Hey, guys! Whoo-hoo, how would y'all like to kick my butt, huh? I know, I know. I promise I love you guys and haven't forgotten. I really want to finish this story so that I can work on original stories. Honestly, this one will probably end in a couple of chapters, at the most 5. And there will be an epilogue or one-shot given how it will end. Y'all will want this HUGE loose end tied or you might hunt me down.

So in this chapter, we figure out what happens with Cole and everybody given the cliffhanger. I'm not sure how you guys will react but we'll see!

Please Enjoy!

AshPOV

Ever been on a roller coaster and feel your stomach just disappear? Yep, that's where I was the moment I opened the bedroom door.

My stomach dropped right out from under me just as my heart turned my chest into a drum.

The bed was empty. The sheets and blankets rumpled.

"Cole?" I said through a tight throat. I cleared it and tried again. "Cole!"

Even though I knew the room was empty, I still frantically checked every corner and even the empty bathroom until the blood finally decided to stop pounding in my ears long enough for me to hear the wind from the open window. Across from the bed, one of the floor-to-ceiling windows was standing open.

"Oh, fuck," I breathed. "Dox!" I yelled as I raced out of the bedroom. "Mom! Dad!"

The hallways and stairs were a blur as I hurtled to the first floor. Mom and Dad flew out of the kitchen while Dox was right behind me.

"What is it?" Dad demanded while they followed me toward the front door.

"Cole is missing. He ran off."

"What? That's not possible," Mom said. "He should still be out of it."

"Well, he's not, and he's missing. We have to find him."

"I'll call Jason, get some extra wolves," Dox offered.

From behind me, Dad said, "Once we phase, I'll call the pack. Where do you think he'd go?"

In the mud, I skidded to a halt. That was a great question. Until I figured out the answer, I had nowhere to run to.

"I don't know."

Mom walked over to put her hand on my arm. "Sweetheart, you know Cole better than anybody else. Think."

"Well, he left without saying anything to anybody. And he snuck out which means he didn't want us to find out for a while. That means he doesn't want us to know where he's going." Looking up, I met Dox's gaze. "If he realized he woke up as something other than human, which he obviously did, he'd go after an object of his rage. His parents."

Dox cursed. "We had them moved back to their house. If he woke up while the plans were being made-,"

I started running again, this time with a purpose and destination.

I could smell the blood before I ever saw the house. The metallic taste was so bad it was as if I had been sucking on a penny.

The trip through the woods was a blur. It had been one of those things where you zone out and somehow reach your destination unharmed but with no memory of how you got there. A cold feeling worming around your gut at just the thought of what could have happened.

Emmett was standing out in the front yard next to the crushed truck where it had been stashed after the wreck, his arms crossed. He wasn't on alert or didn't seem to be particularly worried.

"What happened?" I demanded. "Where's Cole?"

All he did was nod toward the house.

Growling in frustration, I ran and busted through the front door. The smell had me covering my nose. Added to the metallic smell was that of an outhouse, and it was so bad that I swallowed hard to keep from gagging. My eyes watered, blurring my vision of the space.

"Cole," I choked out.

"Jesus Christ," Dox said behind me. "What the hell is that?"

"Death, I think."

"Shit," he breathed.

"Exactly."

My twin gave me a look.

"What? I've read enough books to know that shit is what death smells like if the intestines are punctured."

"Well, that's a pretty picture," he muttered sarcastically. Then he sobered up. "Ash, you know what we're about to find, right? You need to be prepared."

My heart thundered in my chest as we made our way past the stairs. The kitchen was on our left, the living room to our right, the door under the stairs. Further back, at the end of the hall on the right was the master bedroom.

Dox reached for my arm. "Ash-,"

I ripped myself out of his reach. "I know, Dox. But I don't care about them. I care about Cole." I looked over at him. "Stay out here. Let me talk to him alone."

"Ash-,"

"Dox, he won't hurt me."

"You don't know that. Something isn't right here, and I know you know that."

"He's my mate. I have to try. Just stay here."

Dox cursed but did as I asked as I inched toward the room. The door was open, the scent of blood like a wall. The first thing I wanted to look at was Cole, but the devastation in the room grabbed my attention. The walls had been an off-white before they'd been painted in red and thick bits of meat. The blood was dripping down the walls but also from somewhere else that I could hear it hitting the blood-soaked carpet.

I had to steel myself to look at the bed. The urge to puke crawled back up my throat and twisted my gut.

"Oh, God."

There was nothing left but shredded meat and broken bones. No way to tell which side each of the Harris' had been lying. Absolutely nothing gave away male or female. Pieces of body were strewn about and mixed everywhere.

At the foot of the bed, Cole was standing naked, his body just as covered in blood as the rest of the room. But that wasn't what caught my attention. His hands were tipped in black claws, more blood dripping from them.

"Cole."

"They deserved this," he growled. "For all they've done, they deserved the pain they caused to come back to them."

His voice was alien, devoid of any emotion.

"You know I agree with you-,"

"No, you don't. Your humanity sways you to follow human laws."

I stepped closer, the carpet squelching under my bare feet. "Cole, please. I don't care about this or them. I just want you to come home and get checked out. Victoria needs you. I need you."

Slowly, so very slowly, his head turned toward me, gaze meeting mine. There was recognition there but none of the warmth of his personality. A shock went through me when I realized that his eyes were neither red nor gold. The shock turned to a nervous bite of unease.

"You're scared of me."

Holding my hands up, I moved closer. "No. I'm worried about you. You haven't even been out of it for a day. You should be out for at least three."

His brows twitched into a frown. "Vampire venom?" He knew the guidelines of going through the vampire transition after all these years of living with us.

"I know that's not what you wanted, but please, let's just get out of here. We can go home, get you cleaned up and checked out, and then we can talk."

He ignored me completely. "Are you still imprinted to me?"

"Yes," I said without hesitation even though I'd been wondering the same thing. "From the moment I found that you were gone to this moment right here, right now, I am still madly in love with you. All I want is to be what you need."

His head tilted. "And what do I need right now?"

"You need me to explain what happened, tell you how Victoria is, and get you away from here so that the family can take care of this."

"You mean hide the fact that I killed my parents." Butchered was more appropriate but I kept that to myself.

"The Cullens know what it is to kill victims and have to cover it up. Let them deal with it while we go see Carlisle." I held out my hand to him. "Please. Come with me." I looked down his body. "But we need to grab some clothes first."

Cole dropped his head to evaluate himself. "I ran down here naked. I can go back this way."

"You weren't covered in blood when you ran down here. Cole, can I ask you something?"

"Yes. You may ask."

Again with the swallowing hard, but this was a difficult question to ask since I was terrified of what the answer could be. "Do you…do you still-,"

"Do I still love you?"

Closing my eyes, I nodded.

He was quiet for a moment, and then I felt his hands cup my face. They were warm and wet, still covered with blood. I felt the tips of those claws scrape my scalp as they pushed through my hair.

My eyes were still closed as I felt the air move, his presence coming closer. And then something was running up the side of my throat, leaving a cold, wet line behind.

His tongue. Cole had just run his tongue up my throat.

A pumping growl percolated up through Cole's chest. "You. Are. Mine."

Seriously.

I should not be so turned on right now. Nope. Not at all. Especially knowing what the room looked like on the other side of my eyelids.

But I couldn't help it. Fuck.

A shiver shimmied my body under his hands.

"Mmmm," he growled.

It took me two swallows and a throat-clearing to be able to say, "We need to get out of here, Cole. Please."

"Say it," he demanded. "Say you're mine and I'll go anywhere you want."

The demand was surprising, especially as it sounded like a contract deal. My mate could now smell my fear -and likely knew that I'd lied about that- so he could likely tell when I was lying. If I lied to him, there was no telling what this new-and-possibly-improved Cole was going to do

Reaching up, I ran my hands up his forearms to grip his wrists. Finally opening my eyes, I stared into his familiar yet distant gaze and told the only truth I knew in that moment, "I am now and forever yours."

Still growling, Cole pressed his mouth hard to mine before pulling away to head for the closet. He came out a second later, pulling a pair of sweats into place on his hips, a shirt hanging over his shoulder.

Outside, he put the shirt on as he got the hairy eyeball from Dox and an approving stare from Emmett.

"How are you going to cover this up?" Dox asked the Cullen relatives that had just shown up.

Emmett smirked.

Edward gave him a tight look before saying, "We'll put the bodies as back together as possible and then light the house on fire." He looked at Cole. "Did either of your parents smoke?"

Cole turned those cold, distant eyes on him. "The old man kept a box of cigars next to the bed."

"Do you know of any notes with their handwriting on it?" Bella asked. When everyone looked at her, she said, "We can make it look like a suicide."

"An attempted murder-suicide," I said. "They thought they'd killed their kids, so they came home and killed themselves."

Grama shrugged. "Something like that, yes."

"The woman always kept a running list of things they needed on the fridge," Cole answered.

Frowning, I glanced at him. He absolutely would not call them by their names or Mom and Dad. They were nobodies to him, nothing more than two people who had brought him into this world and the two people he had just taken out of it.

Unease trickled through my gut. In my peripheral vision I saw Grampa frown.

As if he felt it, Cole looked over at me. "You are scared of me."

I looked at all the people around us before taking his hand. "Let's just get you home and checked out. We'll talk there."

Thirty minutes later, we were sitting in one of the exam rooms in the Cullen house. Cole was sitting on the bed, his back ramrod straight, hands folded in his lap. His expression was thinned down to cold indifference except for when he looked at me. A spark happened there, like he couldn't wait to eat me.

Where are you, I thought. Who are you?

"I'm still me, Ash," he said quietly.

I shook my head. Damn, I must have said it out loud. "The Cole I know would never have done what you did."

"The Cole you knew was completely human. The vampire venom ate that away."

Bringing my hands up, I scrubbed my palms over my face. "Cole, you don't just lose your humanity like that. Your ways of thinking-,"

"I died, Ash." A big fist thumped his chest. "My ways of thinking died when my brain did. The venom and whatever else is happening with me isn't human anymore. What?" he said when he saw my expression. "You don't think I've noticed that there's something drastically not normal about the fact that I grew black claws out of my fingertips and that my heart is beating and my skin is warm? You had me infected with venom. I should be ice cold, no heartbeat, and definitely no claws. Oh, and I should be craving human blood to the point where the entire Cullen family needs to sit on me to keep me down. So, yes, I know something is off. And I know you're scared of me."

With a curse, I stood up from the chair I'd planted myself in and went to take his hands, hands that he'd scrubbed over at the sink in the bathroom. Before I could take them in mine, though, I had to unclench them. Various rubbing and caressing happened until he eased up to put his palms against mine.

Bending over, I kissed the backs of his hands. "I'm not scared of you. I'm just worried."

"I would never hurt you."

I straightened up so I could look him in the eyes. "I know, and because of that, it's not me I'm worried about. I've never seen something that violent, and I never thought to see it from you. I'll feel better when Carlisle checks you out-,"

"What the fuck do you mean you can't find her?!"

Dox's frantic albeit pissed-off tone brought my head around toward the door before Cole and I shared a frown.

"I'm on my way," he growled. "Stay where you are."

I rushed for the door just as Dox was heading for the stairs. "What's going on?"

He didn't stop for even a heartbeat as he yelled over his shoulder. "Rye is missing."

"What?!"

"Let's go," Cole said from behind me.

He pushed us out the door just as Carlisle came out of his office.

"Wait, what about the-,"

"Later," Cole growled.

Picking up speed, we rushed after my twin.

"What happened?" I demanded.

"She went out with search groups to see if the Harris' had any help in setting up their little ambush. Nechole, Gage, and Tate were in her group with a couple of enforcers but apparently she wandered off. Dammit, Rye!"

Grabbing his shoulder, I pulled him to a stop. "We'll find her. Just calm down."

Dox's expression pared down into something volcanic. "Calm down?" he demanded in a low growl. "Calm down? Ash, this is my fucking mate and she's missing. Don't fucking tell me to calm down!"

The left hook came out of nowhere. Dox's head snapped to the right, blood flying in an arc splattering the crisp white walls.

"Cole!"

Ignoring me, my mate grabbed my brother by his jaws and pushed him back against the wall. "Listen, dumbass," he growled. "If something has happened to Ryell, she needs you to have a level goddamn head to find her. Don't get yourself killed because you want to be a hothead." Pushing away, he poked a finger in Dox's chest. "Now get your shit together."

Dox straightened up, staring at Cole as his throat and mouth worked. He was likely swallowing the blood so as not to get more in the house. He gave Cole a very dangerous look. "I don't know what the fuck's gotten into you, but we'll talk about it later. After we find Ryell."

Cole grinned but it was more snarl and baring of teeth. "I look forward to it."

Tilting my head back, my skull loose on the top of my spine, I breathed out a resigned breath.

Downstairs, there was a loud crack as if someone had broken the front door down.

"I need help!" The wailing of a child preceded the words.

Dox and I both frowned. "Will?" we said together.

We started running again. Dox took off down the stairs as I flung myself against the railing of the second-floor balcony. My eldest sibling was frantic, eyes wide and wild, as he held his daughter close to his chest while she screamed.

Those pitiful cries pulled every person from every room as they all surrounded him.

It was Dad's voice that boomed out, "Enough!" When the house went so quiet I could hear the subtle beepings of the machines hooked to Victoria, Dad shoved his way to Will. "What's happened?"

Will was having trouble concentrating and breathing, his chest pumping out uneven puffs of air, his eyes bouncing around, his arms constricting around Cordy. "Hunter's missing."

A gasp went through the house as my stomach dropped out from under me.

