the breathing of a child who had exhausted every resource his small body possessed and was trusting the angel to handle the rest.

Agnes held him. She looked up at the canopy. Stars were visible through the gaps in the branches, cold and distant and indifferent to the woman standing beneath them with a stolen child and a stolen freedom and a baby she hadn’t told anyone about.

Then she heard it.

Garrett: Agnes, can you hear me?

Tears filled her eyes.

If he was mindlinking, he was close. Close enough that the distance between her and safety had just collapsed from impossible to measurable.

Her stomach dropped. Because close enough to reach her meant close enough to reach the compound, and the compound was a trap, and the trap was designed for the exact man whose voice was threading through her chest right now.

Agnes: Yes. Garrett, my father is planning to attack Darkhowler tonight if you show here. It is a trap. He wants you here so he invade Darkhowler.

Silence on the other end. One second. Two.

Garrett: Where are you? I’m coming.

He hadn’t acknowledged a single word of the intelligence. She had just handed him the complete operational blueprint for a coordinated invasion of his kingdom, the timeline, the entry point, and his response was five words, and the five words were about her, and the five words hit her matebond with a warmth so immediate and so total that her knees nearly buckled.

Tears fell.

They came fast, hot against the cold skin of her face, and the crying was silent because Andrew was asleep on her chest and the forest had ears. The tears were carrying everything she had been holding since the chair and the silver and the backhand and the five-story wall and the pillory and the boy and the whiskey room where her father had spoken Garrett’s death with the cadence of a man ordering dinner.

Garrett: Your emotions are doing laps right now. I can feel guilt, relief, guilt again, something that might be nausea, and what I think is anger at yourself. Want to pick one so I can respond appropriately, or should I just bring a blanket and cover all the bases?

A laugh broke out of her. Involuntary, wet, muffled against Andrew’s hair. The laugh was the first honest sound she had made in hours, and the matebond carried it to Garrett, and through the connection she felt his response: a single pulse of warmth that said there you are.

Agnes: Garrett, listen to me. Go home. Fortify. They are going to kill Cross first. He is the primary target because my father considers your Beta the structural spine of Darkhowler, and removing him collapses your command chain. You are second. He wants you dead because killing you kills the matebond, and killing the matebond is how he plans to bring me back under his control.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify