“But didn’t you call her saying she needed to come in?” Liam demanded, starting to panic.
“Not at all. She’s been working so hard lately. I figured she could use the time off. She rarely uses it, and she’s more than earned it.”
Liam only felt shock as Oscar’s words came through the phone. An icy feeling that made his blood run cold. Surely he was lying. Humans lied all the time.
Except he wasn’t.
So who had been on the phone this morning, then?
“Hello? Hello?” Oscar said, but Liam just let his phone drop to the ground.
What the hell was going on?
Captain? Titus said patiently.
We have to find Kate. Now. Something’s terribly wrong.
Want me to tell Aegis and Opal? Magnus chimed in.
Yes, bring them. I’m driving to her work now. We have to find out what happened to her along the way.
Just text us the address and we’ll catch up to you, Magnus said.
I’ll meet you in the middle. See if I can find anything, Titus added.
Immediately, Liam sprang into action, picking up his phone and texting Magnus while he rushed out the front door and slammed it behind him before jumping into his truck and inciting the engine.
It still worked. Thank you, Magnus.
He typed in the address of Kate’s workplace and found that the map offered two different routes.
One purported to be shorter, even though it went along a small country road he’d never seen before, and he selected the route. Kate was always in a rush. Liam doubted she’d ever choose a longer drive when going to work.
Flooring the gas pedal, Liam weaved recklessly through the neighborhood, exiting the development and turning down quiet, abandoned roads lined with trees and shrubs.
And as pretty as it would have been on a normal day, Liam’s eyes were peeled, searching for any sign of Kate or her car.
Then up ahead, along a silent stretch of the road, he saw her blue vehicle sitting in the middle of the road by itself.
His truck came to a screeching stop, and he jumped out, looking inside.
The driver-side door was ajar, left open. But nobody was inside.
At the side of the road were several orange and white fence-looking things marked with the words “detour.” And in the air, he could scent Kate, could tell she had been here. But the scent was quickly diminishing, which meant she wasn’t nearby.
And there was another scent in the air. A scent that wasn’t human.
He turned and looked up the road. Ahead, it forked off in two directions. Simply choosing one meant he could be going the completely wrong way.
Liam swore out loud and kicked the side of his truck, not caring that he left a huge dent in the door where his foot had connected with it.
Why hadn’t Kate listened to him? She knew they were mates. She knew he could protect her. Why did she have to run off and not trust him?
As Liam fumed, the roaring of a loud engine came up, and he whirled around to see a green sports car pull up behind his truck, tailed by another car in black with red stripes.
Aegis popped out of the first car, and Magnus jumped out of the second.
“How did you get here so quickly?” Liam asked.
“Well, let’s just say human speed limits didn’t apply to us,” Aegis said, coming around and helping Opal out of the car that was precariously low to the ground.
“That and you’re sharing your location with me all the time,” Magnus said with a grin, holding up his phone, “so it was pretty easy to follow you.”
Liam wanted to punch Magnus right now, but it would be counterproductive.
“Is that Kate’s car?” Opal asked, coming forward and sticking to the task at hand.
“Yes, but I don’t know what happened. They could be anywhere right now,” Liam said, the fear of never finding his mate making him want to take off to the skies in his dragon form to search for her.
“Just hold on there, tiger. We’ll find her,” Aegis said, sensing Liam’s rage.
“I’m not a tiger.”
“It’s just an express—Ugh, forget it.”
Just then, Titus showed up in his truck, the newer one, pulling to the side of the road and getting out. But he didn’t approach, instead just folding his arms and watching intently in complete silence.
“I think I can help,” Opal said, running a hand along Kate’s car, appearing lost in deep thought.
Everyone went quiet and watched as she raised one palm to her mouth, then blew, a single bubble floating from the tip of her fingers and drifting lower until it popped on the hood of her vehicle.
Then suddenly, the world shifted around them, revealing what Liam could only surmise was a glimpse of the past.
Kate’s car was no longer there in front of them, as well as all their other vehicles. Instead, the two blockades that were on the side of the road were now sitting squarely in the middle, barring the road.
“The whole setup certainly is pretty sketchy, isn’t it?” Magnus asked, but Aegis just elbowed him in the side, shutting him up.
Standing next to the blockade was a worker in an orange jacket, wearing a hard hat. A worker with long, dark-grey hair pulled into a long braid down his back. Incredibly tall and foreboding-looking for a construction worker.
And then Kate’s car drove up, stopping at the signs as if it were happening before his very eyes. He saw her frustration, saw her as she had been just as she left the home that morning. The man waved his arms and came up to the side of the car, and Kate popped her head out as if to argue.
And then another vehicle came out of nowhere, driving up behind Kate’s car. Immediately, another tall man, his hair silver-white and very short, jumped out, striding behind the blue vehicle and pulling the door open. Without decorum, he pulled out a now-furious, struggling Kate.
Liam’s blood was practically boiling. He knew these men.
The other noble element dragons. Platinum and Silver.
No.
They would curse the day they messed with Liam’s mate.
He watched as Silver pulled Kate away and tossed her into the back of his car as the other shed his construction clothing and pulled the detour signs to the side of the road, then got into the car that then pulled off.
The vision slowly faded as the car sped off into the distance, making a left at the fork in the road ahead just as the illusion dissipated completely.
And then they were back in reality, surrounded by their various cars and a terrible sense of foreboding.
“Are those guys familiar to you?” Aegis asked, arms crossed.
“More or less, yeah,” Magnus said nonchalantly. But Liam knew better.
“Sworn enemies?” Opal said.
“It’s complicated,” Titus said, coming over and getting into the back of Magnus’s car, barely squeezing into the pitifully small backseat of the shining sports car.
“I’m going to want an explanation,” Aegis said, pointing at Liam as he and Opal got into his poison-green vehicle.