Dad stepped up, putting a hand on Will's shoulder. "How do you know this?" he asked as calmly as he could. I could see the tension in those broad shoulders, but he was trying to keep Will from panicking even more. "Will, look at me, son. How do you know?"

He took a couple racking breaths before focusing on Dad. "I left my girls home today and went to the shop. I'd forgotten to take food, so I went home for lunch. The front door was cracked open and Cordy was shut into her room, screaming."

Murmurings and growls hummed in the big space. Dad looked at Edward. "Call the rest of the Cullens home. Forget Seattle. This takes precedence."

Edward nodded and pulled out his phone.

As that was happening, the very air changed in the house. It became hard to breathe and Cole and I shocked each other even though we weren't standing that close.

And then there was a big shadow in the jambs of the front door that Will had left open.

I think we were all surprised when Bray walked into the house, his now-amber eyes so bright they cast shadows. The fury that had thinned down his face told me exactly what he was about to say, and when he did-

"Jules is missing, too."

-the hunt was on.

RyellPOV

Consciousness fritzed in and out like lights during a bad thunderstorm. The first thing that came online was that one side of my body was cold. Not freezing because of my natural body heat, but I was chilly. The second was the pain.

Unfortunately, this was the second time I was waking up in captivity. The first time, I'd come to with a blurry vision of Hunter sitting in the corner of the cinderblock room.

"Rye? Are you coming back again?"

I groaned at the heavy accent.

"Wake up, honey. You need to stay awake."

Breathing hurt so bad that my inhale turned into a bubbling cough. My eyes fluttered open. Hunter was kneeling in front of me, her gentle fingers brushing my hair back. She had a piece of cloth in the other hand and was patting at some sore spots.

"You…okay?"

"I'm fine, sweetheart. You protected me."

My teeth started chattering. "They d-d-d-didn't h-h-h-hurt you when I p-p-p-passed out?"

She smiled softly. "No, they were called off."

Gathering the strength, I pushed myself up into a sitting position, my back against the rough wall.

"What the h-h-hell is happening?"

"I've no idea, but you're bleeding pretty badly. You're not healing."

Closing my eyes, I focused on breathing. "I feel fuzzy, like I'm drugged."

Her warm hand held my arm at the elbow. "I think you are. They injected you with something."

"Break my arm."

Through the blurriness, I saw her frown. "What? Why would I do that?"

"If I bleed enough of the drug out, I can shift, heal, and keep fighting them off to stay away from you."

Hunter shook her head. "Absolutely not."

"I will not be able to live with myself if something happens to you and that baby." I met her gaze. "I won't be able to face Will and the others."

She reached out to run her fingers through my hair. "You've done as well as you can; you've fought hard. Nobody will blame you for whatever is to come."

"I will."

With a look of defeat and gentleness, she slouched a little while still wiping up blood.

She was about to say something when the corrugated door on my right started to lift.

Dammit. What now?

Adrenaline kicked in enough to get me to push up off the floor but it wasn't enough to support my legs. There was enough energy in my blood to push Hunter to the side.

"Get your hands off me!"

And suddenly there was another body flying into the room with the door shutting firmly behind it.

"Fuck," Jules said when she stopped rolling along the floor and the sounds of a lock clicking came from the outside.

She cradled her elbow to her chest as she sat up, but then her aqua eyes found us.

"Jesus Christ. What the hell happened?"

"My past life as a pinata is coming back to haunt me," I said with a strained smile. I couldn't hold it because exhaustion was eating at my mind and body.

Jules came over, shrugging the big flannel shirt off her shoulders. "Put this on. It's Bray's so it'll be big enough to cover everything."

Together, she and Hunter got me covered.

"What's wrong with her?" Jules asked.

"She was drugged."

"When?"

"About an hour ago? I'm not sure about time without windows."

"Drugs don't work on us for that long. And how the hell did you end up in here? What is going on?"

Hunter smiled. "I know. This morning after Will went to the shop. And I don't know. Not long after they got me, they tossed Rye in here. I think she was shifted when they got her and in her unconsciousness, she turned back. When she woke up, they were closing in on me. She fought them, passed out, and here we are. What about you?"

"I was going to the damn grocery store before going up to the big house to help out with Victoria."

Groaning, I sat up higher and pain exploded in my gut.

Hunter and Jules looked down as I wrapped my arm around my hips. Then they shared a look that I couldn't read.

"How bad are you hurt, Rye?" Jules asked. "And don't lie to me."

For a moment that lasted forever, I contemplated lying, but that's not what came out. "No kickboxing for a while."

"Fuck," Jules breathed.

"Basically," I said dryly.

"Have any of them said anything?"

