Finding My Breaking Point

by C. C. Masters

  Caleb chuckled and helped me up and although I was a tiny bit irritated, I smiled at how far Caleb had come since I’d first met him. He used to be too quiet and reserved to just let go and have fun like this. “What?” he asked as we started to walk back into the house.

  “Nothing,” I murmured. “Race you back inside.” I took off running and the two pups quickly passed me, but at least I had enough of a head start to beat Caleb back to the house.

  Once we were back in Caleb’s room, I picked up my phone to text Reagan.

  Anna: How are things going? Have you talked to Emily?

  Reagan: Justin told the rest of the pack that you refused to send her back.

  Ice ran through my veins and my heart rate picked up.

  Anna: What?!? Justin left with her yesterday.

  Reagan: The other girls said she never came back. Only that Justin threw a fit about Austin stealing one of his females and that he was reporting it to the council as a kidnapping.

  “What the fuck?” I yelled out loud.

  Caleb grabbed the phone from me and paled as he read through the messages. “Shit, I’m going to screenshot this and send it to Austin.”

  “It sounds like Austin’s going to be headed to council headquarters.” Caleb and I looked at each other with worry. I couldn’t help the guilt that slid through me. Why had I agreed to let Emily go? I should have been stronger; I should have been able to stop him from taking her. I was angry with myself, but I was furious with Justin. He was going down.

  I could feel Austin in the house through our bond and Caleb followed after me as I furiously stomped towards his office. “Austin!” I shouted before I had even reached the door.

  I felt Caleb send me a wave of calming energy, but I brushed it off. There was a young girl’s life at stake, and I wouldn’t be soothed that easily. I pushed the door to Austin’s office open forcefully, but Caleb caught it before it could smash into anything.

  “Anna,” Austin said as he walked towards me. “I got your text and I’ve been in contact with Reagan.”

  “Did you already know?” I asked angrily. A flicker of guilt in Austin’s eyes told me everything that I needed to know. “Why wouldn’t you tell me she was missing?” I cried out. “We sent her back with that monster knowing there was a chance that she could be hurt!”

  “I didn’t tell you, because I knew how devastated and guilty you’d feel,” Austin admitted. “I let Justin go at that time because that’s what was best for our pack. I was waiting to see if we could find where Justin tucked her away to first.”

  “But we didn’t find her yet?” I questioned. “And who is this ‘we’ that you’re speaking of?” I asked suspiciously.

  “Hey,” Austin said softly as he put his hands on my shoulders. “We’re not doing nothing. Reagan has gone behind Justin’s back to organize a search party with their pack members who can still be trusted. They’re combing the territory for Emily right now and if she’s there, they’ll find her.”

  I took a breath. “And if she’s not?”

  Austin’s face hardened. “If he’s harmed her, then he won’t be getting any mercy from me.”

  “So, we’re just supposed to wait here while Emily could be hurt or dying?” I asked defiantly. “No, I refuse to do that.”

  “Justin’s territory is quite large, Anna. If we’re going to storm over there, we need a specific location, otherwise we would just give Justin the opportunity to either hide or kill her,” Austin pointed out.

  I searched Austin’s eyes before I said anything else. My initial reaction was to ask if Justin would really harm an innocent girl like Emily, but that had been his plan all along, hadn’t it? And with the darkness inside of him, potentially controlling him, was there really a limit to what he was capable of?

  “I’ll use my magic to find her,” I told him a lot more confidently than I felt. “Jade used her magic to track down the men who had attacked us, so I should be able to do the same.”

  Austin brushed my hair back and cupped the back of my neck. “Do what you can, but just remember that you’re not the only one responsible for her safety. This falls on all of us.”

  I gave Austin a nod, but in my heart, I didn’t really believe his words. In a way, I was the only one responsible because I was the only one who could potentially take Justin down. “I’m going to find the hoodie that I let Emily wear,” I told him. “I probably need something of hers?” I said unsurely, but questioning myself more than him.

  Austin gave me a kiss on the forehead. “Keep me posted, I’m going to keep working in here for the rest of the night.” He turned to Caleb, who had remained silent during the exchange. “Keep her safe,” he murmured. “And don’t let her beat herself up too much.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Caleb said with a wry look on his face.

  I rolled my eyes at their male-bonding moment as they acted like I wasn’t standing right here and that I wasn’t perfectly capable of taking care of myself. Most of the time, anyway. However, I’d be lying if I said that Austin’s words didn’t send a small trickle of warmth through me. It was nice to have someone who wanted to take care of me, and I knew they both only spoke out of their love for me.

  I took Caleb’s hand in mine and we walked much more calmly back to his room. “I wish I had thought to ask Jade more questions about what she was doing when she put the spell on James,” I murmured.

  “We can ask James how he felt while the spell was doing its work,” Caleb suggested. “Didn’t you say that magic was mostly intent? We can work backwards if we know the effect that we want to cause.”

  I laughed and gave Caleb a hug. “This is why you get the title of smartest wolf in the pack.”

  Caleb blushed. “I don’t know if I’d say that…”

  I hopped back on the bed and called James. To my surprise, he picked up on the first ring. “This is James,” he said abruptly.

  I held back my smile at his gruffness. “And this is Anna. Do you remember when that girl did that thing that helped you find the guy?”

  There was complete silence on the other side of the line. I was being deliberately vague because we were talking on the phone instead of through the pack bond and I had no idea who might be listening. I just hoped that James knew me well enough to get what I was trying to ask him.

  “Just a minute, Anna,” he told me before he put me on hold. I sighed. I probably should have asked him if he was in the middle of something first, but this was important. He came back on the line only a few moments later. “Yes,” he said brusquely. “I remember.”

  “I want to do the same thing,” I confessed. “But I need to know how you felt so that I could mimic it.”

  “It felt like there was something inside of me that was tugging me in the direction of my prey,” he said after a moment of deliberation.

  “Like the feeling you get when you’re lost, but vaguely know the general direction you need to go in?” I asked curiously.

  “No,” he said thoughtfully. “It was more like a compulsion that left me no alternative but to go directly to my destination. It took all of my willpower to stay on the road and not to cut through the forest in the shortest way possible.”

  “But Jade said you could break the spell at any time?”

  “And the moment that I did I would have lost the direct line to our enemy,” James reminded me. “My mistake was waiting too long to break the spell. I got too close.”

  I shivered when I remembered that night. Feeling James bleeding out in my arms is something that I could never forget. That night was also what caused my latent power to explode out of the barrier that Froston had placed on it to keep me hidden. “Thanks, James. That helps.”

  “Good. Don’t do any magic until I get back.”

  Before I could even argue with him, the phone beeped to let me know that the call had ended. I shook my head. James was definitely not the type of mate who would ever smother me in affection, but I had a feeling that he had hung up on
me deliberately because he knew I would argue with the order he had attempted to give me. Caleb had a faint smile on his face, and I knew he was thinking the same.

  I closed my eyes and laid back on the bed. “I’m going to try and search through Talen’s memories to see if there’s anything that can help us,” I told Caleb. He wished me luck and went back to his desk to work as I tried to concentrate on the task at hand. Sometimes the memories that Talen had left me came easily as if they were my own. Other times I felt like I had a vague recollection of something I wasn’t quite sure of, but this was one of those times where I was going to have to go deep. I kept my breathing even as I withdrew into my own mind. You know those times when you walk into a room with a purpose, but the second you get there you forget what it was that you wanted to do? Then you drive yourself crazy trying to figure it out? Yeah, it was like that.

