Chapter 134 - You need to leave

HADRIAN

The door rattles when I push through the doorway and I storm out of the parlor. The little box is in my hand with the two rings securely trapped inside. The silence in my mind is absolute and every call bounces back.

*“Graciella?”* I call out again, her name turns into an echo in my mind when it stays unreceived. There’s no response and there hasn’t been one since her initial cry for help. I’ve been calling out to her a dozen times already, but every time it stayed quiet on the other end.

*“I don’t have a good feeling about this,”* I say to Nero.

Nero grumbles in agreement. The cry for help was strange, but bone-splitting. The fear in her voice was real.

I cross the empty streets and try to pick up her trail. I search through the scent of silver and pick up Emma’s scent first. Her trail is fresh, maybe minutes old. *Strange.*

I can’t help following it for a few seconds. The action is as automatic as the forward movement of a ticking clock. Speaking of which, the ceremony has already started. *What was she doing here?*

The wheels in my head are still turning when Lucas rounds the corner in the distance. His chest is heaving as he comes running towards me. His movements are agitated and clumsy. He nearly trips over a cobblestone when he frantically looks behind him.

There’s nothing behind him except for quiet empty streets. His hard steps and his heavy breathing is the only thing that fills the silence. I search for the looming threat that has him this shaken, but there are no other living beings around. The only thing that ignites gooseflesh on my neck is the trace of silver coming from him.

His eyes are wide and frantic when he reaches me and his fingers dig hard in my shoulders. “Dude, you need to leave.” The urgency in his voice is clear through the tremble of fear.

But his words don’t make sense.

“What are you talking about?” I gripe, the uncertainty of it all has my controlling nature aggravated and on edge. First the disappearance of the rings, then the negotiation with April, then the cry for help from Graciella and now Lucas acting like a maniac.

*“Maybe this has something to do with Graciella,”* Nero grumbles in careful consideration.

Lucas frantically looks around him before he looks up to the sky. I follow his gaze but there is only a clear sky with the occasional cloud. The sun on the horizon is starting to descend and it creates an orange hue to the sky.

"Where’s Graciella?"

Lucas turns his gaze back to me and his fear turns into confusion. “Graciella?”

Lucas blinks and turns his frenzy to me. “Are you not listening?” He tightens the grip on my shoulders and shakes me with all his might. “YOU NEED TO LEAVE.”

I grimace when his bellow makes my eyes ring and I fear that my eardrums have split with the volume of his voice.

My frame moves back and forth marginally with his rough push and pull. “Why?”

Lucas releases me and grabs a handful of hair. He pulls hard at the roots and spins a meaningless circle. “I don’t know.”

His other hand clutches his chest and he gasps for air. His breaths get shorter as if oxygen suddenly disappears. “I can’t, it’s suffocating me.”

*“I think he’s having a vision.”* Nero says suddenly.

My eyes widen when I look at Lucas with this new perspective. His eyes are clouded over as if trapped in another world. Some place that brings him fear.

“What's suffocating you?” I ask. I haven’t been surrounded by psychics often in the past few years, but I do remember that Lela had flares of strange behavior when we were younger. Never as frantic as this, however.

Lela pulled more inward and would be staring at a blank wall when having a vision. She explained to me once that her visions trapped her until she accepted them and allowed herself to experience them. Fighting the visions would only make it harder.

“I don’t know!” Lucas swings his arms in the air and kneels to the ground. He places his hands on the cobblestones and his nails scratch over the hard stone. “I feel like I’m going crazy.”

*“I think you might be right.”* I tell Nero.

I sink to my hunches next to Lucas. “What do you see?” I urge Lucas to go within and experience his vision.

“I— silver, a lot of silver.” Lucas starts to look around the empty street again and moves his gaze back to the sky before turning to me. “You need to leave, now. You’re in danger.”

“We need to find Graciella first.” I urge on. If this has anything to do with silver then I might not be the only one in danger.

Lucas shakes his head. “She’s already gone.”

“What do you mean?” I frown and watch the same confusion appear on him.

“She’s not here anymore.” Lucas looks around the streets with a deep frown and then his eyes widen. “I think she’s in the factory.”

*The factory? Why would she be there?* I don’t question his assumption because I know he’s going to be right. “You're sure.”

Lucas shakes off his frenzy and pulls himself up from the ground. “I don’t know, I always have a hunch of where people are.” The clouds before his eyes disappear. “It’s my intuition.”

“No, it’s not, it’s your psychic ability.”

Something I quickly figured out about his ability is that Lucas can sense where people are. He has found me or Emma more times than I would've liked. I believe him when he tells me that she’s gone.

“We need to find her,” I say again. I don’t know what happened, but I know we need to find her fast.

Lucas shakes his head again and takes a loud breath. “No, you need to leave before it’s too late. I will find her.”

*“We need to listen to him.”* Nero says.

We’re not ones to easily put trust in the words of others, but I nod without further hesitation. There’s only one thing I need to do first.

*“We need to get Emma.”* I say to Nero.

Nero is quiet this time. He knows better than to change my mind.

We’re not leaving this town without our mate.

———————————

I’m not surprised to find her at the square. Finding Emma is easy. Even if I could not follow her scent, then I could always follow the tug in my chest. It will lead me towards her. It’s one of the advantages of the mate bond.

It brings me back to the busting crowd and people are dancing. There’s a warmth to my chest that grows with every step that I get closer. But what my eyes perceive makes my blood run cold and a new fury burns from within.

Having his hands on my mate is one thing that I had to endure over and over for weeks. It already had me grinding my teeth and cracking my bones.

I watch how he pulls her close and leans down to lock his lips over hers. Kissing my Emma is unforgivable and I can’t stop the flames from within.

They expand my body until I tear through the fabric of my clothes. My muscles swell before they break my skin. My bones snap one by one and the ear-splitting cracks reach over the music. Everything grows and mutates into a different form. My hands become claws. My skin becomes fur. My voice becomes an angry roar.

I know when my transformation is complete when humans start to scream in fear. I am the bane of their existence. They hate me as much as they fear me. But I don’t have my eyes on them.

My pace is calculated as I move towards Dex. I growl when he has the nerve to shield Emma with his body. There’s fear in her eyes when she sees me.

He’s the only one not watching me in fear, but with steeled resolve.

“A true wolf in sheep’s clothing.” Dex chuckles but it lacks humor. He sweeps a calculated look around and nods at a faceless human out of my line of sight.

Nero charges forward with the intention to kill. Our canines are bared and thirsty for blood. We won’t stop before they tear through his flesh. The darkness doesn’t allow for any sanity or a sense of logic.

Dex doesn’t run away. He stays unmoving as he watches me come closer.

Through the consuming fury, other senses still work in the background. Like my sense of smell and self-preservation, but it comes too late.

Because silver is coming towards me faster than I can dodge it.

*Silver, a lot of silver.* Lucas had said.

“NO!” Emma screams. The same pain I feel is laced in her voice.