Chapter 14

Axton

Tossing my jacket on the back of the couch, I plop onto it. Eli follows me into the room, and I can feel our entire pack’s nervous energy around me. Khan has had them searching all night. My men are exhausted, and Khan is becoming a raging beast at the thought of losing his mate, so Eli’s forced us home while our patrols keep searching. Not knowing is driving me crazy. I need to find her, or Khan will become untameable.

We have searched everywhere, every corner of this damn city except her old pack. There is no way Alpha Derrick will allow me on his territory without a fight, not that he is in much of a position to fight right now. Yet, at the moment, I hold no power to storm onto his pack territory and demand to look around for his daughter. This twenty-one day suspension is becoming a hindrance.

“What about her friend, the purple-haired girl?” I ask Eli, and he flicks through the list of all her associates.

“Already accounted for. She hasn’t left home or made any phone calls to her. Elena’s phone also appears to be switched off,” Eli tells me, and Khan growls menacingly in my head.

He is furious with me, and I know I won’t get anywhere with him anytime soon. As far as he is concerned, I should have forcibly marked her. Khan is unforgiving that she’s managed to slip through our fingers. He blames me because of the leaked video, yet it was the only way to get Derrick tossed out of the council. When I find her, I will be handcuffing her to the fucking bed; she won’t be escaping me a second time.

Only problem now is locating her and dragging her back here.

“Send out an alert to the neighboring cities. If she enters or tries to join another pack, I want to know about it,” I tell Eli.

“For what? She hasn’t done anything,” Eli says.

I rub my temples and curse under my breath. This is so fucked up. I can’t believe she has taken off like this. And with my twins. “I don’t know. Kidnapping! Something.”

“You aren’t thinking about this, Axton. How can she have a warrant placed on her for kidnapping? She can’t kidnap herself,” Eli tries to reason, but at this point, I am becoming unreasonable.

If I don’t find her soon, I don’t trust Khan not to steal control from me, and if that happens, we are going to have a serious problem on our hands.

“What if she aborts them?” Khan growls at me, pacing inside my head. My minuscule control over him is waning with every second.

“Don’t be stupid. Why would she?” I snap at Khan.

My head is pounding from stress, and I am now exhausted, which is not helping at all. I doubt I will get to sleep anytime soon with Khan snarling in my head and trying to overthrow me for control.

“You’re forgetting, numbskull. She fucking rejected us,” Khan snaps at me. My aura presses out with his anger, and I hear Eli take a step back from me.

“But the bond is intact. We never accepted it,” I remind Khan, trying to calm my angry wolf.

“She doesn’t know that. Our mark is not on her neck. We may be able to feel her, but that doesn’t mean she can fucking feel us. It is severed on her side,” he snarls at me.

My entire body trembles with that realization and his fury. She rejected me, as in she has no ties to me. None. Yet I can feel her perfectly, and unless I reject her, the bond will remain. What if she does get rid of them?

“Alpha, what do you want me to do?” Eli asks nervously.

I grip my hair in frustration, trying to think of where she would have gone. “There is no way she left the city, right?” I ask Eli, looking up at him.

He swallows and shrugs. “I don’t know. We don’t know how long she was gone for, only the sighting on the train, but we searched every station. She never got off. I am pretty sure it was wrong information. We couldn’t even find her scent anywhere.”

I growl and look up at him as he tosses the folder on the table and leans against it.

“So, she jumped?” I ask incredulously. Given her state, I can’t see that being possible without severely hurting herself.

“Possibly. We have no way to know for sure.”

“Get a hold of the supernatural council. She has to register somewhere. Also put out a missing person alert,” I tell him, leaning back on the couch and staring at the ceiling.

We have not seen her with anyone besides Alisha, her brother, or her family. She has no life outside of her father’s rule except the few times she’s snuck into the club. It makes no sense. Her life is purely mapped out by the schedule her father’s made. Where he goes, Elena goes, and she even works at the same place. He has tabs on her wherever she goes, so if anyone knows, it’s him.

She never left the city when we were watching her, she also never missed pack meetings except for that night. Besides, our insider’s told us she isn’t in pack territory, but then again, he is only one of Derrick’s pack members. He holds hardly any significance within the pack ranks, so I doubt our informant would have been told if they were indeed hiding her.

“And then what? We fucking wait?” Khan growls at me, making my already pounding head throb more.

“Do you have a better fucking idea?”

Khan growls angrily, pacing back and forth, waiting for me to let my guard down so he can hunt her down himself.

If only I had marked her and made her mark me. If I had, I would be able to find her. Our link would lead me straight to her. I click my tongue. I should have marked her at the hospital and forced her to mark me in return.