I shook my head. "Probably did when we were fighting but I wasn't exactly paying attention to that." And then a thought occurred to me. "Rings."

"What?" Jules asked.

"Were any of them wearing rings?"

Understanding dawned on both of their faces.

Hunter nodded. "The two who took me. They both were wearing rings, but I couldn't see the crest."

My heart sank as pain radiated through my body. "Then he betrayed us. He lied right to our faces." I wanted to beat my head against the concrete wall but just the thought made me nauseous.

"I'm not so sure about that," Hunter muttered.

"What do you mean?" Jules asked for the both of us.

Hunter rearranged herself so that she was sitting cross-legged next to me, her hands on her baby-filled belly. "Each pack has its own distinctive scent, much like if you were to walk into someone else's house. There is a different scent because of laundry detergent, candles, different aromas. Packs are like that as well. The two who took me? They didn't have a recognizable scent, which means they weren't members of any of the visiting packs."

Tucking the shirt around me, I sat up higher against the wall so that I was less on my hip and more on my butt. "Or they separated from the pack long enough to lose the scent. How long do you think that would take?"

Hunters brows pulled down, her teeth worrying at her lip as she thought about it. "Depends on where they've been. If in the woods, it could take a while. But if they've found a densely populated city with an overwhelming amount of scents, a couple days give or take."

Jules and I shared a look.

I gritted my teeth as my head began to pound. "Like the search party Joseph sent to Seattle."

"If he sent them before he and his people got to our land, they could also be responsible for the attacks. Shit," Jules said. She patted her pockets.

"They took my phone," Hunter threw out there as if she knew.

"Yeah, they took mine, too," Jules said. "Well, the one they could find." Digging into her shoe, she took out…a sock? Nope, a cell phone wrapped in an extra sock. Dropping the thing into her palm, she grinned and wiggled it at us. "Waterproof. Now," she said as fiddled with the thing. "Let's see if we can get a signal."

And then the recreation of The Lion King began as she held the phone up and walked around.

At the corner of the corrugated door, she let out a triumphant sound.

"Rye?"

My body moved.

"Ryell!"

"Mmm," I mumbled.

"Open your eyes," Hunter ordered. "Come on, now. You need to stay awake."

The fuzziness in my brain absolutely said fuck that. The pain across my lower belly was getting worse, throbbing like the cramps I got during my period but only a million times worse.

"Rye, honey," Jules said quietly. "They're coming for us. I managed to get ahold of Bray. Our men are coming for us, I promise."

And that was the last thing I heard before I promptly passed out, losing the war against the drugs in my blood.

DoxPOV

Ash and Cole held the doors while Will, Bray, and I barreled into the Forks police department. The rez's department didn't have the technology to get the number traced in a quick fashion. So here we were to demand of the fine officers of Forks.

The whole crew had wanted to come but it could have been seen as a sign of aggression upon the force, which was not our intent. So in the end, it was just us. But Mom and Dad were outside in their truck just in case.

Chief James was leaning over an employee's desk as we stormed in. He looked up and the blood drained from his face. He gave the colleague a lifted finger as he walked over to us.

"What's happened? Are we being attacked?"

Bray thrust a piece of paper with numbers written on it into the man's face. "We need this number traced. Now."

James looked at the paper before glancing back at us. He lifted his hands. "Now, boys, I can't just authorize something like that off the books."

Bray's eyes flashed amber as he leaned in, his teeth starting to lengthen. "So, you want us to report three female werewolves missing, one of whom is goddamn pregnant?" he growled low.

The rest of the blood drained from the chief's face as he looked at each of our faces. "How far along?" he asked.

Will stepped forward, his own glower contorting his features into pure violence. "That doesn't matter. I will not lose them. Now, trace the motherfucking number."

With a shaky hand, the man took the paper. "Follow me. Is the GPS on?"

Bray shook his head even though the other man couldn't see him now that we were all walking the same direction. "It's on, but it's glitchy."

"Then that means they're someplace with a weak signal," James said as we all followed him into a room filled with tech equipment and computers.

"And probably outside of Forks," Ash offered as he leaned over a computer that James had sat behind. Cole was like a shadow, staying as close to his mate as possible while still allowing Ash to walk independently.

My gaze narrowed as I watched them. Something was off with my brother's boyfriend. There was something way off about him now. And as if he felt my stare, he turned his head, gaze meeting mine. The face was familiar, the emotion was not. Cole was naturally a warm personality, always ready to help. This newer version was devoid of warmth as far as I could tell.

He was the first one to lower his eyes before turning back to paying attention to Ash.

"What makes you say that?" the chief asked.