  I lost track of the time that passed as I sorted through random memories that flashed in front of me. I struck gold when I remembered using my magic to find a sword that one of my classmates had hidden from me in an attempt to get me in trouble. I slowed down the memory as I relived Talen’s search for the missing sword. I was looking for a person, not an object, but at least this was something. I opened my eyes and sat up once I realized that I had gotten the general idea. Talen had used his magic to give himself a vision of where the sword was hidden, which was completely different than the spell that Jade had performed. I already knew that fae magic was much different from witch magic, so that wasn’t the part that worried me.

  “Caleb,” I called to him excitedly as I picked up my phone. “Can you hide this somewhere so I can see if I can find it?”

  He spun around in his chair and grinned at me. “Yeah, give me a sec to save this and log out.”

  “Oh, if you’re in the middle of something-”

  “Nope,” Caleb assured me as he typed something on his keyboard and then stood up from the computer. “This is more important.”

  I handed him my phone. “Maybe hide it in one of the other rooms in the house? But be careful not to accidentally give me any hints through the pack bond.”

  Caleb chuckled. “You got it.”

  I sat back on the bed as my hands shook with excitement and nerves. I needed to be able to do this. Caleb was gone for only a few minutes before he returned and gave me the word to start looking. I took a deep breath and focused on the way my phone felt in my hand as I held it. Talen had pictured himself using the sword before he looked for it, so I was trying to do the same. I thought about the weight and the smoothness of the screen when I ran my thumb across it to scroll. Then I focused on my need to have the phone in my hand again and opened my mind to search for a location. It was difficult to tap into my magic while holding onto the image of what I wanted to find, and I struggled on how to focus the magic to do what I wanted.

  I didn’t make any progress at all until I thought back to my lessons with Talen. “Focus on your intent,” he would always tell me. “Using magic isn’t like following a recipe and you need to stop overthinking everything. When you catch a ball out of the air, you don’t think about each individual muscle you need to tense to make your arm move in the right direction, you simply use your instincts to reach for it. Magic is an extension of yourself and you need to use it just as you would an arm or a leg.”

  I cleared my mind completely and immersed myself in my magic. I pictured using my magic to reach for what it was that I needed. The vision came to me after five or six tries, but I jumped up in excitement as it did. “The pantry!” I shouted. “In the empty box of pop tarts that I know the twins must have left there.”

  Caleb laughed. “Yeah, the bastards ate them all again, but they still haven’t found my secret stash.”

  “Okay,” I said as I rubbed my hands on my thighs. “I’m going to try finding someone, but it can’t be anyone I have a mate bond or the pack bond with. I feel like that would be cheating.”

  Caleb nodded. “Sam?” he asked thoughtfully.

  “Yes,” I said enthusiastically. “Sam is perfect.” I thought I was getting better at this because it only took me three tries before I saw Sam looking in the mirror. The vision was fuzzy at first, but then I realized that she must be at a gym because I could see a rack of free weights in the mirror beside her. “Can you call her?” I asked Caleb since my phone was downstairs in a box of pop tarts.

  “Yeah,” he said with a grin. He put the phone on speakerphone as it rang.

  “Yo,” Sam answered when she picked up.

  “Hey, Sam,” I called to her. “Are you in the gym right now?”

  “Uh, yeah…” she said cautiously. “Why do you ask?”

  “I’m trying to find stuff,” I told you. “You were the perfect guinea pig since we don’t have a bond, you know?”

  Sam chuckled. “No weird side effects from this, right?”

  “Um, probably not?” I answered, wishing I would have thought about that before I tried it on someone who hadn’t even agreed.

  “No worries,” Sam said casually. “Quinn’s here blowing off steam with me, so I’ll make him drive on the way home.”

  “Okay,” I said worriedly. “Call me ASAP if you feel weird or anything, but I don’t think anything will really happen since I wasn’t using magic directly on you.”

  “You got it,” Sam said. “See you later, Anna.”

  I told her goodbye and looked up at Caleb. “I’m a shitty friend.”

