Chapter Sixty-Eight: Torin

“Warren? Just wanted to check in. There’s a lot of movement up here at the main building and I wanted to make sure everything was fine back at the house. Is Briar alright?” Torin reached out through the mind link that connected him to the other Kodiak-shifter, his heart pounding in his chest.

Five minutes earlier he’d felt a wave of pure panic sweep through his mind and body as he’d knelt beside Miles, watching the Packhouse through the thick brush that lined the east side of the building. It wasn’t quite like anything that he’d ever experienced, and while he’d tried to brush the emotions aside, he couldn’t entirely ignore the feeling of dread that lingered.

It was why he had reached out to Warren, wishing that he had the same sort of link with Briar.

He had expected an immediate response and when he didn’t get one, he nudged Miles and tilted his head to the side, letting him know that he was leaving him to keep track of what was going on at the Packhouse on his own.

Once he had put enough distance between himself and the Packhouse, Torin began to move more quickly, hardly paying attention to the amount of noise he was making as he hurried back to the small house that Briar had grown up in. He’d reached out to Warren several times and each time his prodding words had been met with silence.

Meanwhile the panic that had swept through his body had turned into a sort of steady terror that he couldn’t shake. The emotion was inside of him, but it didn’t feel quite right. In the past, with very few exceptions, he’d always been able to push his feelings to the side during emergency situations, so that he could act with a clear, rational mind. This emotion simply was, and there wasn’t a single thing he could do to change it or block it out.

The moment he reached the small clearing in front of the house that Briar had grown up in he knew that something was horribly wrong. The front door stood open, and the entire space was blanketed by an oppressive silence. Torin froze for a moment, feeling as if his heart had risen up into his throat. This wasn’t right at all, there was simply no way Warren would have left the door open, even if he’d fled.

The sickly, metallic scent of blood hit his nostrils before he crossed the threshold of the door. Once he was inside it only took him a moment to find Warren’s body partially concealed behind the couch, next to a now closed curtain.

Torin’s eyes scanned the form of his friend, taking in the bullet hole that had penetrated right between his eyes. Pushing the curtain aside, Torin could imagine that the shooter had been hidden somewhere in the dense brush that rose up on the other side of the clearing that surrounded Briar’s home. He guessed that Warren hadn’t even seen the shooter, or known what was happening, it had all happened so fast. That’s why he hadn’t been able to give any sort of a signal to Torin that there was trouble headed their way.

Turning away from his friend, Torin took the steps to the second floor, three at a time.

“Briar? Wolfling are you here? I never should have left you, Sweetheart. Please come out. I won’t make the same mistake twice.”

Taking a deep breath, Torin could still smell his mate’s intoxicating scent, but it was clear to him that she wasn’t there, since the sweet fragrance was already fading. Someone was still there though, and holding perfectly still he could hear the rapid heartbeat that he guessed was coming from the closet in the bedroom he had just entered.

“Lilli? Are you okay? You can come out. I need to know what happened to Briar.”

There was a long silence and for a moment Torin began to fear that Lilliet had been injured too, but then he saw the clothing near the front of the closet part, and a small head, covered in dark blonde hair, peeked through.

“You have to save her. It’s all my fault. She never should have come back, even to help find mom. If she dies I’ll never forgive myself. I knew it was a trap, but I still did exactly what they wanted me to do.” Tears dripped down Lilliet’s cheeks, and she had to pause between sobs to get the words out.

“This isn’t your fault, Princess. It’s the fault of whoever put this plan in motion and the people who are helping him. But you did the right thing by calling your sister. She probably is the only person who had the resources to help your mom. And I promise you Lilli. I’m going to do everything in my power to get both of them back. I’d give my life to save your sister. But I’m hoping that I don’t have to, because I’d much rather live happily ever after with her, once I get all of us out of here.”

“You really still think you can?” The young wolf shifter didn’t look at all convinced as she asked the question.

“I know I can. Whoever did this made a mistake, taking your mother and now my mate. But this is important, Lilli. Can you tell me anything about what happened here after I left?”

Sniffling, Lilli’s brow furrowed as she thought about what she might say that would help the large bear-shifter find her sister.

“Briar and I were in here, where that friend of yours told us to wait, when we heard glass shattering. She tried to play it off like it was no big deal, saying maybe your friend had dropped a plate or something in the kitchen. I think we both knew that wasn’t very likely.” Torin nodded encouragingly, but didn’t say a word, waiting instead for her to go on. “Briar said she wanted to go downstairs to see if everything was okay. I didn’t want her to. Especially after she made me hide. That was when I knew she probably had a good idea that something was really wrong.”

Lilli tried to take a deep breath, but Torin heard it catch several times as she choked down sobs that she didn’t have time for. She needed to tell her sister’s mate what had happened. “I couldn’t hear much of what happened downstairs because she made me get in the closet and all the stuff in there sort of muffled the sounds. But I thought I heard the door open. And then it was just too quiet. I would have gone out and looked, but Briar had made me promise that I would stay put until she came back. Which I guess means that I shouldn’t have come out when you came in here, but Briar had been gone so long-”

“How long?” Torin interrupted the younger girl for the first time since she’d begun to tell her story. “How long ago did she leave you up here?”

“Half an hour maybe? I’m not really sure. I don’t have a watch and I think time went extra slow while I was in there. It felt like hours. But I don’t think it was even fifteen minutes after you left, that she went down to check. We weren’t up here all that long.”

Glancing down at his watch, Torin nodded.

“That would put it at somewhere between thirty and forty-five minutes ago. I left about an hour ago.” Torin looked up from his watch and fixed his eyes on the girl standing in front of him. He had a problem.

He needed to make sure that she was safe while he saved Briar and her mother. But what was the best way to do that? If he left her here, even well hidden, there was a chance that he would succeed in saving Briar and her mom, only to find Lilli gone when he returned. Taking her with him was also dangerous though. He couldn’t focus on saving Briar if he was worried about keeping her sister safe, especially now that he was a man short.

If he could go back he would have brought a dozen of his men with him, but it was too late to change what was already done. He didn’t have time to call for backup now. Briar was in danger and he needed to save her, and keep her mom and sister from getting hurt. Nodding towards the door he let out a long sigh.

“Let’s go, Kid. I have an idea. And it had better work.”