Ash bent over the guy's shoulder to look at the map the chief had pulled up. "They wouldn't risk going onto the rez where all three women would be recognized, especially Hunter and Jules. Will and Jules are the two Alphas living there. Everybody knows who Will's mate and sister are. So we're looking for something outside of town, probably between Forks and Seattle."

James shook his head. "That's a lot of ground to cover."

I looked at Bray. "What did Jules say?"

The guy shook his head. "The call was broken but she said something about concrete walls and a metal door."

"Well that could be any sort of warehouse," James said as he rolled the chair to another computer.

"But somewhere that's relatively empty, especially this time of day."

"Storage unit."

As one, we all turned to look at Cole. James' chair squeaked as he turned, too.

He shrugged. Had he gotten physically bigger? Anyway, he commented, "Just a thought. We do watch TV. That's usually where people are kept."

"He's not wrong," James muttered as he started typing again. "Okay, there are at least ten storage facilities closer to Forks than Seattle."

"Look for climate-controlled facilities," Ash said. "They'll be better insulated."

James glanced up. "You sure you're not a cop?"

Ash huffed. "Pretty sure but my grampa was one, right?"

"The best. Okay, here are the best three. The last ping of that cell phone is closest to this one here." He pulled them up on a map and pointed to one of the locations.

"Send that to our phones," I demanded. "And our dads'."

"Sure thing."

As we all turned away, I kept my eye on Cole until he and Ash walked out the door, leaving me the last in the room.

"Everything okay, Maddox?"

Shaking my head, I turned back to him as my phone pinged with his message. "Thank you, Chief James. I know this isn't protocol."

The man put his hands on his hips and stared at the floor. "The world is stranger than we've always believed. Because of that, the rules have to bend a little more. And with a pregnant woman missing, I'm not taking chances. Go get your girls."

I nodded. "Again, thank you. We owe you, and the pack pays its debts."

As I was walking out of the room, my phone rang. "Hey, Walker."

"What have you found out?" he demanded in a deep growl.

"We've gotten the last location of the phone that Jules used to call Bray. We're all heading out now."

"Text me the address."

"Walker-,"

"Dox, that is my daughter."

"And she's my mate," I said in a low voice as I got back to the bull pen. "Stay with Christa and Wren. We've got my dad and Jason, plus all the rest of us. Hold down the fort. You'll get another update soon. I promise."

Was quiet for a couple heartbeats. "I don't like this new attitude of ordering me and your dad around."

I sighed. "Listen, I'm losing my shit, too, okay? I'm going crazy wondering what the fuck is happening to them. All three of them are my family, but we've got to stay calm. Keep the search parties going to try to find any other clues. We'll take care of the girls. Please."

There was a creaking sound like he was gripping his phone too hard. "Fine, but we're going to talk about this."

"When they're all home and safe, you can pound me to a pulp. How does that sound?"

Walker snorted. "Just get them home."

Click.

Shaking my head, I shouldered my way out the glass door.

AshPOV

Another glance in the rearview mirror ten minutes later didn't show anything different. Dox was still sitting behind Cole, his eyes distant, expression solemn. Dad and the fucking caravan were following us, Dad's bumper nearly touching the bed of Dox's truck. He was urging me to go faster, but I wasn't about to get us all pulled over and waste time.

So I ignored the flashing headlights and his angry glares through the window.

"How ya doin', Dox?"

Slowly, his eyes lifted to the mirror to meet my reflection. "I'm tired," he said hoarsely. "I know I should be ramped up for a fight and to find them. But I'm just so fucking tired, Ash. It's just one shitshow after another. Barely three years since the last fucking emergency. I want a decade. A century of peace. I want to quit looking over my shoulder or behind every rock for some crap to explode in our faces."

Switching my grip on the steering wheel, I glanced at Cole before meeting my twin's stare again. "We'll find them. Alive."

"Will we? Really? And even if we do, what if something…" His voice cracked. "What if something so terrible has happened to them that they don't want to be alive?"

I frowned. "Where the hell is that coming from?"

He snorted. "Come on, Ash. We're practically adults. The enemy isn't going to be careful with how they hurt us. You and I both know something bad went down with Jules when she and Dad were taken by Melice. Don't even tell me those nightmares were from watching Dad get the crap beat out of him. It was more than that. And we weren't there to protect her. Hunter is pregnant. What if…what if they've done something-,"

"Enough."

Dox and I both looked sharply at Cole.

"Excuse you?" Dox growled.

