Chapter 314: But Why?
Aidan.
"Who could have actually done this?"
The words left my mouth in a low, strained tone, but inside, my thoughts were far louder, more chaotic. My mind kept circling the same impossible question, refusing to settle on any reasonable answer. Who would dare? Who had the audacity to step into Noah’s territory, into a pack as fortified as ours, and take something as valuable as the bride?
Noah had been foolish—utterly foolish. Lowering the pack’s security just because he was preparing for a wedding. A wedding. Of all things. Sentiment had blinded him, and now the consequence was staring us all in the face like an open wound. The bride had been stolen. Taken right from under our noses.
And now... we were left with nothing but confusion and rising tension.
"How do we find her now?" Davian asked, his voice cutting through the thick silence that followed my words.
His face, though not as pale as most would be in panic, still carried a visible strain. His eyes moved across each of us, searching, demanding, as if one of us had the answer written on our foreheads. There was impatience there too, tightly coiled beneath his concern, as though he hated the helplessness of the situation more than anything else.
"Yes, what do we do now?" Adrien added quickly, stepping forward slightly as if proximity alone could speed up a solution. "Maria is really in trouble and it’s making me troubled," he continued, his voice tightening at the end.
I exhaled sharply through my nose, already irritated by the direction this conversation was taking. My gaze moved from Davian to Adrien slowly, deliberately. All they were doing was repeating the obvious, asking questions that only deepened the problem without offering even a fragment of a solution. Panic without action was useless. Noise without thought was even worse.
I rolled my eyes away from them, forcing myself to look elsewhere before my irritation turned into something sharper.
"You both keep quiet and use your head!" I snapped at last, my voice rising with frustration as I ran a hand through my hair.
The strands tugged slightly under my grip, but I barely noticed. My thoughts were already racing ahead, trying to piece together something—anything—that made sense of this mess.
Silence fell again, but it was not peaceful. It was heavy. Expectant. The kind of silence that demanded answers no one was ready to give.
"Aidan is right," Damien finally said, breaking it. His tone was calmer, more controlled, but even he could not hide the weight pressing on his words. "But right now, we don’t even have any clue on where she was taken to."
That was the truth we were all avoiding. The bitter, uncomfortable truth.
I stayed quiet after that, my jaw tightening as I forced my mind to work faster. Every second we stood here arguing, she was further away from us. Further from reach. Further from safety. My fists curled slightly at my sides as I tried to think, tried to push past the frustration clouding my judgment.
Then, suddenly...
Beta Torin’s voice broke into my head.
The mind link opened without warning, connecting us all at once. It was abrupt, almost jarring, like a door being forced open in the middle of a storm.
I frowned instantly.
Why had he activated a full pack link? Especially now? He was supposed to be handling things at Moon Bridge. Everything there was under control... at least, that was what we believed.
"What’s going on, Torin?" Davian asked immediately, his impatience now sharpened into urgency.
There was a beat of silence through the link—just long enough to make my chest tighten.
"Something big has happened, Alphas," Torin said at last.
And in that instant, a cold wave of dread crashed through me.
My body stiffened.
My thoughts stalled.
What exactly could have gone wrong now?
"Speak, Torin!" Adrien commanded immediately, his voice sharp with urgency and impatience.
There was no patience left in any of us now. Whatever Torin had to say, he needed to say it quickly. Every second of delay only made the tension in the air heavier, more suffocating, as though the walls around us were slowly closing in.
"Alphas, I sincerely apologize, but it all happened suddenly," Torin’s voice came through the mind link at last. It carried a clear undertone of regret, like someone who had just lost control of a situation they were meant to secure. There was strain there too, the kind that came from panic held poorly behind discipline.
"What exactly happened, Torin?" Damien pressed immediately, cutting through the apology without hesitation. His tone was firmer now, more demanding. "Just go straight to the point!"
There was no room for explanations that dragged on. No space for hesitation or softened words. We needed facts. We needed clarity. Anything less was useless.
A brief silence followed on the link, and it only heightened the unease already building in my chest.
"It’s Lady Vanessa," Torin finally said.
My jaw tightened instantly at the mention of her name, the muscles in my face locking before I could stop it.
The air in the room felt like it shifted—heavier, more suffocating, as though the words themselves carried weight I didn’t want to acknowledge.
"What about her?" I asked sharply, my voice cutting through the silence with impatience I didn’t bother hiding.
It slipped out faster than I intended, edged with irritation, because I already hated where this was going.
There was a pause again.
And that pause...it dragged.
It stretched in a way that made it almost unbearable, like time itself had slowed just to test my restraint. My fingers curled slightly at my side before I realized it, my patience thinning with every passing second. I didn’t like uncertainty. I especially didn’t like it when it came wrapped in hesitation like this.
"Lady Vanessa escaped confinement, Alphas," Torin said at last.
His voice was more controlled now, but I could still hear it—the urgency buried beneath discipline, the careful way he tried not to sound like he was losing grip on the situation. He wasn’t just reporting; he was managing damage with every word.
My expression darkened immediately.
He continued, then hesitated again as if choosing how much truth to release at once.
"We... I mean, I really kept a close eye on her, Alphas," Torin added, his tone tightening slightly as though he was bracing for my reaction. "But she... she isn’t in Moon Bridge Pack at the moment," he finished.
The last words came out heavier than the rest, almost reluctant, like admitting them cost him something.
For a moment, everything inside me went still.
The world around me didn’t move, didn’t breathe. It was as though the words had frozen time itself.
Without wasting another second, all of us severed the mind link at once.
The connection snapped shut, and the silence that followed felt even louder than before.
I stared ahead blankly for a brief moment, my mind struggling to process what I had just heard.
Vanessa escaped.
That thought echoed in my head again and again, each repetition more disturbing than the last.
What is she up to now?
A heavy curse slipped from Damien almost instantly. "Shit!" he said, running a hand through his hair in frustration. His expression darkened as his thoughts began to align with the implication of what we had just been told. "That lady that day... come to think of it, she really did resemble Vanessa," he added slowly, as if the realization was only now fully settling in.
And honestly...he was right.
I exhaled sharply, my jaw tightening as I replayed that moment in my mind. The resemblance we had dismissed, the suspicion we had pushed aside—it all came rushing back now with uncomfortable clarity.
But at the time, none of us wanted to entertain it. We were already dealing with enough chaos, and Maria’s situation had been our priority. So we brushed it off. We ignored the possibility that should have been obvious.
But now, it no longer felt dismissible.
"If she isn’t in Moon Bridge, then it only means she was here," Damien said again, his voice dropping lower this time, calmer but far more certain, as though each word was carefully assembled from scattered pieces of a truth he was only now beginning to see clearly.
There was no hesitation in his tone anymore—only a grim conclusion forming in real time.
My fists tightened slightly at my sides, the muscles in my arms tensing as the implication settled in, unwanted but unavoidable. My silence deepened, but inside, my thoughts sharpened.
"Oh no!" Adrien suddenly blurted out, his eyes widening in alarm as realization hit him all at once. His expression shifted rapidly from confusion to shock, as though the full weight of the situation had just landed on him without warning. "Could it be Vanessa took Maria... but why?" he asked, his voice rising with disbelief, frustration, and a growing edge of panic tangled together.
The question lingered heavily in the air after he spoke it, unanswered and unresolved, pressing down on everyone present with a sense of dread that only deepened the silence that followed.
