Shards of Sanity (Book 6, Forgotten Series)

Chapter Twenty-Five

Agitation strummed through me from my wolf. He paced and snapped and snarled at the spot where our female once rested. It was empty and cold now, there was nothing there to indicate we had ever had a female. I ground my teeth together and suppressed the rumble that was growing in my chest. Months, she had been gone for months. I knew someone on the territory had taken her away, had stolen her from me. Not just that they had taken my heir as well. She had been five months pregnant when she had been taken.

I had grown more and more agitated and frantic with her missing and then the plague had happened and I had become incensed. My mind had twisted and turned with the worry for my heir, because when it happened, she was suddenly gone from against my soul. In an instant she had disappeared. I feared that she had fallen to the plague, the sickness that killed our children in the wombs. I feared that both she and my son were gone. I couldn't replace her. I couldn't.

I ground my teeth together once more, clenching my hands tighter on the steering wheel. She had been perfect. Submissive, subservient, and cared only about me. I had moulded her into the perfect female to stand beside me. She had been a shining beacon to my pack and the sub-territories we had. A mere common female turned into what would hold the pack's future. She had been everything I had wished for in a female, in a mate. Lilith had made my world brighter and sweeter.

She had been everything to me, to my pack. The sterility plague had come down on us nearly two months after she had disappeared and I hoped and prayed that she had been far enough away that my heir was alive, that she was alive. I knew that if they were both alright, he would have been born by now. A few weeks old at the oldest. My wolf snarled inside my head, his anger at his lost mate palpable. Our future was gone, taken away from us. We knew someone had taken her from us. Lilith never would have left on her own, she had been happy to walk her life with me. She had been happy because she couldn't be anything else. She had been so fucking perfect.

She had never argued, never challenged me, she accepted all that I was and everything I had planned for her. There was no replacing that. I knew no other female could take her spot and I just wanted to find her. I refused to believe she was gone, that her soul was gone forever. With or without my heir I wanted her back. The sterility plague was battering at us but I still needed my female so we could try again. I hoped my son was okay, that the future of my pack was secured but without Lilith I knew that if he wasn't, then our future was gone completely. I couldn't allow that to happen.

It wasn't just the plague that hounded us. There had been a 'blessing', the mother goddess decided to showcase her strength and allowed for a single breaking of bond, a chance to try again. Rebellious females were using it to leave. They had no right to walk away from their lives, from their males. They knew the hierarchy, they knew their place, yet they still ran, the cursed words echoing in the air as they did so. The goddess took our children from the wombs of our females and then took away our females. Not all of them but enough. Six females in my pack alone had ran. It was why I was now heading for Altia.

I had been nominated to speak to the Head Priestess by the coalition of packs I was within. It had been created to preserve our ways of life and I knew it was an honour to be given such a mantle as to represent us all within the heart lands but I felt no love for the goddess. She had taken my future from me and while I hoped and prayed my female was okay, that my heir was secure, she still allowed them to be taken from my reach.

I had spared no expense to bring her back. I had searched and I continued to search. I had even paid off an illegal rogue that had been sniffing around my territory. I had paid him to look for her, to seek out any information about her and where she could have gone. Once the other females had left I had paid him to track them down too. My investment into him had been fruitful and two of the females had been returned to their punishment. They had betrayed their males and the pack and that required punishment. However he had not found anything about my Lilith. There had been no sign, no trace, nothing about her. He had come up empty handed where she was concerned.