"I said enough," Cole repeated in his new cold way. "The past is the past. And Jules has clearly dealt with what happened to her. She is happy and healthy with Bray. Neither of us can promise you that the same things haven't happened to Ryell and Hunter. But what I can promise you is that we will take care of them, help them to heal." He turned in his seat so that he could meet Dox's eyes. "We will be their strength after we take our vengeance on those who dared to take them from us. We will show this enemy what it is like to suffer the wrath of the packs and coven of the Pacific Northwest. They must think we're all about peace and love and Kumbaya. We will show them differently as we flay the skin from their bones and watch their blood flow over our hands, their hearts take their last beats in our palms."

The two of them were quiet as they stared at each other.

I saw Dox opening his mouth, but Cole rushed ahead of him.

"And if you're about to say that I'm not related to any of them, I want you to hear me now and believe every word. I would lay my life down for any one of those females. They are my family and have been for years. As are you and Will. I see the way you look at me now, the way you watch me. I'm colder, more direct, yes. And no, I may not carry the same morals I did before I was injected with venom. But I know who my family is and what I would do to protect them, to protect you."

They did another round of staring before Dox nodded.

"I believe you."

With that, Cole turned back around in his seat, and I couldn't help but reach over for his hand. He gripped my hand tightly but kept staring straight ahead.

His speech scared the hell out of me, but he wasn't wrong. If we were to find the peace that Dox so desperately wanted, we had to put the fear of God into our enemies and those that could be our enemies. Yes, it was okay to believe in peace and love and the softness life could give you. But at the same time, when shit went down, you had to be prepared to get bloody to bring that soft life back. It was like a dog, pun intended. With a dog, you could love and cuddle it if you raised it right. But start to mistreat it? It could very well rip you apart. And that's where we were. We had finally secured the western seaboard and had our alliances, but things weren't soft for us yet. We were now in the bloody stage of things, the survival stage. And honestly, right then and there, I was glad for this change in Cole. He spoke the cold truth of the situation, recalibrating us from our emotions to the simple knowledge that we had to do whatever we had to in order to get the girls back, even if that meant killing.

It took a good hour before we got to the storage facility. It was a massive place with several buildings over the property.

"Fuck," Dox breathed. "This place has key cards to get in and out."

A knock on my window had me rolling it down to see Jason. "I'll take of security."

"How?"

He held up something gold and shiny. "May have lifted it off a deputy."

My eyes bugged out. "Are you fucking kidding me right now?"

He gave me a deadpan look. "The moment you mentioned climate-controlled facilities, I knew we'd be dealing with some sort of security and probably tech based. Do you want to find them or not? If I go in saying I need to see the feeds and the latest check-ins, I can pinpoint which buildings to search first and get the alarms to those turned off. Give me twenty minutes."

Putting the truck in park, I went for the door handle. "I'm coming with you."

Instead of rolling his eyes and muttering that I didn't trust him, Jason just nodded and waited patiently until I was matching his stride toward the main building.

"How's Cole?" he asked in a low voice.

I glanced over at him and then almost over my shoulder toward the truck. But I stopped myself from that one. "I don't know. He's the same yet different."

"Different good or different bad?"

Rubbing the nape of my neck, I stretched it until the cracking relief had my shoulders loosening. "I'm still trying to figure that one out. He butchered his parents."

Jason growled. "Good."

"No," I said forcefully. "You don't understand. There was nothing left solid of them. They were painted all over the walls. I've never seen anything that violent."

"No offense, but I'm sticking with my previous statement: good."

Now I stopped him with a hand on his arm and stared at him. "How can you say that?"

Those blue eyes shifted toward the truck. "Your mate isn't human anymore, Ash. The morals and rules of humanity don't exist for us."

I frowned. "What are you talking about?"

He made an impatient sound and put his hands on his chest. "Take me for example. I walk and talk like a human, but in here"-he pointed to his head- "and in here"-now his heart- "I don't think or feel like a human. I was born an animal with a human skin. My kind of justice is an eye for an eye. What Cole did doesn't surprise me and it doesn't disgust me. The right to avenging his sister and himself was his to take, and he now has the power to do it. From what I understand, Cole was dead when he was infected with the venom, right? Of course, he'd come back a little different, and especially missing that 'human' part of himself."

I shook my head. "My grandmother was dead when she had the venom pumped into her and she didn't come back different."

Jason gave me a look and a little smile. "Are you one-hundred percent sure about that? Maybe she came back differently but Edward loved her anyway. Loved her because of the change in her. Not to mention she woke up a vampire with a newborn daughter. We're perilously close to those exact same circumstances."

"Except Cole didn't come back as a fucking vampire," I hissed. "He came back something entirely different."

Jason shook his head. "Whatever it was he came back as, it likes blood."

That stopped me from blowing up at him. "What?"

