Aria’s POV
The school told everything in sixty seconds flat.
A woman. Claid to be my sister. Had docuntation. Had a story. Said I’d called her and asked her to co. Called it a family ergency.
She had consent forms.
She looked enough like that nobody thought twice.
I stood at the front desk and listened to all of it and felt the ground disappear under my feet.
"We tried calling," the woman at the desk said. Her voice careful. Apologetic. Like she already knew she’d made a catastrophic mistake. "Twice. It went to voicemail both tis—"
"I know." My voice ca out wrong. Too quiet. Too controlled. "I know it did. Which direction did the car go?"
The woman blinked. "Sorry?"
"The car." I pressed my hands flat on the desk. Made myself breathe. "When she left with the girls. Which direction did the car go?"
---
I don’t know how I made it outside.
My legs were moving. That was all I knew. Moving, because stopping wasn’t an option. Stopping ant thinking. Thinking ant feeling the full weight of what was happening, and if I let myself feel that right now I would collapse right here in the school parking lot and never get up.
Lina and Lilith were in a car with Serena.
Serena, who was desperate enough for money that she’d been selling wolfsbane to an already-broken man.
Serena, who our mother had described as nearly broke. Who had nothing left, no safety net, no connections, no cash flow—now that Lucian was out of the picture.
*She’s going to sell them.*
The thought arrived fully ford, and it was so horrifying that I actually stopped walking for one second. Just one. My body refused to move.
Then I started moving again. Faster.
*Think. Think. You have to think.*
My phone was in my hand. I was dialing Kael. Training session, phone off, I knew that already, I knew, but I dialed anyway. It rang once and went to voicemail.
"Kael." My voice didn’t sound like mine. "Kael, call the second you get this. It’s—just call . Please."
I hung up. Looked at the street in front of .
Serena’s car. Cream-colored, I was pretty sure. She’d had a cream car last ti I saw her. Had the school noticed which way it went? They had. Left. Which ant she’d taken the main road.
I started walking. No plan. No destination. Just the knowledge that standing still was unacceptable.
---
The first cara I found was outside a pharmacy on the corner.
I walked in without thinking. Went straight to the counter and put my hands on the glass and looked the pharmacist directly in the eye.
"I know this sounds insane," I said. "But soone just took my daughters. I need to see your security footage from the last twenty minutes. Please."
He stared at .
"Please," I said again. My voice cracked on the word.
He looked at my face. At whatever was on it—desperation, terror, so combination of both that was probably hard to look at. Then he set down what he was doing and ca around the counter.
"Show the ti stamp you need."
---
She’d gone straight through the intersection. Hadn’t slowed down. The footage was grainy but clear enough—cream-colored car, moving fast, heading for the junction that led toward the highway.
The pharmacist was already reaching for his phone. "I’m calling the police—"
"Thank you." I was already heading for the door. "Do that. Tell them the car is heading toward the east highway. Cream sedan."
"Miss—"
"Thank you," I said again, and pushed back out into the street.
---
The highway.
She was going to the highway. Which ant she wasn’t staying in the territory. She was taking them sowhere else. Sowhere nobody would look. Sowhere she’d arranged in advance.
*She planned this.*
The thought made sick. This wasn’t impulsive. She hadn’t grabbed my daughters on a whim. She’d thought about it. She’d gotten docuntation. She’d had a story ready. She’d tid it.
She’d planned to take my children.
I was walking too fast for soone with an injured leg. I knew that. The makeshift bandage Selene had wrapped around the cut had held for most of the day, but I could feel it now—that hot, pulling ache with every step. Blood seeping. The fabric of my slacks sticking to the wound in a way that was going to be unpleasant to deal with later.
*Later. Deal with it later.*
I checked every cara I could find. Three more businesses. A bank. A traffic cara on the main road—I couldn’t access that one myself, I’d need soone with credentials, soone with connections—
My phone buzzed.
Not Kael. Damon.
I answered imdiately. "Damon—"
"Kael’s in a session," he said. No preamble. "I saw you’d tried to call him. What’s wrong?"
"Serena took the girls." The words ca out flat. "From school. She posed as a family mber, she had fake consent forms, they let her take them. She went east toward the highway. I’m trying to track the car through caras but I don’t have access to—"
"Stop walking," Damon said.
"I’m not going to stop walking—"
"Aria." His voice was firm. "Stop walking. I’m sending people right now. Tell exactly where you are."
I stopped walking.
Nad the street.
"Stay there," he said. "Five minutes."
"I don’t have five minutes, Damon, she’s been gone for—"
"You’re alone, and you’re tracking a car on foot." His voice was quiet but he wasn’t asking. "Let send people who can actually access the traffic network. Let them find the car. That’s going to happen faster than anything you can do right now."
He was right.
I hated that he was right.
"Four minutes," Damon said. "I promise."
I stood on the sidewalk and pressed my hand flat against the nearest wall. The concrete was warm from the afternoon sun. I stared at it and breathed. In. Out. In.
*They’re okay.* I needed to believe that. *Serena is reckless and desperate and broken, but she wouldn’t hurt them outright. She needs them in one piece. That’s the whole point.*
The thought was supposed to be comforting.
It wasn’t.
---
Damon’s people found cara footage that I couldn’t.
The traffic network. Three different city intersections. They mapped the car’s route in minutes—east, as I’d guessed, heading out toward the territory’s outer ring, then turning south. Not the highway. A secondary road. The kind that led to warehouses and industrial parks and buildings that nobody paid attention to.
A phone call from a blocked number. A man’s voice, calm, precise.
"Target vehicle last confird at checkpoint seven, heading south on Route Eleven. Current speed suggests arrival at the outer boundary in approximately—"
"Can you intercept?" I said. I had no idea who I was even talking to. Damon had handed off to soone, soone with access, soone clinical and efficient.
"We’re working on it."
"Those are children in that car."
"I understand." A pause. Not dismissive. Just professional. "We understand."
I hung up.
My leg was really hurting now.
I hadn’t noticed it stop being background noise and beco actual pain. But it had. At so point between the school and the pharmacy and here, the dull throb had sharpened into sothing that made grit my teeth with every step.
I was still walking.
I didn’t know where I was going anymore. The car was south. Damon’s people were handling the tracking. I should probably stay put. Wait for news. Let the people with actual resources and authority handle this.
I kept walking.
Because my daughters were in that car.
And I was their mother.
And standing still felt like giving up.
I got one foot under .
Then a pair of hands wrapped around my waist from behind.
Firm. Sure. Not rough—careful, actually, in the way of soone who’d moved fast to catch sothing they were afraid of dropping.
And then a voice.
The one voice I hadn’t been able to reach for the last hours.
"Hey." Low. Close. Right behind my ear.
I turned my head.
Kael was crouched half beside , half behind , his hands still locked around my waist, steadying my weight. He was still in training clothes—black, no jacket, his hair slightly disheveled like soone had pulled him out of a session mid-drill. Which soone had. He must have driven straight here.
His eyes weren’t on my face.
They were on my leg.
On the blood soaking through the wrappings. On the dark stain that had spread through the fabric of my slacks. On the state of , kneeling on a public sidewalk in the late afternoon light.
His jaw was tight.
His expression was carved stone.
Those black-gold eyes ca up to mine.
"What happened?" he said.
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