Alpha Xander's Undoing Chasing my Unknown Mate Back novel Chapter 89

Chapter 89

Chapter 89

*Xander*

39

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The phantom thread pulled at the center of my chest, and it felt tighter than it had at the entrance. Not the bond. Not the steady burn I knew. This was rawer and thinner, like wire tugging through flesh. Every step made it sing.

“Lovely,” Mona said under her breath as water dripped somewhere ahead. “Truly the finest holes in the ground.”

“No echoes,” Dhara said, flat as stone. “Keep your voice down.”

Mona shut her mouth. No one laughed anyway.

We followed Dhara’s torch through a corridor the width of my shoulders. The walls sweated. Our boots slipped on patches of slick rock, and the sound carried farther than it should have. Matt moved behind Dhara and in front of Mona, his free hand out to catch an elbow or a fall if either of them lost footing.

He did not have to say a word. He never had to when he was in this mode. He became function-angles, lines, steps. It made the part of me that hated him less, and I resented that because I did not want to need him right

now.

“Hold,” Dhara murmured, and she crouched by a bend where the floor widened into a shallow bowl of dust and grit. She pinched something between two fingers and held it up. The black stick was no longer than my thumb and still stained her skin.

“Fresh torch stub,” she said. “New ash.”

Mona bent with her. “How new?”

Dhara rubbed the ash between her fingers and tasted the air like she could read numbers in it. “Less than an hour,” she said. “Maybe less.”

The thread jerked hard in my chest, and my knees almost went out. I grabbed the wall until the world steadied.

“She’s close,” I said. “She was just here.”

Matt’s gaze cut to my hand on the wall, then to my face. He nodded once. “We move.”

We moved. The corridor broke into a pocket chamber with a low ceiling. Scratched stone lined the left wall where iron had eaten grooves into it. The marks were not old. I could see the bite of fresh force in them. Someone had tightened chain there, and it had torn the surface like teeth. I did not say that out loud. I did not have to. Mona saw, and she swallowed hard, and we kept going,

The next sign came quicker. A few crumbs of hard bread lay ground into the grit by a heel. A strip of cloth caught on a shard of rock. A print where someone had stumbled and recovered, small enough that the shape parked itself in my brain like a brand. Rory. The thread pulled again, and I almost broke into a run.

“Slow,” Matt said, not raising his voice. “There are two ways to miss her. Run past, or bleed out.”

13:21 Wed, Sep 17

Chapter 89

39

55 vouchers

“I am not ” I started, because anger sounded better than fear, but my foot slid, and he caught my forearm. I shook him off harder than I needed to. “Fine,” I said. “Fine.”

We cut left when the passage forked, because the right-hand air smelled stale and the left smelled of iron. Dhara glanced back to make sure we were reading the same map, and then she quickened her steps. She did not bother telling us to keep up. Packs do or they do not.

The corridor widened again, and the ceiling lifted. A black smear ran along the wall at hand height. It looked like a hand had dragged there-soot or dried blood, hard to tell in the light. The floor showed scuffs and a clean streak where something heavy had been dragged. I did not think chains at first. I thought body, and my vision narrowed.

Mona reached for my sleeve. “Hey.”

“What,” I said, because if I softened I would break.

She pointed past me. “Footprints,” she said. “Two men. One smaller. Maybe a boy.”

Matt crouched fast. “Look at the spacing,” he said. “Hurrying, not running. They think they have time.”

“They do not,” I said, and Azrien pushed hard against the inside of my skin like he wanted to wear it.

We went on. The left wall broke into a series of holes the size of fists, where anchors had been. A few still held rings. The smell of old water and iron choked the air. Mona’s light shook once as her hand trembled, and she steadied it with both palms.

“Do not imagine her here,” Dhara said without looking back. “Imagine her ahead.”

The thread yanked. It felt like a warning and a promise. We passed under a low arch where the rock had been shored by old beams. The wood creaked. The sound made Matt’s shoulders rise, and he ushered Mona under with a palm on her back like she was a nervous horse.

We rounded a final curve and stepped into a chamber wider than the rest. The ceiling dropped again and pressed heat down on us, like breath.

Two iron rings hung from a bolted plate in the floor. A chain lay coiled beside them, black with age except where friction had polished a few links bright.

In the corner, a dented pan sat under a slow drip. And along the stone near the chain, a smear of red had dried. It looked like a thumb had dragged it across the rock without meaning to.

Rory,

I did not say her name. The word burned the back of my tongue.

Matt reached for the chain. He touched it with two fingers, and he hissed and snatched his hand back. “Warm,” he said. “They just left.”

Azrien shoved so hard that my body did not feel like mine for one second. Bones loosened, muscles pulled heat, vision sharpened.

13:21 Wed, Sep 17

Chapter 89

39

55 vauchers

My hands curled into claws that did not exist, and I stepped toward the nearest wall and hit it with my fist because I could not hit anything else. Pain tore up my arm and I hit it again. Blood smeared across the rock.

“Xander,” Mona said, and it sounded like she was half begging and half warning.

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