Ozzy stood up from the couch abruptly. “No way. We’re not bonded,” he said aloud. “If we had a pack bond, maybe, but we don’t. Creating a pack bond is a conscious choice.”
“Whatever is happening, you can’t deny you heard him,” I said. “And it will be helpful. I just wish I could speak to Shan and Caspian, but I think our bond is too weak right now to create an open line of communication. Maybe if I’d marked them…”
I should have. I should have made the time to do it instead of pointlessly waiting for a ‘right moment’ that now may never come.
Nolan’s phone rang shrilly and we all turned to stare at him, watching him answer it.
Unfortunately, when he did, he went white as a ghost.
TWENTY-FIVE
Nolan
Icouldn’t push past the guilt.
Shan and Caspian had been taken because I hadn’t been compelling enough; hadn’t fostered enough stable allies over the year. We’d been overpowered because I wasn’t a force to be reckoned with. Not like Kylan. Not like everyone else in my family had ever been.
Oswald had tried to comfort me, feeling my guilt through the bond, but I couldn’t handle it right now. Comfort, or him. All those old emotions were welling up. The sense of not being good enough to be loved… somehow, it was made worse by him showing me affection.
So I left him alone and paced the room, trying to get through to Altair and Sky, and Amabella, and literally anyone who might be able to give me some details on what the fuck was going on.
I left a message with Julian’s Earth contact, telling him to get the man to call me the next time he was in the Earthen realm and had cell phone service.
Then I listened in on the revelation the rest of them were having about mental connections and bonds, all far beyond my comprehension. As a Beta, I would never be part of it. I kept calling until finally someone called me back.
Amabella.
All eyes on me, I answered the call.
“Donotcome back here,” Amabella said, sounding winded. “We’re being attacked, and the wards won’t hold. I’m evacuating everyone through a portal right now and Clement is enacting scatter protocols.”
Oswald stood up to stride over me when my face paled.
Scatter protocols were our worst-case scenario.
Everyone in the company went on their own way, used their own resources and some of mine to stay in the wind. It was only to be used if someone was after the company and I couldn’t handle it, and that was exactly what this was.
Me, failing to protect what I’d worked to create from the ground up.
“Are you going to be able to evacuate everyone in time?” I asked, keeping my voice level. Barely.
“Yes. I’ve got it, Nolan. Keep Freya the fuck away from here. We all know they’re after her. You guys go in your direction and we’ll go in ours. Tell Freya Mabel is safe with me, and the employees who can’t flee on their own are safe with Clement.”
“Call me when you’re safe.”
“Call me when you are,” she countered. “I don’t know what happened with your goal other than clearly not killing Kylan, but these assholes seem a little too optimistic to me.”
Explaining the entire garbage fire of an operation would take far too long, so I took her words as the warning they were. “Got it. Talk to you soon.”
“You will,” she promised before hanging up on me.
I let the hand holding the phone drop to my side, my fingers limp. Three sets of eyes stared at me. Emmett had probably heard both sides of the conversation. Possibly Oswald, too. But Freya didn’t have the enhanced senses of other supernatural races and would have no idea what the call was about.
“We can’t go back to HQ,” I said quietly. “Amabella is evacuating everyone. Kylan sent a team.”
Freya cursed. “Is Mabel safe?”
Nodding, I accepted Oswald’s touch when he pulled me against him, my back to his chest. “From the sounds of it, almost everyone is gone and they’re going to be fine. We’ve implemented scatter protocol, so all employees will go off in their own directions until such a time that we can be back in business.”