  “No,” Caleb assured me. “You’re just doing your best to find a missing girl who might be scared or hurt. Sam wouldn’t have hesitated to agree if you had asked first, and if you had you would have wondered if it had affected the test.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed, but it didn’t make me feel better. “I’m ready to try for Emily.” I didn’t know Emily nearly as well as I knew Sam, so she was harder to picture. I pictured her face as she had walked past me and over to Justin and the scared look that was in her eyes since that moment was frozen in my memory. I did my best, but I wasn’t getting anything at all. Since that wasn’t working, I tried thinking of when I had performed a magical search on her to make sure she was just a wolf and not another fae in disguise. Everyone’s essence felt a little different, and I was hoping that it was distinct enough that it would lead me to her.

  Caleb must have felt my frustration. “Maybe try thinking of her in each one of her forms,” he suggested. “We don’t know if she’s human or wolf right now, so that might affect it.”

  “Right,” I agreed, trying to keep up my determination and not get discouraged. Emily had been in her wolf form when we had first met, so I brought back the memory of seeing her run down the beach towards me and how she had been so nervous as the twins interrogated her. I remembered separating her scent from the sand and the ocean so that I would remember it for the future and how she had a white mark on her forehead that had reminded me of the one Tigger had.

  I got a vision, but it was of the wrong person completely. I saw Justin pacing back and forth in an old house. It seemed odd, because Justin was the type of person who always wanted the best of everything to show everyone that he was better than them. I wouldn’t have thought that Justin would deign to step foot in a place that decrepit.

  I tried not to get frustrated by my failure and tried again. And again. And again. I tried so many times that I lost count. “I can’t find her,” I confessed to Caleb. “I either see nothing, or I see Justin.”

  Caleb’s eyebrows rose. “That’s weird. Why would you be seeing him?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe because he’s in the back of my mind so I’m thinking about him subconsciously?” I guessed.

  “It might be more than that,” Caleb said with a frown. “Why don’t you try to focus on Justin directly? But when you find him, try to look around as much as you can. Maybe there’s a clue as to what he did with Emily?”

  I perked up. “An old decrepit house seems like the perfect place to hide a girl that everyone’s looking for, right?”r />
  Caleb nodded. “Yeah, that would be somewhere I wouldn’t expect to find Justin.”

  I closed my eyes and focused on Justin this time. I pictured the way his eyes had glittered with rage and the way he had snarled at Austin as they argued. It didn’t take long before I got a vision of Justin. This time he was standing outside, and my heart sunk as I focused on where he was. Another man was digging what looked like a grave and when I focused on the bundle that laid at Justin’s feet, I saw a stray lock of wavy brown hair that had slipped out.

  “We’re too late,” I whispered as tears stung my eyes. I swallowed them back as I met Caleb’s gaze, and told myself that I could grieve later. But the sympathetic look on Caleb’s face crumbled my resolve and I let him hold me as I cried. He rubbed my back as I let it all out and stroked my hair once my sobs turned to sniffles.

  I didn’t trust myself to be able to tell him what I had seen without crying, so I opened the bond to show him. I felt Caleb’s disappointment and sadness as he saw Emily’s body, just as I had. I knew he was disappointed that we couldn’t find her in time, but it only added to my sense of failure. I should have been quicker to think of looking for Emily with my magic and it shouldn’t have taken me that long to discover where she was. If I had done this immediately after she left here, would she still be alive now?

  I swallowed my regrets and frustration and pulled away from Caleb. “I’m tired of falling short with everything I try to do,” I said angrily. “I need to get my shit together.”

  Caleb rubbed my arms. “Anna, you have to give yourself a little bit of leeway. I know for a fact that you’re doing everything that you can.”

  “Sometimes I feel like I’m one of those people who others refer to as ‘too stupid to live,’ and maybe I am.” I didn’t give Caleb a chance to answer, I just stomped away in search of Austin again. He needed to know that it was time to call off the search for Emily and start the hunt for vengeance. I didn’t know how I was going to take Justin down, but I was going to spend every waking moment trying to figure it out.