The Jilted Mate's Rise To Supreme Luna

Hillery's POV

Morning frost still clung to Zimmerman territory, and the Old Wastes Highway was the shortest line through the gray buffer zone. I should have been at the northern outpost by nightfall, dealing personally with the smuggled cargo my border patrol had seized.

But taking a shortcut never actually saves time.

The intelligence was clear enough: the eldest Bowers daughter would be bound to Deondre Langley in seven days. I hadn't planned to remember the name. Until this moment.

"Alpha. Smoke ahead." Arlin sat in the passenger seat, and the armored car was slowing on the gravel. I looked up and saw a column of black smoke cutting straight up at the end of the dead grass, like someone had scored a burn mark across the horizon.

The convoy slowed. I lowered the window and let the cold in. It carried rust, scorched rubber, and something deeper.

Blood. A lot of it. Fresh.

Then the bond moved.

That thread, the one that had always been there, the one it had taken me years to learn to ignore, jerked hard inside my chest. My wolf was awake instantly. It reached down the other end of the bond and rolled a low sound in its throat. It knew her. My fated mate.

I pressed my hand to my chest, knuckles white. The sigils under my collar burned.

"Alpha?" Arlin looked over, his face tightening in a heartbeat. He'd known me too long not to know what that expression meant on me.

"Coordinates." My voice came out rough. "Hers."

"Whose—"

"Ember Bowers."

I didn't wait for his second sentence. The door was open, my boots were in the gravel and the cracked dirt. The other end of the bond was shaking hard. Fear, sharp and cold, mixed with adrenaline. Then pain — knees, shoulder, palm burned on an iron pipe. Every place she was hurt drove into me like a needle.

She was running.

My wolf was snarling. Hunt. Go. Now.

I shut my eyes and forced it down. Something else came through the bond: her heartbeat, held very low. Not panic. Cold. The feel of fingers locked around something — metal, silver, a bloody hilt. She'd killed the first one. The recoil came back through my own hand, as if I'd held the blade myself.

When the third wolf closed in, I let the pressure out.

The Alpha command hit the waste ground through the bond and landed as precisely as a hand on a beast's scruff. It froze, whined, and ran with its tail tucked. But Ember's reaction tightened my chest. She didn't relax. Her heart went from terror to alertness, then quickly into something colder, as if someone had turned her whole body's temperature down a few degrees.

She knew someone had helped her. She didn't know who. She had no intention of finding out.

"Alpha." Arlin's voice came from behind me, pitched low. "Langley's people are here."

I turned. Blue lights flickered at the end of the highway. The Langley convoy sat on the shoulder, silver falcon emblems cold under the headlights. Deondre Langley got out, uniform knife-creased, and scanned toward the pump station.

Deondre walked right past the pipe she was hiding in. Less than ten yards. He didn't see her. Brandee followed him, her gaze crossing the broken wall of the pump station, pausing one second, sliding away. Her nose wrinkled slightly, as if she'd caught something, but the rose perfume and the scorched dirt of the wastes covered too much.

Interesting. His wife-to-be was hiding in a ruin, covered in blood, and he was standing in the sunlight with a hand over his nose, offended by the smell.

"Arlin."

"Here."

"The Rogue that got away ran east. Cut it off. Alive."

"Yes." Arlin typed the order into his tablet, and Black Guard squads swept around the flank.

Ember came out of the pump station. Brandee saw her first. That carefully arranged expression froze for half a second, then folded into concern, and she ran for her. Deondre turned, took in the ruined dress and the blood, stayed three steps back, and covered his nose.

The three of them exchanged a few words. From half a waste ground away, all I saw was Ember standing straight, Deondre's lips moving, Brandee gesturing beside him. Then Ember walked around them, toward the highway. Deondre reached for her shoulder. She spun, dagger tip at his throat. He went still. Brandee stepped back twice.

Ember put the dagger away and kept walking. Deondre stood there a few seconds, straightened his collar, and turned back toward the convoy. Brandee followed, glanced over her shoulder, then got into the car. The blue lights died. The convoy turned and headed for the estate.

Down the bond, Ember's heartbeat settled slowly. She was still walking. Not fast, but not stopping.

I watched her go. At the other end of the bond, her heartbeat knocked against the inside of my ribs, one beat at a time.

"Alpha." Arlin turned from the front seat. "The Rogue's contained, in the third squad's vehicle. What do you want done with it?"

"Bring it to the underground cells."

"Yes."

I took one last look at her back. She was moving fast across the waste ground, the blood on her knees darkening the gravel, and she didn't stop. I leaned back into my seat, palm still pressed to my chest, the heat of the sigils slowly fading.

"Back to command."