Sloane turned and followed Austen through another set of doors, surprised when Austen stopped halfway down the corridor. “What’s going on? Where is he?”
Austen motioned toward the door at the end. Sloane made to go, but then Austen took hold of his arm. “There’s something you need to know before you go in there.”
“Oh God.” Sloane put a hand to his mouth as he tried to get ahold of his emotions. “Please, Austen, just fucking tell me.”
“He’s going to be okay. Physically, anyway. He’s banged up, but thanks to his new Therian DNA, his body has already started to heal. There was a nasty pileup, and he was thrown from the roof of a speeding van. He got lucky and landed on the roof of a car.”
Sloane didn’t even know where to begin processing everything Austen had just told him. Thrown from the roof of a moving van? “Jesus Christ. What the…? How…? Wait, what do you mean he’s going to be okay physically? For Christ’s sake, Austen, spit it out.”
“The reason he was on the roof of a van was because he was chasing it.” Austen ran a hand through his hair before meeting Sloane’s gaze. “They took Maddock.”
Sloane stared at him. When he spoke, his voice was a whisper. “What?” No. That couldn’t be right. He’d heard wrong.
“After the tux fitting, Maddock was going back to THIRDS HQ, and Dex was heading to the park. We don’t have all the details, but I managed to get hold of some security footage. Dex was roughly a block away when a man walks past Maddock, turns, and shoots his neck with an injector. Maddo
ck screams, Dex turns, and a black commercial van pulls up to the curb. Two masked men get out. They take Maddock….”
“And Dex goes after them.” Sloane felt his knees go weak, and Austen was at his side, an arm wrapped around his waist. That explained everything. What he’d felt back at the restaurant. Oh God. It had been happening while Sloane was in the bathroom trying to call Dex. He blinked back his tears and closed his eyes to get ahold of himself. “Tell me you have something,” Sloane said hoarsely, his heart feeling as though it was going to beat out of him. “Austen, tell me TIN has something.” He opened his eyes to look at Austen.
Austen shook his head sadly. “These guys were professionals. We got nothing.”
Sloane leaned against the wall and slipped his fingers into his hair. Oh God, this wasn’t happening. It had to have been the worst moment of Dex’s life, and Sloane hadn’t been there. No, he wasn’t going to go down that route. Shit.
“They had it all planned out, where and when to strike.”
“I’m not following,” Austen said.
“They knew I wouldn’t be with Dex for the tux fitting. I wasn’t supposed to be there. And they knew we’d be vulnerable after our shift, which is why they waited until just after to try and take Hudson.”
“Shit. They tried to take the doc? When was this?”
“Just before you called. In Central Park, in front of the Boathouse. They didn’t succeed. Wolf intercepted the message and showed up.”
“Okay, I gotta get this intel in. You should go.” Austen motioned to the end of the hall, and Sloane flinched. Dex….
Sloane pushed away from the wall and tore off down the corridor, ignoring Austen calling out for him. He ran into the room and came to a halt. Dex sat up on the side of the cot, the only sounds in the room coming from the machines monitoring Dex’s vitals. Sloane blinked against the tears welling in his eyes as he took in Dex’s bloodied and bruised state. They’d obviously tried cleaning him up, but the white bandages stood out against his stained skin. He was covered in scratches, cuts, and bruises. His eyes were bloodshot and red-rimmed, and he was missing a sneaker. He stared down at the floor, unmoving.
“Dex….” Sloane wanted to go to him, but Dex’s stillness gave him pause. He recognized this. It was the calm before the storm.
“I lost him.”
Sloane swallowed hard. He remained where he stood. For the first time in his life, he didn’t go to Dex, no matter how fiercely his feral half, and his heart, screamed at him to. He couldn’t. Sloane could always read Dex, could gauge what his partner needed. Dex had always been good at giving off signals—his body language, his vibe, or in this case, nothing but stillness.
“We’ll find him,” Sloane said softly.
Dex looked down at his hands. “I had him. I could have….”
Sloane took a step forward, and Dex slipped off the cot. Sloane braced himself. He knew what was coming. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, and his inner Felid wailed at the agony he could feel radiating from his mate.
The roar that tore from Dex’s lips startled the hell out of Sloane, and he instinctively took a step back. It was an inhuman cry, the cry of a wounded animal.
Dex’s skin flushed red as he screamed, and Sloane’s heart shattered when Dex tore at the tubes and pads attached to his skin. He grabbed the heart monitor and swung it into the concrete block wall, shattering it into several pieces. The next machine met the same fate, snatched up and smashed against the floor. Dex stomped down on it repeatedly with his sneakered foot, grabbing cables and wires, jerking and tearing. He cursed and yelled as he destroyed the equipment, using a steel tube like a baseball bat to beat the remaining machinery to pieces. Chunks of plastic and wiring sprayed in different directions. Dex punched, pounded, and kicked at anything that wasn’t already shattered into dozens of pieces before he tossed the rod and turned to flip over the cot.
The door opened behind Sloane, and Sloane quickly pushed it closed, shaking his head at the operatives through the window on the other side. No way in hell Sloane was letting them in here. It was for their own safety. The room once again plunged into silence, and Sloane turned to find Dex standing in the middle of the room, which now resembled some kind of equipment landfill. Sweat dripped from his face, his chest rose and fell with rapid breaths, the shattered remains of his grief surrounding him on all sides.
Dex collapsed onto the floor, and Sloane ran to him. He dropped down and gathered Dex in his arms, running a hand over his head, and closed his eyes against the tears that fell for his suffering mate, his heart breaking at Dex’s sobs. His entire body shivered violently as he clung to Sloane, his fingers digging into Sloane’s arms as he screamed and cried himself hoarse. Sloane pressed his head to Dex’s, rocking him gently in the hopes of offering some kind of comfort.
Being so close to Tony, unable to help him, was undoubtedly tearing Dex apart. Sloane knew Dex too well. This happening shortly after the evening where Dex had shut himself in the bathroom because thinking about his parents not being at his wedding hit him harder than expected. Dex would be thinking about his parents, how he’d been just a little boy, helpless to do anything. And now as an