Chapter 126 Desperate Search

"Who said anything about a divorce?"

Alpha Sebastian’s face went dark. He figured Serena had told him that, and he wasn’t about to say so out loud.

"Serena’s situation is handled, Mr. Crawford. You can go."

"I know what to say for her. That’s all I came for."

"Jordan."

Jordan walked him to the elevator.

Vincent rode down annoyed, and underneath that, sorry for Serena. The man had ended a four year bond for her and still wouldn’t say the word out loud. Anybody could see where that goes.

He texted his associate from the lobby. Confirm the date.

Screenshots came back inside two minutes. Council registry and Bureau of Vital Records, both of them. Bond dissolution, finalized last Thursday.

There was nothing to argue with.

So Hale genuinely didn’t know.

--

Upstairs, Alpha Sebastian had exactly one thing in his head.

Find Eira.

The company was stabilized. Serena was out. For the first time in three days he had an hour to himself, and he was going to use it to explain.

He grabbed his coat and went down to the garage. Didn’t take Jordan. Didn’t call his driver.

He drove to the Thorne estate and barely slowed at the gate. Two guards got in front of the car. One of them had his phone out and was already dialing.

Martin came down the drive and waved them off.

"Mr. Hale." The estate manager’s voice could have frozen the fountain. "You want to spend another night in a holding room, that’s your business. Don’t do it on our property."

"I just want to see her." Alpha Sebastian got out and looked past him at the house, at the windows, at the lawn. "I know she’s here. She doesn’t have anywhere else to go."

Martin’s expression changed slightly at that. Alpha Sebastian didn’t catch it.

"Let me talk to her. Ten minutes. I’ll explain all of it. Serena, everything."

"What is there to explain?" Martin didn’t move. "It’s in writing, Mr. Hale. Four years of it. There’s no version of that story that comes out clean."

"There are things I can only say to her."

Footsteps on the gravel behind him.

Beatrice Thorne came around the car and looked at him the way you look at a stain on a rug.

"Things you can only say to her," she said. "Or things you can’t say in front of anybody else?"

Alpha Sebastian straightened up. "Beatrice."

"Don’t. I’m her family. You and I have no relationship."

She stopped about six feet away.

"You know what’s impressive about you, Mr. Hale? Four years. Four years and that girl never once caught on."

"Mrs. Thorne—"

"She gave you every dollar she had. Never bought herself anything. Never asked for anything. And you took that money and you put it in a car and a condo and whatever was in those boxes from the jeweler." Her voice stayed flat, which made it worse. "Meanwhile she had to explain a nine hundred dollar charge to your mother."

"What I sent Serena every month was an investment."

He’d practiced that one. It sounded thin out loud.

Beatrice actually laughed.

"An investment." She let it hang. "Then why didn’t you invest in your wife? "

Alpha Sebastian didn’t answer.

He didn’t have one.

It had never crossed his mind. She didn’t have a job. She stayed home. He’d thought that was the arrangement. He’d thought that was fine.

"I need to see her."

"You don’t get to need things from her anymore." Beatrice’s chin came up. "The world moved, Mr. Hale, and you’re standing in the same spot. You want to see her? Keep dreaming. Though I doubt she’s in your dreams. I imagine somebody else has that slot."

He took it. He didn’t argue. He couldn’t.

"Please." His voice came out rough. "We were married four years. I’m asking for one conversation."

His eyes had gone red.

Beatrice didn’t blink.

"One conversation. You had fourteen hundred days of conversations. If you’d wanted her once in any of them, if you’d changed your mind one single time, you would not be standing in my driveway."

"You did this."

"And no, you’re not seeing her."

Alpha Sebastian looked at the house.

He didn’t believe it. Not really. Eira had spent four years telling him she trusted him, that Serena was just a friend, that she wasn’t the jealous type. People don’t turn that off.

He turned toward the front door and shouted her name.

"Call it in," Beatrice said to Martin. She was done.

Martin took out his phone.

"EIRA." Louder. "Just come out. Let me explain."

Nothing moved in any window.

Security was coming anyway, so he ran for it. He got a shoulder past Martin and went straight up the steps.

"Mr. Hale, that’s trespassing—"

"Let him," Beatrice said.

Martin stopped where he was.

Alpha Sebastian went down the hall throwing doors open. Empty. Empty. Empty.

He kept saying her name and it kept coming back off the walls.

She wasn’t in any of them.

Then he pushed open a bedroom door and stopped.

There was a gray hoodie hanging on a wooden coat rack by the window.

He crossed the room and took it down. He knew this hoodie. It came in a set of two. She’d shown him the listing on her phone one night, sort of sideways, the way she asked for things, and he’d said sure, buy it.

His had stayed folded in a drawer for four years. He’d never once put it on.

Hers was pilled at the cuffs and gone soft in the wash.

His hand closed around it.

Then he started tearing the room apart.

The balcony. Nothing. The bathroom. Nothing. He pulled the curtains back like she’d be standing behind them.

He left the closet for last.

When he opened it, it was full. Coats, sweaters, slacks, three dresses, everything in cool quiet colors, and every single piece of it was something she would look right in. Somebody had thought about her for a long time to put that closet together.

Alpha Sebastian stood there and didn’t move.

The closet at home was full too. It was full of his suits. Her things had ended up on a rod in the guest room and he could not now remember who moved them there.

Martin was in the doorway.

"Don’t handle Dr. Crawford’s things." His voice was very even. "Mrs. Thorne and I picked out every piece in there ourselves. You had her in four year old sweaters and somebody else’s coats. The rest of us aren’t going to sit and watch that."

Alpha Sebastian shut the closet door and turned around.

"I’m going to do better. Starting now."

Martin smiled with the bottom half of his face.

Too late. She doesn’t need you for that anymore.

"She isn’t here, Mr. Hale. I’m going to have to walk you out."

He didn’t buy it. He went through the rest of it anyway. The hall, both sitting rooms, the kitchen, the garden, all the way down to the tree line.

She wasn’t there.

He finally stopped on the lawn, out of breath, and looked back at the two of them standing by the steps.

He came up the drive slowly.

"Mrs. Thorne. Please. Just tell me where she is."

"You spent four years keeping things from that girl." Beatrice didn’t raise her voice at all. "You’ll manage to find one person on your own."

She turned and nodded at Martin, and the gate rolled shut about a foot from Alpha Sebastian’s chest.

He stood there a while.

Then he took out his phone and called Jordan.

"Find out where she’s living."

Jordan didn’t answer right away.

"Alpha, I’d advise against it. With her clearance, pulling her address or her movements gets flagged the same day. Not by her. By the Bureau." A pause. "People have gone in front of a judge for less."

Alpha Sebastian said nothing.

He still hadn’t caught up to it. Somewhere in the last three days, the woman who used to crouch down in the entryway to tie his shoes had become a person he was not allowed to look for.

Fine.

She was his mate. Four years. Nothing on a screen at the Council office changed that.

She’d come around.