Chapter 10: Panic, Confusion… Fear.

Phoenix’s POV.

“I don’t understand… Explain it to me again,” our father asked Nora, our Clan’s Seeker, to repeat herself once more.

“I can’t find anything wrong with him Al—Alpha,” Nora’s voice stuttered; her hands clenched tightly in front of her.

“What do you mean you can’t find anything wrong with him!” our normally meek, and reserved mother roared from my brother's bedside, her hands tightly holding onto Maddox’s. “Look at him! There is clearly something wrong with him!”

Nora Reed was a third-generation Star Seeker; her family had been with mine since the beginning of the Clan. Nora grew up with Maddox and me. One of the only members of the Clan that had been close to our age. She was young. But her age never limited her ability. She outwitted, outsmarted, and outmatched most of her predecessors. Nora Reed didn’t simply not know things.

“Adel.” The effort it took to push her name through my lips only for it to come out sounding like a hoarse whisper, might as well have been a bomb dropped in the middle of the forest.

“Absolutely not Phoenix.” Our father glared at me from behind our mother, his hands resting on her shoulders in an attempt to soothe her.

“But she’s his mate… or will be his mate. That has to mean something—”

“He’s right,” Nora meekly pitched in. “If they made any attempts at sparking the bond—”

“We don’t know that the pups—”

“They kissed.” I swallowed past the omission even though I knew that my revealing the secret that Maddox had sworn me to might help him. I couldn’t help but feel like I was committing an act of betrayal.

“How do you know this,” Miguel, our father’s Beta, spoke from a stiff wooden chair in the dark corner of the quiet medic cabin, his elbows resting on his knees, exhaustion practically bleeding off him like an open wound.

“Besides Maddox confiding in me I happened to stumble upon Adel waiting for Maddox the night of their engagement. Apparently, they had a… plan—”

“No,” our father repeated.

“But James… If there’s a chance she could help him—”

“The Muete de loup pack would see this as an opportunity to back out on the agreement. We wait. That’s final.” James Byrne, Alpha of the Blood Moon Clan, had spoken, and there was nothing any of us could do to sway him.

Maddox was in the same position as he was when they brought me into the cabin after Miguel found me. His color had only become more ashen, and if it weren’t for the shallow rise and fall of his chest one would think Maddox Byrne would be no more. If my father were to have any say in the matter, a beautiful, bright-eyed brunette with a smile I was convinced could bring the dead back to life regardless of if she was a mate or not, would never be able to say goodbye.

“Where are you going?” My mother’s broken voice was almost enough to still my feet as I turned to leave the room.

“Phoenix,” my father called out after me as my hand touched the wooden handle of the medic cabin door. “Where are you going?”

“I need some air. I can’t think in here.”

It was only partially true. Yes. I needed air. But I didn’t need to think. I knew exactly where I planned to go when I climbed into my black pick-up truck that had more rust spots than paint. I knew exactly the path through the homestead that would take me the quickest to town, and when I pulled up in front of the driveway of the small family-owned bed and breakfast that Adel’s family was staying in.

I don’t think I breathed, however, since I stepped out of Maddox’s room. I think I held my breath all the way here. Until I found her sitting at a small cafe table in a wallpapered room. She was smiling at one of her family's packmates. Laughing kindly at something they said. They saw me first. Her eyes landed on me, and I think for the first time since my brother collapsed, I took a full draw of oxygen, and all I smelled was her.

“Phoenix?” she said my name and my heart soothed slightly from the fear I had been living in since my brother collapsed. “Wh—”

“Maddox,” was all I managed to get out before I clocked all the eyes watching me, my feet automatically drawing me out of the room.

“I’ll be outside with A bharrahd.” She smiled kindly to the older wolf she was sharing a meal with.

The older wolf nodded their head at her, following us both out of the small room with their eyes. I hadn’t registered that my hands were shaking at my side until we were standing face to face outside. Tucking them out of sight I stared at her dumbly.

“Nix?” Adel’s beautiful face was etched with concern as she stepped closer to me. “What’s wrong? Is everything okay with Maddox?”

“I need you to come to the homestead,” I dumbly stated, not answering her question. “Please.”

“O—Okay. But I need to tell my father—”

“Now. I need you to come now.”

Her face flinched with the harshness of my tone and internally cringed as I reached out pulling her arm to follow me to my truck.

“Phoenix, you’re starting to worry me… can you tell me what’s wrong? Is everything okay? You said, Maddox?”

I didn’t mean to ignore her. But I didn’t know how to say it. How does one go about saying the man she’s destined to be tethered to, the man she last saw, who was kissing her with vibrance, and health, was now laying catatonic in a bed in the middle of the woods, and no one knew what was wrong? That the best of the Star Seekers could sense nothing that would alert any concern. No foul play. No underlining illness. All I could do was push her into my truck and slam the door behind her and show her.

“I like your truck,” Adel sheepishly complimented me after silence washed over us.

“It’s not supposed to look like this,” I admitted as I pulled the truck off the side of the road onto a small break in the trees that no one would really consider anything other than a small opening in the woods.

“Oh. I rather like the rust stains. It gives it character.”

“It’s a project I started when I was sixteen,” I explained as the homestead came into view. “Just never got around to finishing it.”

“I’m scared, Nix,” Adel admitted, looking over at me as I put my truck in park in front of the small little cabin.

“Me too.”

Pulling my attention away from the distraction sitting in the bucket seat next to me, I focused back on the small cabin in front of us. I’m not Maddox. I don’t have the words necessary to give her to encourage her, to prepare her for what she’s about to face inside those tiny four walls. I don’t have the education and training of the Alpha Heir to really understand the boundaries I just crossed to bring her here. But I do know this. There’s nothing. No training. No education I need to know that I would stop at anything to protect her and shield her from what she’s about to face if I could.

“Whatever happens, Adel, whatever the outcome is…” I said, not daring to take my eyes off the small wooden cabin. “You won’t be alone. I promise you.”