"Do you really think he did all that damage to his parents without using his teeth? He got some blood in him, and he obviously didn't throw it up. What else did you see in there?"

I debated on telling him the truth. After all these years, Jason was as close to me as my own brothers, but there was also a part of him that was separate, exactly as he'd just described.

And he must have known my hesitation because his expression softened. "Ash, anything you tell me stays between us. I thought we were past the distrust here?"

Not to mention he also needed to know as head enforcer so he could be prepared for a just in case scenario.

I took a deep breath. "Claws. He had black claws and fangs."

A small frown pulled his brows in. "But he didn't shift?"

"No. Not even his hands. The claws were like switchblades, shooting out from the tips of his fingers."

"Did his eyes change?"

I shook my head. "No. Do you…do you like the taste of blood?"

He seemed surprised at the question, his brows lifting to his hairline. "By itself? No. When I'm in this form, I don't really think about it much. But in my wolf form, I'm going after the meat, not the blood. The red stuff just happens to be where the meat is so it all goes down the same way."

Behind us, a horn honked loudly and perspective came rushing back. Now was not the time to be playing twenty questions about what Cole had come back as. We had females to rescue.

I grabbed Jason's shoulder. "Come on. Let's go before Dox runs us over."

"Why is he not the one coming in anyway?"

I shot him a look. "Come on. You know why. He can't be objective. His mate is one of the missing. Mine is not."

Nope, I thought. But he's the one scaring the shit out of me.

Going into the main building, Jason took charge of everything like he'd done this type of thing before. He'd flashed the badge to the guy at the desk with a made-up name, called me out as his partner. Gave the story of getting a tip about some missing women being held in one of the storage units and needing information about the newest members and their units.

Pretty sure a warrant was needed for all this stuff, but Jason was scary enough that the guy at the desk did whatever he wanted. With Jason, there was an air of authority that nobody really wanted to mess with. He was a leader who got what he wanted when he wanted it.

Within fifteen minutes, we had a half a page of names, unit numbers, and bolt cutters, not that the Children and vampires could rip the locks off. Outside, the enforcers, my brothers, a few of the Cullens and my parents were waiting for us. Jason and I handed out search areas and were on our way to our own.

Here was hoping we found them. Alive.

DoxPOV

I was on my fourth building and sixth unit when I smelled the blood. The very very fresh blood. The very familiar, fresh blood. My heart sank at the same time it started to double-tap in my chest.

"You smell that?" I whispered to Dad, who was right behind me.

I saw his nod from my peripheral vision.

Putting our noses to work, we followed the scent trail to a unit with a lock hanging on the latch. It wasn't busted but it was unlocked, just hanging there. As I bent to grab the lip of the roll-up door, I saw the drops of blood. I followed it out of the door and between my boots.

Something told me we were too late, and that they had been moved.

Cursing, I lifted the door until it stayed up on its own.

"Fuck," I breathed. Anger curled in my gut.

Dad's hand landed on my shoulder as he passed me into the unit. The automatic lights came on with our movement, and with the illumination, a string of curses came out with each breath. More blood. Puddles of it.

And all of it was Rye's.

While Dad wandered over to the corner where there was some random table with a couple boxes on it, I crouched over a puddle of blood close to a wall. It was the oldest, already darkening.

Over in the corner, Dad coughed.

"Anything useful over there?" I asked.

With a strange look on his face, he turned around and shook his head. "Not that I can see." He nodded toward me. "Can you tell-,"

"It's Rye's," I cut in. Clearing my throat, my eyes bounced around. "It's hers. All of it."

Dad came to stand in front of me, putting his strong hands on my shoulders. "We'll find them."

"Alive?" I croaked.

"Dox, there isn't enough blood here to suggest she bled out. Somehow, they must have known we were coming and moved them. We have to keep hope, if not for us, then for them. Those young women are waiting for us to come save them. What do you say we don't let them down, huh?"

Squeezing my eyes shut, I took a few deep breaths. "Yeah. Let's not do that."

He patted the side of my throat. "Good man."

He started to walk away but I pulled him back. "Dad."

"Yeah."

It took me two tries to say, "Thank you."

But he seemed to know that there was novel's worth of things unsaid in those two words. His smile was small and happy as he nodded.

As he left me alone, the exhaustion hit again. I had lost hope the moment I'd walked in here.

The bottom line was that they were gone, and the reality that I could lose three of the most important females in my life weighed heavy in my gut.

Looking back at the puddles of Rye's drying blood, I whispered, "I'm coming for you. Just hold on."

Alrighty, so given that we're so close to the end, I'm going to try to update regularly. Again, can't promise anything, but I WILL TRY. I love you guys. xoxoxox