Page 119 of The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate
She places one hand over heart.
“She wore it every day for thirty years. I was eight when she died. I’ve kept it since then. Never gave it to anyone because there has never been anyone to give it to.” My voice becomes rough by the end.
Sienna doesn’t say anything. The stool scrapes back as she gets up and crosses the small space between us. She puts the box in my hand; then, she turns around and lifts her hair off her neck.
My fingers shake on the clasp. It catches on the second try. The chain settles beautifully against the line of her collarbone, the pendant resting next to the curse mark, almost touching it, the metal warm against the cold of what she is carrying.
My mouth lowers to the spot at the top of her spine where the clasp sits.
“My mother would have loved you.”
She makes a sound between a sob and a laugh. Her hand comes up and covers mine where it rests at her shoulder, pressing my palm against the crook of her neck. We stand like that for a full minute, her back against my chest, the necklace shining around her throat, the bond between us so full that it could break a man.
The alarm bell on the eastern wall sounds.
I go very still against her.
It rings again.
I am moving before the third peal. Sienna follows me. We are down the corridor and on the staircase before the bell has rung a fourth time, the household converging in the entrance hall below us, voices raised.
Monroe meets us at the bottom of the stairs. “Our man on the eastern perimeter saw movement at the tree line,” Monroe informs us. “He sounded the alarm before he even reached the body.”
Sienna gasps.
“Body? How many?” I demand.
“Just the one.” Monroe points in the direction of the situation. “Down at the pines.”
I am out the front door without another word.
The night is cold. Wet grass meets my bare feet. The lawn is dark in the last of the daylight, and across the open stretch of it, I can see torches moving at the eastern tree line.
Sienna is at my shoulder. Darius comes out the door behind us, already shifting, clothes tearing as he hits the lawn on four paws. Violet appears on his back, and he breaks into a hard sprint.
I shift, too. The change rolls through me, and my wolf hits the grass. Sienna leaps onto my back, and I am running.
The torches grow as the pines come up. Two of my guards are kneeling in the moss at the foot of one of the trees. A third man is on a radio. Between them, on the ground, is the body.
I shift back as I cover the last ten yards. Sienna stays behind me as my knees hit the moss next to the still form.
It’s Lydia.
Her face is bloodied. The shawl at her shoulders has been torn. A slash across her temple has soaked part of her hair black,and there’s a deeper wound in her shoulder that I cannot assess in this light. Her chest rises and falls. Barely.
“Alive,” one of my men says in a low voice. “Pulse is there, but it’s weak.”
“Where’s my mother?” Violet’s voice is terrified. “Mom left with Lydia to go for a walk. Where is she?”
Her eyes go past me, into the trees beyond, searching the dark between the pines for a second person who is not there.
The forest goes black ten yards in. Torchlight doesn’t reach past that point. Nothing moves between the trunks. Just an empty stretch of forest where Violet’s mother probably was twenty minutes ago and is nowhere to be seen now.
The alarm bell is still ringing behind us at the wall.
I look down at my friend bleeding onto the ground between us.
Her eyes remain closed.
